Random musings and general banter.

[Duke of Cheese]

There is a particularly bad smell about that channel and how it is run. No wonder they read here. The truth hurts; but clearly, it is particularly addictive for those involved in this format.

 

[galesgal57]

Yes of course you were. I believe you. You could never suggest anything as rude as the image now ingrained in my brain

Dirty minds think alike.

 

[PhædrusR]

That's not an easy one to answer, automatic chronographs don't feature in the affordable watch market, think Kevski is the only one on IW that's had a watch with Valjoux in it, really depends on what deal you can find at any given time. I've got a Hamilton (Valjoux 7753) cost me £600 in a sale at TK Maxx, but at the moment it's around £1300-£1500 at any place that has it, kinda scare.

If you're lucky, find a sale etc, you could pick up one from approx £750 upwards Swiss or Seiko NE86 (inside a Sturmanskie). Other option would be second hand at somewhere like chrono24.

Now on the other hand, if you're after a mechanical (hand wind) chrono, the Chinese do an excellent affordable one, which is very popular and has been copied by many Chinese brands. That is the re-issue of the Seagull 1963 Airforce watches. If you go for Seagull made ones they're more expensive £400+, but as i said lots of different Chinese brands doing them so you pick them up at Ali for as little as £60 in the sale.

https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-1963-seagull-watch.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.auto_suggest.1.307358ZO58ZOkG

Thanks.
Is there a cheap(er) automatic chronograph movement. In what watches.

As for Swiss, Tissot used to do an auto-chrono for around £600? Is that the cheapest still?

I seem to remember on the old IW2, a £200-300 auto+chrono being sold, if that's what it was, but I can't remember the make. Possibly Russian make or a Selitta movement, but I can't recall.

 

[Professor Branestawm]

Prof: just a quick question if I may. As I said before I have no real interest in watches per se but 13 years ago I purchased a nice (in my view) watch which I believed at the time was a good/known maker.
It is a Tissot(Matthey not mentioned on the paperwork) and the type is T-Classic Desire.
It has been on my wrist ever since,keeps exact time and only replaced batteries.
My question is : should I have it serviced?
Think I know the answer

It says on the enclosed leaflet a member of the Swatch group(means nowt to me)

Tissot is a good old (since 1853) Swiss watchmaker, based in Le Locle in the French speaking part of Switzerland , and now part of the Swatch Group (along with many others). Crudely, you could say that Swatch owns brands in all the main categories from the very high luxury end (Breguet, and Blancpain) , through the luxury watch category of Omega and Glashutte Original (actually German from Saxony, the everyday luxury of Tissot, Hamilton Rado and Certina, to the lower end of Swatch and Mido. There are others, Jaquet Dros, Harry Winston etc. and of course ETA, the movement maker.
So your Tissot has an excellent heritage, and is established as an ‘everyday luxury’ brand, making a mix of Automatic, Quartz and hand wound watches, all using ETA mechanisms as their engines.
A watch, even a quartz watch does need a regular service, as well as a battery change as soon as the battery expires (dead batteries leak more readily than working ones and a leaky battery will kill a watch very quickly. Tissot themselves offer fixed price servicing, which, TBH is a good deal - and you get a 2 year warranty on all replaced parts, free cleaning and waterproofing check. A complete service on a quartz watch to bring it back to fully working and guaranteed costs £105 on your watch. What do they do for that?
1. Opening of the watch case; dismantling of the crown with the winding stem so as to extract the movement with the dial and the hands.
2. Dismantling of the movement in its individual parts, revision of the movement and replace worn movement parts, cleaning, oiling, assembling, tuning of the precision and checking the functions of the movement according to the Tissot quality standard or a movement exchange
3. Case and metal bracelet cleaning.
4. Replacement of the hands, crown, pushers/corrector, crystal (except shaped mineral crystals and sapphire crystals), gaskets, and battery.
5. Restoration and checking of the water resistance of above mentioned parts and testing according to the Tissot specifications.
6. Technical and aesthetic final check in compliance with the Tissot quality standard.

It’s a good deal, and quite a bit cheaper than for an automatic.
I’d normally say that a 3 hand quartz watch should be serviced every ten years. I do think that if your watch is valuable to you, the. I’d get it serviced, and I’d have it done by Tissot/Swatch as above.

Best wishes and good health.

 

[Professor Branestawm]

Any idea what the cheapest automatic chronograph is?

And the cheapest swiss made one of same?

Every few months you can pick up some Hamilton chronos (Valjoux-ETA 7750 variants) on TK Maxx online, brand new, with international warranty for around £500-£600, which is about as good value as I think you’ll ever see. Like Hammy, I’ve bought a couple over the last few years, along with a lovely two-eyed Hamilton chronograph looking very, very much like the Tag Monaco. It’s an ETA 2824 inside with the Dubois Depraz chrono module, and that too was only £599. That would very much be my go-to suggestion.

