Hi you all the vintage
fanatics! Last week René sent me an email asking to give a call to Jean Zurbuchen, an antique dealer and watchmaker, located in La Chaud de Fond and french speaking only .I gave him a call today, he is a delightfull old gentleman and kindly answered to my questions .He is 88 , seems to have 100% of his understanding but less in hearing , so I shall send him a letter with some more questions - as you can understand he does not have any email adress .
Hereafter you will find the first answers to our questions on this chapter of the L. Breitling company end , and his involment in the Jean Zurbuchen Navitimer - clones !
First let note that Zurbuchen is a quite common name in this area. Jean Z. knew another Zurbuchen who was an employee of Breitling, but quite elder . He his not the so called Zurbuchen who presented a caliber to the Chrnonometry contest in 1949, that you find when you google his name .
Jean Zurbuchen established in the 70s in repairing old watches and quickly specialised in dealing old watch parts. At this time the horological crisis drove many companies to reduce their squ. m2 and save general expenses so that many old stocks were sold at very low prices .
Far before the end of Breitling, Jean Zurbuchen started to buy some of their old stocks . I spoke to him of my contacts with Albert Wajs and he revealed me that he sold back some parts including some cal.11 to MM. O&W at the beginning of the 80s, as they were lacking those parts to assemble their Aviation watches.
Jean Z then explained me the story of the so called watch .
He was in touch with another guy called Peter Wyss - some of you know him on ebay as esa-9162-9164 in Grenchen - who had bought the rights and stocks of firma Orator and some Breitling stocks ,.
A condition of the deal was that they were not allowed to assemble complete Breitling watches for sale besides Breitling . Nevertheless, the design of case and dial with sliderule was not under copyright, so they both had the idea to put the new 7750 in a 7806 case . The angle of pushers was not exactly similar btw 7740 and 7750 , but the 7806 pushers were able to start and stop the V7750 chrono properly .
They had their 7750 dials made by one of the dial factories locally , and cristal backs in order to show the 7750 as it was an innovative caliber at the time . Nothing more, they just operated a very limited quantity , less than 200 watches in total and sold then very confidentially .
I asked to JZ if he had a commercial agreement with Australia as most of the watches offered on ebay come from Australia : his explaination is that he sold in one batch his 50 last pieces to an australian watch dealer at the end of 80s.
Here is the story . I shall try to get more informations by writing .
I shall also try to have Peter Wyss on phone shortly .
Phil
