Q&A Expertise thread: Is this watch legit or a franken? Part 3

Looks fine, except the lume that fell out. There are plenty of good and cheap pieces with this dial variant, i'd let it pass, unless you're a reluming expert.

I'd say around 25 $.

Maybe this will help:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Slava-fake...714149?hash=item42147f1465:g:Yv0AAOSwH1NeTD3Y
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-ru...760820?hash=item1f0c6263b4:g:ctwAAOSw0iNeX~Sw

God knows...does the date function even work, do the numbers fit the window?
If not, someone was faking something that is already fake

Personally, I would not touch a NVCH-30 that comes without the metal can, unless it is a super super bargain.

P.S. I just saw that two "NVCHs" for sale on ebay both have "only the lower half of the tin case". How's that for suspicious.

Odessa200 said:

Why not? I would imagine many good watches are w/o these tins.

Click to expand...

There were not that many NVCh issued, and i would guess they were issued to officers who would take good care of them, along with boxes and paperwork. Kind of like, if they give you a medal of a Hero of the Soviet union, you don't throw away the box, do you?
Also, what do you really need to fake a NVCh? A 2209 movement (well there are plenty of them), some paddle hands, a somewhat modified 1190 case with lugs grinded to 22 m, a fake patinated dial and voila - 800 $.

Yep, for 399,99 $ it's a real bargain
And Dodgydruid, looks like someone went Delboy on you
What's next, Yugoslavian riesling? Computers from Mauritius?

Ah well...you dive into the world of USSR watches, only to find out that your newest acquisition has the wrong glass, crown and mechanism. So you start a long quest for the original parts, only to find that a cost of defrankenizing surpasses the value of a fully original watch...
That reminds me; in one of the most iconic scenes in British television comedy, Trigger proudly reveals that he has used the same road sweeping brush for his entire career. “This old broom”, he says “ has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles”.

For some reason the 24h or Windrose variants often end up in Calendar cases. I wonder what happened to the original cases...?

I'd rather see a flat than an older, bevelled 2609.HA movement in the Big Zero. Could be factory built with an older leftover movement, but a flat movement is a characteristic of this watch. Unlike bracelets, straps are consumables and don't last 35 years.

Looks personalized to me...

I knew I saw this somewhere:


No butterfly, franken then?

If you've got Big Zero case, movement, hands and dial, then you've got a Big Zero. If it looks like a duck...
80 % of the Big Zero is the dial, hands are the rest.

Something similar here:
Personally i wouldn't touch a Nvch-30 without the can and papers, but that's just me.

Someone probably painted it red for whatever reason.
But there is something interesting in the catalogue picture above.
The black Copernic in the catalogue has a flat crown, different from a chrome model.
All the genuine Copernics I've seen so far had a crown like the one above with the red hand.

Nerzh - Chinesium 1 : 0

Knowing Vostok, I suppose it's possible that the watch left the factory with that configuration, especially in 1990, when nobody bothered with such things. BUT. If i was paying top dollar for NOS, I'd want it to be a spitting catalogue image.

Unsure if this dial went with thin lines case...
Maybe someone has a catalogue picture at hand?