 

[Professor Branestawm]

You dirty old man

I never quite got over the fact that in real life they were quite close in age.
Harry H Corbett (young Steptoe) was born in 1925, Wilfred Brambell (his dad) in 1912, so only 13 years between them!!
It was odd to me in ‘On The Buses’ how all the girls fawned over Reg Varney.
Reg was born in 1916, so in 1974 when ‘On The Buses’ was shown, Reg was very nearly 60 years old. And yet he lived with his mum and was ‘on the prowl’ with all the young female clippies (conductors).
His mum in the show, Doris Hare, was born in 1905, so only 11 years between Reg and his mum!

TV is a strange place!

 

[Professor Branestawm]

Thanks.
Is there a cheap(er) automatic chronograph movement. In what watches.

As for Swiss, Tissot used to do an auto-chrono for around £600? Is that the cheapest still?

I seem to remember on the old IW2, a £200-300 auto+chrono being sold, if that's what it was, but I can't remember the make. Possibly Russian make or a Selitta movement, but I can't recall.

I’d snap up any Selitta chrono for £200.
That would be a real bargain and ine you could definitely sell without losing money.

QVC used to have Poljot International Chronos for around £499 with the 3133 movement. You can ocasionally see new ones on eBay around £500-£600, which is a fair price (they sell second hand for about half that).

Tissot’s quartz chronos are around £500, but I’ve not seen a mechanical one for less than £1000 for a while, sadly Phaedrus.
Mostly their auto chronographs are edging towards £2000 now - Swiss prices have been climbing for a while, and Tissot are very similar to Oris, price wise.

TISSOT Chronographs for men | Watch selection | Tissot® United Kingdom

TISSOT® UK Official Website | Discover our latest selection of chronograph watches for men and keep track of your time in style | Free delivery and returns. 2-year international warranty. Swiss Made.

www.tissotwatches.com

 

[Muttley]

I never quite got over the fact that in real life they were quite close in age.
Harry H Corbett (young Steptoe) was born in 1925, Wilfred Brambell (his dad) in 1912, so only 13 years between them!!
It was odd to me in ‘On The Buses’ how all the girls fawned over Reg Varney.
Reg was born in 1916, so in 1974 when ‘On The Buses’ was shown, Reg was very nearly 60 years old. And yet he lived with his mum and was ‘on the prowl’ with all the young female clippies (conductors).
His mum in the show, Doris Hare, was born in 1905, so only 11 years between Reg and his mum!

TV is a strange place!

I hadn't realised that Harry H Corbett and Wilfred Bramble were so close in age, that's interesting. I find Septoe and Son quiet tragic in places, Harold so wanting to rise above his life and get away but stuck with a dad that constantly puts him down. I remember the episode where Harold divides the house and tells his dad it's apartheid. Albert says "apartheid, what the bleeding hell's apartheid"

As for On the Buses, it was Olive and Arthur that fascinated me, and the way they would tease Arthur about his 'operation' (never actually specified which makes it funnier). He had such comic good timing. And don't forget Blakey, "I 'ate you Butler".

 

[Hammy60]

Thanks.
Is there a cheap(er) automatic chronograph movement. In what watches.

As for Swiss, Tissot used to do an auto-chrono for around £600? Is that the cheapest still?

I seem to remember on the old IW2, a £200-300 auto+chrono being sold, if that's what it was, but I can't remember the make. Possibly Russian make or a Selitta movement, but I can't recall.

I've only been watching watch shows on IW since 2018ish, never seen an automatic chrono or mechanical chrono at that price. I wonder if it might have been one of the meccaquartz (Hybrid) watches, sometimes the description/sales patter given when selling them was way wrong, could have made it sound like it was an Auto Chrono.

 

[Scraping the barrel]

Tissot is a good old (since 1853) Swiss watchmaker, based in Le Locle in the French speaking part of Switzerland , and now part of the Swatch Group (along with many others). Crudely, you could say that Swatch owns brands in all the main categories from the very high luxury end (Breguet, and Blancpain) , through the luxury watch category of Omega and Glashutte Original (actually German from Saxony, the everyday luxury of Tissot, Hamilton Rado and Certina, to the lower end of Swatch and Mido. There are others, Jaquet Dros, Harry Winston etc. and of course ETA, the movement maker.
So your Tissot has an excellent heritage, and is established as an ‘everyday luxury’ brand, making a mix of Automatic, Quartz and hand wound watches, all using ETA mechanisms as their engines.
A watch, even a quartz watch does need a regular service, as well as a battery change as soon as the battery expires (dead batteries leak more readily than working ones and a leaky battery will kill a watch very quickly. Tissot themselves offer fixed price servicing, which, TBH is a good deal - and you get a 2 year warranty on all replaced parts, free cleaning and waterproofing check. A complete service on a quartz watch to bring it back to fully working and guaranteed costs £105 on your watch. What do they do for that?
1. Opening of the watch case; dismantling of the crown with the winding stem so as to extract the movement with the dial and the hands.
2. Dismantling of the movement in its individual parts, revision of the movement and replace worn movement parts, cleaning, oiling, assembling, tuning of the precision and checking the functions of the movement according to the Tissot quality standard or a movement exchange
3. Case and metal bracelet cleaning.
4. Replacement of the hands, crown, pushers/corrector, crystal (except shaped mineral crystals and sapphire crystals), gaskets, and battery.
5. Restoration and checking of the water resistance of above mentioned parts and testing according to the Tissot specifications.
6. Technical and aesthetic final check in compliance with the Tissot quality standard.

