Specifications
Name: World Time Indicator (name given by me)
Model Reference: ?
Movement: Ronda 763.24H, Swiss Parts, 1 jewel, battery type 364
Time display: 24 hour, minute, second
Date: no
Case: stainless steel with screw on back
Size: 40 mm diameter, with crown 43 mm
Height: 12 mm
Face: white, black hour numbers and markers as outer circle, yellow lumed minute numbers and markers as inner circle
Text on dial: World Time Indicator, Water Resistant, Quartz
Text on back: NF Stainless Steel Back 30 M Water Resistant
Hands and markers: silver hour hand with red crescent, silver open minute hand, silver seconds hand with red arrow
Water-resistance: 30m (3 ATM)
Crown: standard
Crystal: domed mineral crystal
Lug: 20 mm
Bracelet: leather strap with buckle
Foreword
This watch was once posted here as
https://www.watchuseek.com/f5/gopten-24-hr-223807.html and you can find in
24watches.info named as "Body Heat alias Gopten 2000". I saw it in eBay with BMC Software logo and named just "24h quartz wristwatch". Nobody showed any interest, I was the sole bidder and for EUR 23.50 (inclusive shipping from Germany) this watch was mine. I wasn't sure I want it at all, but the loss was anyway minimal.
Comments
When I got this watch the first impression was - this is the ugliest watch I have! Until I started to set the time it was not clear for me, what hands it has at all. Tell me what time is it now:
6:26 is wrong. 6:50 is wrong. It is 11:16! Got it?
Not every day you see a watch where the hour hand is longer and minute hand shorter. And crescent-tipped hands are usually indicating date; here it is the hour hand!
I decided to test this watch wearing it at home. (I know, that nobody ever notices what watch am I wearing, but I didn't want that THIS watch will be the first one when somebody asks - "what strange watch are you wearing".)
And … the dial was surprisingly legible! When you take a closer look you see, that it is not a random assembly of hands what they happened to have in stock. The length of hands is right - crescent hand works very well and when minute markers are in the inner circle then minute hand must be the shorter one.
The hour numbering starts with 0. Which is, for some reason, very important for some readers of this forum.
Pale yellow for minute numbers and markers was obviously not the best choice, that's right. They are lumed, but the hands are not and at night you can't see anything at all.
What else I can say is that the overall quality level is not bad at all. Many cheap quartz watches are too fragile. Here we have solid case with screw on back. The shape of the case is passé, but the size and weight are OK. Wearing this watch is like wearing a "real" watch.
The movement is standard - Ronda 763.24. Many cheaper 24h quartz watches are equipped with this (now discontinued) movement. The watch is obviously made in Chine (as we can read from inner side of caseback) and the movement too. It is a "Swiss Part" version, and on the place where Ronda movement number must be is just "0A" instead of "763.24".
I have no idea who produced these watches. We have here a promotional watch known with different company logos on dial (Body Heat, Gopten, BMC Software, Hetronic ...). The differences between series are minimal. Gopten has no "quartz" on dial, Body Heat has "quartz" with other font, Gopten has in Italian "Gopten Serie Limitada" in centre of the back, Hetronic has NP instead of NF on the back.
The only links to the original producer can be:
- NF on the caseback
- U.C.O. on the inner side of caseback
But this thread needs title and I decided to call it "World Time Indicator", as it stands on all dial versions I've seen.
BTW, genuine leather strap is also good and fits very well into old-fashioned picture.
Summary
Strange. For a promotional purpose I would expect more cool-looking watch with worse quality. Who needs a strange-looking watch with too solid assembly? Maybe only WIS at WUS? And it warms my heart when I read this:
I just received this nice Gopten watch which I bought on Ebay just before Christmas.
It is a quartz watch, and an unusual feature is that the hour hand is the long one with the crescent shape on the end, and the shorter open hand is the minute hand!
I like the look and the 0 on the hour dial, but unfortunately there is 60 on the minute dial. The minute numbers are lumed and show well, but I don't know how easy it will be to see the hands in the dark though.
An interesting watch, and a bargain at $40 lightly used.
Phil.
And now the four versions: