The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Hello everyone,

I'm curious about Vostok watches. Friend of mine showed me one yesterday, and it looked very alike to.... Breitling...

He mentioned the fact, that Breitling bought that company and stared making them based on breitling engines... (something like Seiko did with Pulsar)

Is that true?? I can't find any approriate info on the net, that's why I'm asking here.

Regards,

M

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everything comes to those who wait...

I'm vaguely aware of them, but don't know much I'm afraid.

I can say categorically that they are not Breitling owned, and never have been.

I've owned a Vostok Europe watch myself and it was OK for a budget auto.

When talking about these watches, you have to be careful of the distinction between "Vostok" and "Vostok Europe". Vostok is/was a purely Russian/Soviet concern and used to produce fairly low quality, predominantly manual-wind watches for the Russian market, and mainly the Russian military. The quality is not great (they use plated base-metal cases a lot of the time), and they look very Soviet in styling.... so that's either a good thing or a bad thing depending on what you like! Vostok Europe is (pretty obviously!) related to the parent company, but they are made in one of the former Soviet republics (I think), and are constructed to a much higher standard using SS cases, etc, for mainly the Western (and by that I mean "European") market. Everything they make is automatic and generally speaking the quality is OK, especially for the price range. They like their display backs (calm down Roff! ) and every piece is supposedly limited edition, although it should be noted that they class the same watch head just on a different strap as a different limited edition run, so they are not as exclusive as you may think at first glance! Where they fall down is in the details - e.g. the hands are not great, sometimes the lume on the dial looks different to the lume on the hands, the straps are distinctly ordinary, the movements don't have hack seconds, they use mineral glass not sapphire, the movements are not the smoothest and are not exactly innovative..... just the odd day/night indicator or non-adjustable GMT hand, etc, etc.

I went through a phase of buying a few Russian watches a couple of years ago, and while the VE was by far and away the best of the bunch, I still sold it very quickly. In summary - not bad for the money, but I'd recommend saving your money and putting it towards a Breitling!

And no, Breitling most certainly DO NOT own them!

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Driver8

Site Moderator

hehe, that's what I'm trying to do...
At the moment I'm working hard on finding Blackbird for a fantastic price! And that's really tough believe me...

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everything comes to those who wait...

What D8 says is spot on. Vostok are generally poor quality. Vostock Europe are a different factory and produce good quality watches for the money. You don't get a £1500 Breitling for £50 but the K-3 Submarine I had was an excellent watch. I gave it away a couple of years ago to someone lurking on this forum!
A Russian company who make watches very like Breitling is Poljot. A lot of their watches use a movement very like the Venus 178 used in early Navitimers but there is no connection between the companies.

that's interesting

I used to have a poljot, many, many years ago, but I never considered that watcha as something special...

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everything comes to those who wait...

I've owned a couple of Poljots too (during my Russian watch phase!) and again they were OK.... although they were manual winds, which I'm not a huge fan of. The ones I had really ripped-off the styling of the Navitimer, which bugged me a bit, so once again they were sold to fund the ol' Breitling addiction!

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Driver8

Site Moderator

hehe, I wonder what I will have to sell to buy my dream watch.

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everything comes to those who wait...

What's your dream watch incidentally?

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Driver8

Site Moderator

if I had non limited founds, I would go with a Zenith or Patek and plenty of Breitlings which I love...

But realistically I'm trying to find Blackbird and in longer perspective Navitimer World. I was also thinking about Skyland, and I also bought one, but the customer tax to get that from US blown up my idea... Unfortunately I'm struggling with limited founds which makes my decisions even more difficult.

What about you?


EDIT.

My English isn't great, that's obvious. If you ask me about my dream watch for the moment, that's definitely Breitling Blackbird. Longer perspective means in this case next 10 years I am affraid....

I hope I made myself clear enough now

Regards,

M

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everything comes to those who wait...

There's no problem with your English at all.

My dream Breitling is unfortunately totally unobtainable for me at the moment - Bentley Mulliner Perpetual in rose gold. The cheapest I have seen on the second-hand market is £20K (Approx $40K).

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Driver8

Site Moderator

hugh, sounds like unique stuff!

When are you going to have one?

EDIT:

hehehe, you won't believe it...

I tried to find your dream watch, and guess what the first link in google was?

Sorry - had to edit this - no links to fakes please

Roff

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everything comes to those who wait...