TZ-UK Forums TZ-UK Forums doctorj
I don’t post enought watch or collection shots, but I think these are unusual and interesting enough to share. Not going to bore you with my thoughts and dreams, suffice it to say that the Chrono One kicked it off big time. I love that watch, and stalked it for nearly 10 years.
Left to right we have a L U Chopard XP, the Chopard LUC Chrono One, the Alpine Eagle, and a Chopard Quattro.
The XP stands for eXtra Plat, meaning extra flat? so a thin watch. Under 8mm, and light. The movement is the x.96, mostly designed by Michel Parmigiani, which really kickstarted Chopard as a full on watch manufacture in the 90s. The main features of the movement are the micro-rotor and two stacked mainspring barrels. This is the less fancy version of that movement, a plain two hander with a tungsten rotor. The hands and indicies are blued steel and the dial is a lovely brushed silver. This came with a very fancy but very delicate knitted cashmere blue strap. I can’t cope with that so I got a blue leather strap.
The Chrono One is the watch that made me pay attention to Chopard at all. Who would buy a Daytona when you can get this?! It is almost my perfect watch. The only things that could make it better might be if they had made it with the "Arena" caseback that came on some models of the gold version of this, and better lume. This is a limited edition of 500, 42mm in stainless steel, column wheel vertical clutch flyback chronograph, with a feature I’m not sure isn’t unique to Chopard – you can reset the continuous seconds to 0 by pushing reset when the movement is hacked. It did come on a deployant, but for me it’s more comfortable removing the deployant bit of the buckle, the strap is from ABP.
The Alpine Eagle. The watch influencer’s watch of 5 years ago. You might say it’s another stainless steel integrated sports watch knockoff, but I liked them from the moment I saw it. The guards, the butthole dial, you name it, I like it. Chopard say it’s 40mm, but I think it feels smaller. Comes with a movement that is available in some LUC models, but slightly less well finished. Still has polished bevels and shit. This is the only one of these watches I’ve bought new from an AD.
Finally, the Quattro. This is essentially the x.96 movement with the micro-rotor replaced by two more mainsprings. It’s therefore a hand-wind, and has a massive power reserve of about 9 days. This version is white gold, and the blue (gold) dial and white gold indicies make it sort of the counterpart to the XP. The XP is 40mm, this fucker is 44mm (still doesn’t make the date legible without glasses), but with it being thin, if it wasn’t so heavy you might not notice. The dial on this can look anything from black to grey to blue to green, in the sunlight it is astonishing. The hands even have a bit of lume, which is unusual for a Quattro model, but this is the sportiest one they’ve made. The movement looks amazing. It’s my only Geneva seal watch, and I do think the finishing is slightly better than the other two LUC watches. The list price is high, too, I think more than 25 grand, but the usual Chopard second hand discount applies. I feel like Richie Rich wearing this.
So, in essence, you might not think about Chopard when looking for a fancy watch, but imo they are superb watches and you can get a bargain. I bought all these well under list price, even the new one was 30+ % off. They are underpriced on the second hand market, and that’s to our (ok, my) advantage.
J
