Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Last Gasp for the Sinn 903 with Lemania Movements

Back in 2003, I got my hands on one of the last of the handwind Sinn 903s, in fact a rare 24 hr version. Many miss this model, Sinn having been forced to replace it with the unspecial Valjoux 7750 movement when in early 2000 Lemania decided only to sell the 1873 movement to sister companies of the Swatch Group.

The Lemania movement is the basis of the Omega 861 calibre and the case is the Navitimer/Cosmonaute design that Helmut Sinn got rights to along with Albert Wajs when Breitling went as good as belly up in '79. So, the manual wind 903 is like two watches for the price of one. As I wanted both an Omega Speedmaster Pro AND a Breitling Cosmonaute it seemed to fit the bill.

Good news recently though: for die hards, Sinn have announced a final limited run (220?) of the Lemania movement in two watches. I think the 903 H2 is only a 30 min chrono and the H4 shown below (with moonphase) will be just under €3000. I'm a bit disappointed to see the rather inconvenient crown controlled slide rule used in both; it is much easier to simply grab the bezel and spin....



Click to warp to the Sinn pages on these.

However, what I have decided is there is no getting away from owning a Speedy, so my 903 has been sold as I seem to have got the "must have a Navitimer/Cosmonaute" thing through the system, but not the Speedy thing.

1 comment:

Speedmaster said...

Thanks Velociphile, great post as usual.

I'm glad that you need a Speedy again. :-)


Chris
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/