With this Movado Sub Sea M95, it is all about the little details. Sure, at a first glance it looks like your usual vintage silver dialled chronograph- not much to talk about and plenty of other variants like it. But as I have said many times, with vintage, what makes it so fun and interesting is that often it is about the little quirks that really makes a watch special and with this Movado, it is no exception.
Beginning with the dial, this particular example features a very rare variant with oversized sans-serif Arabic numerals and a blue snail scale. The joy of collecting M95s is that there are many different dial styles and I am very happy to have acquired such a rare one.
As well as the dial, the case is also very special. It was produced by Francois Borgel (FB) who most famously also produced cases for Patek Philippe for their first waterproof chronograph, the Ref. 1463 ‘Tasti Tondi’. This in itself is a testament to the quality of this Movado. I really do love FB cases as they are highly unusual. This Movado features a screw back case with unique downturned lugs and stumpy pump pushers.
Finally, powering this watch is perhaps one of the quirkiest movements out there- the in-house Movado M95 movement. It certainly is different on many levels, but the strangest one is that operating the chronograph function is done inversely to a traditional chronograph. The bottom pusher starts and stops the chronograph while the top pusher resets. Even architecturally the movement looks different from your typical Valjoux or Venus movement, all in all making for a seemingly ordinary but actually very unusual and unique chronograph.
