**** Mfas lockdown edition ****Grand finally ****

[is that my watch]

Ladies and gentleman this is the last round of the more for a score comp, we had some close rounds and then others not so close well guess you can't win them all or even once for that matter but now we are left with the final two still standing so we are in the winner take all stages all being a rather nice pair of cufflinks .



and a snazzy badge.



if you can get Geoff to do it so with no further ado.

the last two pulled are :




1) matt - replay

Once upon a time, Mussolini made the trains run on time. Sadly, like so many stories, it's just not true. He made certain expresses carrying journalists and dignitaries run on time, and damn the chaos elsewhere. Sound familiar? However, after the war, the Italian rail network actually started to be something to be proud of and became a symbol of the new high tech Italy. While the Cortebert spin off Perseo had the monopoly during the fascist period, after the war, the Ferrovie dello Stato came up with a loose specification for an Italian State railway watch and accepted tenders from pretty well anyone who could meet the slightly less than exacting standards. As long as they looked nice...

Which they did. Universal Geneve, maker of cult watches to the gentry, produced a series of watches for the Ferrovie dello Stato that still manage the remarkable feat of having been cult watches for as long as I've been collecting without every flying anywhere but under the radar. However, there are a whole raft of even less well known FS watches by all sorts of manufactures. All share the FS logo on the back and most come with a while enamel dial with blued stick hands. So while I have no idea who Replay are or even if they are a brand or just the model, I can tell a nice FS watch when I see one.




And I'm looking at one right now.



The movement, a Unitas 6378 is a rock solid movement but the level of finish hints at where the money was spent...



However, the watch survived a few days of scrambling in Snowdonia before being cleaned and fettled - which is barely true of its owner... I'm pretty sure that this is my entry as the screw in the Girard Perregaux isn't succumbing to alum fast enough.


4) tribe- m-watch

The M-Watch

Back in the early 1980s, I read a magazine article about a new breed of watches. These new watches were made from plastic, they were cheap, and you could change the battery yourself. There were two watches standing ready to take over the world, and they were the Swatch and the M-Watch. I wanted an M-Watch - and I couldn’t find one anywhere.





Mondaine has an M-Watch model today (a different design), so it’s natural to think that M stands for Mondaine, but it doesn’t. M is for Migros, and Migros had their M-Watch made by Mondaine. Migros, sometimes called ‘the orange giant’, is Switzerland’s largest supermarket chain, and it’s Switzerland’s biggest employer. The company logo features a large orange M. The M-Watch was sold in Migros stores and was also known as the ‘Volksuhr’ or ‘People’s Watch’. The main difference between the M-Watch and the Swatch is that the Swatch had more vigorous promotion and better access to international markets.

The M-Watch had to settle for being a local cult and was eventually dropped. When Migros brought it back (as a 30-year anniversary model), Mondaine went to court, saying that the name and concept belonged to Mondaine - but they didn’t. Migros eventually won the case, with the court accepting that M was for Migros, and that the originator of the concept was Pierre Arnold, Chairman of Migros in the 1980s. Part of the evidence was this watch, which showed that the M originally stood alone (rather than hyphenated as M-Watch), and was a representation of the ‘orange giant’ M.





I’m not going to have a precise memory of a magazine photo from nearly forty years ago, but everything points to this being the watch I wanted and couldn’t find. Tellingly, it’s the sort of thing that I still like today. This picture from a later article says: “The success story began with this model: the first M-watch from 1983”.





The one I have bought appears to be an original from 1983, rather than the anniversary model that caused a fuss thirty years later. The case back shows that it was made by Mondaine, and the anniversary model was made by somebody else - hence the court case. So this is the ‘Volksuhr’ that lost to the Swatch, and later led to a legal debate on the meaning of M. It also shows that the Swatch wasn’t as uniquely inspired as we might think - a supermarket had the same idea.




The watch is in pretty good nick. The mineral crystal has some scratches, and the plating has been worn away from the crown, but it’s perfectly wearable. The strap will have been replaced at some point, but may well be correct for the model. It works, and it’s accurate. But the watch itself is secondary to the story, historical and personal.


voting will be done as a view-able vote so those on tapacrap who want to vote can just say here and then when voting finishes will add those to the score on tallying up .. every one is welcome to vote whether they enter anything or not .


As always Ismy

[skywatch]

Both have wonderful histories, and worthwhile head to head. I had to vote for the one I would want in my own collection.

[tribe125]

Yikes, the final.

Unitas, clean dial, Italian railways, a fair bit of charm, some intrigue about the company’s identity - Replay.

[crownpuller]

I'd glady wear both of them and I have to thank Mr Tribe for the education and introduction to the previously unknown to me M Watch; but, for me the 'REPLAY' is a case of 'what's not to like ?' and gets my vote.

[Matt]

Both watches have plenty to offer. In many ways, the Replay is a perfect example of a historical cheap utility tool watch which could have been made at literally any point in the last century without anyone batting an eyelid and, while nicely designed, was built down to a price . The M watch is strangely similar in that it picks up almost precisely the same batten and carries on running with it. While a plastic watch might feel utterly everyday now, it is only because of this, swatch and the so called 'disposable' military watches of the early quartz period set a standard for cheap utility that I doubt will change much for another century. When I look at the M watch I can't help feeling that the designers of the oh so cool Seiko SUS watches peeked at it when designing that 'unique' classic utility watch - the M's design transcends its materials and it's period.

So while it is a fine tradition to vote for the opposition, had the Replay been someone else's, I'd still have voted for the M watch. Don't get me wrong, the Replay is a fine watch that is no worse than the near identical Universal SF watch which is considered a cult gem:


Although mine is the usual battered beauty!

However the M watch is a beautiful, and seminal, example of just how nice a plastic watch can be. So it's M for me. More to the point, Tribe's usual education adds so much more value.

[is that my watch]

well this one runs till Sunday remember anyone can vote

[tribe125]

I’m not sure if Matt has shirts that will take cuff links.

[Matt]

Shirts? If I were lucky enough to win, I’d be getting my ears pierced!

[crownpuller]

...I’d be getting my ears pierced!

That could be entertaining... socially-distanced ear piercing.

[tribe125]

That could be entertaining... socially-distanced ear piercing.

Air rifle, dart. I’m willing.