It’s a good deal, and quite a bit cheaper than for an automatic.
I’d normally say that a 3 hand quartz watch should be serviced every ten years. I do think that if your watch is valuable to you, the. I’d get it serviced, and I’d have it done by Tissot/Swatch as above.

Best wishes and good health.

Prof,
Thanks very much for such a detailed reply.
My Tissot cost me circa £112 circa 13 years ago. As said I know sweet f a about watches now so knew even less then

So it would be worth spending on a service it seems.

How much money would it cost now to buy a similar quality Tissot watch do you think.? (And is Tisssot the same as Matthey Tissot? Or are they family relations?)

Having read so much on here about watches from you and that guy from Aberdeen who clears Ideal World out of Duchamp watches i feel quite honoured to have made such a wise choice all those years ago.

Mind you,i wasn’t watching Unideal World in those days so missed out on some real bargains

 

[Hammy60]

Prof,
Thanks very much for such a detailed reply.
My Tissot cost me circa £112 circa 13 years ago. As said I know sweet f a about watches now so knew even less then

So it would be worth spending on a service it seems.

How much money would it cost now to buy a similar quality Tissot watch do you think.? (And is Tisssot the same as Matthey Tissot? Or are they family relations?)

Having read so much on here about watches from you and that guy from Aberdeen who clears Ideal World out of Duchamp watches i feel quite honoured to have made such a wise choice all those years ago.

Mind you,i wasn’t watching Unideal World in those days so missed out on some real bargains

Two different brands, no relation, just similar name.

Both old Swiss brands, Mathey-Tissot 1886, Tissot 1853.

When Peter Simon talks about a Swiss brand that makes 4,000 watches a day (he wrongly thinks it's Rolex) it's Tissot.
Mathey-Tissot on the other hand struggled with the quartz crisis and while the brand survived under new ownership it no longer manufactures it's own watches in house, they're watches are made by a 3rd party watchmaker.

 

[Jazzydrury]

I see in Coronation Street, Helen Worth who plays Gail is 73, Sue Nicholls who plays Audrey is 80.

But on the Show Gail is Audrey’s Daughter

 

[Jazzydrury]

So it’s Christmas Gift Wish List weekend, would anybody want a Gift from a list from IW

I see double shift Pedro is back

 

[Jazzydrury]

Scaremongering again, with Wallets

 

[Battiola73]

So it’s Christmas Gift Wish List weekend, would anybody want a Gift from a list from IW

I see double shift Pedro is back

Best gift from IW - start telling the truth. The real truth that is not IW truth.
Apart from that no, nothing from their tat list. Wonder if they’ll sell the little cellophane fish that you used to get in crackers as a health cure it all?

 

[galesgal57]

Best gift from IW - start telling the truth. The real truth that is not IW truth.
Apart from that no, nothing from their tat list. Wonder if they’ll sell the little cellophane fish that you used to get in crackers as a health cure it all?

Natalia could sell the plastic lips

 

[Jazzydrury]

Peter has just said Text in, with how you really feel. He’s opened himself up

 

[Jazzydrury]

I see Mark Reyes is on Create and Craft at 3pm, with Piranha Kitchen Gadgets

Has Simon Lies been seen on TV anywhere since Seen on TV ended

 

[Muttley]

Peter has just said Text in, with how you really feel. He’s opened himself up

I don't think he wants us texting in and telling him what we feel. I'm surprised he didn't say everybody except Shopping Telly forumites.

Anyway, I think Peter has an alternative source of income. I'm currently on a bus going through Cricklewood and saw 'Pedro's Cafe'. It looked a pretty rough greasy spoon cafe. It probably matches the decor of his damp, mould ridden hovel that he claims to live in (when it suits him when making a sale).

 

[Jazzydrury]

I don't think he wants us texting in and telling him what we feel. I'm surprised he didn't say everybody except Shopping Telly forumites.

Anyway, I think Peter has an alternative source of income. I'm currently on a bus going through Cricklewood and saw 'Pedro's Cafe'. It looked a pretty rough greasy spoon cafe. It probably matches the decor of his damp, mould ridden hovel that he claims to live in (when it suits him when making a sale).

Was Mark Stewart cooking