But that doesn’t make them not a good value. The values are still massive, absolutely. Remember back when no one cared or knew what an exotic Tudor was? Or way back when Paul Newman Newman was just a salad dressing? Collector Zeniths are in that state now. Either nomenclature is not yet well established. Perhaps ‘quadcolor’ would be more accurate. There’s even a tiny bit of inter-reference variation, some examples have a monochromatic grey left hand subdial, leading a few to call this A3817 configuration ‘exotic’. The fact that only the A386 and this have shared this element, and yet almost no one knows what an A3817 is, that’s a shame. Three subtle subdial shades it’s mission gracefully accomplished. It’s every watch designer’s goal to have a beautiful design that doesn’t shout, but is still recognizable across a room. Moreover, I believe Zenith nailed their chronograph DNA right out of the gate in the El Primero. I mean, I see the reissues today and they look every bit as contemporary and edgy as just about everything except HYT. This case, with this dial, it must’ve made a similar impact in 1971. You know how Dyson vacuums all look kind of like they’re actually made to go on the next launch to the ISS? It’s a vacuum, but it looks like a nano-gel turbo thruster. While the A386 was produced in 2500 examples, this A3817 was only ever produced in a (Zenith SA-confirmed) 1000 examples. It’s lesser known because it’s just lesser-seen. This is the 1970s successor to the A386’s 3019 PHC halo-product throne: the A3817. It even brought the famous ‘sharks tooth’ chronograph seconds track from the Cover Girl. It fact, it’s really the only other watch Zenith made in period besides the A386 to sport the grey-dark grey-blue. There is only one watch that has combined Zenith’s A386-style tricolor subs with an A3818 Cover Girl case.
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