SugessSeagull 1963 ST1901 Venus 40mm Chronograph Sapphire, Display Back, 2 Straps BNIB

At last, a chance to leave this much deserved review for a marvellous watch and a great guy to purchase from.The watch arrived here on 02:12:21, but an administrative balls up, that happened somewhere along its journey from Australia to my home, here in Northumberland, made my watch appear to have vanished into outer space or Glasgow as it's better known.I've posted a couple of images showing the watch doing what it does best; keeping good time.Surprisingly, but in a good way, my timegrapher proves, by electronic wizardry, that this specimen of the well loved and beautifully built Chinese timepiece whose popularity is growing around the world is in fact even more accurate (and somewhat less affected by position and atmospheric pressure) than my much loved Omega Seamaster 300 Pro diver, a COSC accredited chronometer!So here we have an incredibly inexpensive, beautiful and consistently accurate timepiece that performs in a way more typical of pieces costing dozens of times as much of our hard earned watch budget.In my case, the seller confirmed that he, in fact, carries out his own assessment and pre delivery regulation of these watches prior to his being satisfied that the watches are performing at their absolute best.OK, so we can buy this model - I opted for the 40mm size, with sapphire crystal, lumed hands & markers - for a few Pounds, Dollars or Euros less on a well known Chinese discounters site, but in my opinion - backed up by the timegrapher - it's far more sensible to buy from the supplier of my example, unless you have the inclination, the skills and the spare time to open the watch up regulate it properly yourself, which I advise against as very few of us amateurs could come close to preparing a watch this well.Mine has only been removed from my wrist when going for a swim, showering or washing the car, it makes no claim to offer any significant level of water resistance and I won't be taking risks with it.. that's what G-Shocks and dive watches are for!Points that potential buyers of any of the various watches that use this beautiful, well established mechanical movement ought to bear in mind:These are hand wound, not an issue as a rotor would add a couple of mm to the thickness of the watch and would hide that gorgeous movement, but unlike an automatic, it is crucial that the watch is wound with a delicate touch and mechanical sympathy.I recommend only giving the crown a few twists for the first few days of use, which will allow the tiny amount of oil applied to a new mainspring to creep its wayvinto each coil of that spring then, once you've developed the feel for how many turns are needed to keep the watch running, make sure that you resist the temptation to give it "just one more tweak." This watch is consistently reliable but is, nonetheless, a very delicate instrument so please treat it as such and it will reward you!Regarding the correct use of the chronograph functions:The first push of the start / stop pusher will appear not to be doing anything. Again this is a case of gently pushing until there is a slight, but detectable by feel, sensation of the pusher starting the chronograph.Treat this movement with TLC and you'll be fine, get brutal and you'll break it. Trust me, you will soon get used to the fact that this isn't a Seiko Prospex "Mecaquartz" chronograph, (I have such a thing and it's apparently indestructible) but is in fact an example of where microengineering meets art.So you could do hours of research on the various watch forums in order to make your ST1901 buying decision, or you could just look at the Amazon items available from the guy who supplied me with my watch and buy with confidence, wherever on the planet you stay!Cheers for ploughing through that lot.Happy Christmas, stay safe and buy one of these in either case size, acrylic or sapphire crystal, lumed or plain, but whatever you do buy it from the same source as I did this way you'll be glad that you chose one of these watches.JayeBee ××