Vacheron Constantin

n0wjsti
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Finally have a birth year watch.. VC QP 43031

For nearly a decade, I have had romantic notions of embarking on the quest to find an appropriate birth year watch. At long last... I think I can put an end to this. The year in question is 1984 -- and since my interest in watches started from the Submariner and Speedmaster, I naturally kicked off from that starting point. It was a transitional year for the Submariner and for the Speedmaster... well, just nothing significant. I continued to search for watches in 1984 and came across many beautiful watches. Just nothing that seemed to have enough "meaning" for me. 

Over the last 18 months, I'd been reading more about neo vintage watches and was interested in the offerings from AP, VC and PP. Specifically, their perpetual calendar watches; with AP introducing their QP in 1978, VC in 1983 and PP in 1985. In the dawning era of quartz watches, it felt like the rebellion's move to introduce ultra-thin, automatic perpetual calendars.

I am certain there are experts in here who can guide me further and explain what I have just bought, but what initially attracted me to this watch was the extract of archives dating it to 1984. This is an early "Swiss" only dial with a champagne dial (which is also more visually attractive to me). I understand that later versions had several variations which includes "sigma Swiss sigma", "Automatic" and addition of the Maltese cross (amongst other small details). Also, with VC, the 1120QP (which is a JLC 920 ébauche with Depraz perpetual calendar module) displays a 48 month sub-dial that also tracks leap year (unlike the AP 25657 equivalent which shares many similar underpinnings). This is the less conventional display of a perpetual calendar but, if I'm not mistaken, this difference also results in a slightly slimmer watch.

Of course, I was also keen on the fact that production numbers were small; an estimated of just 2,300 perpetual calendar watches over 23 years (1983 to 2006) of production -- nearly 3x less than both AP and PP. My grail birth year watch is actually the VC 43032 (skeletonized version of the same watch, produced by VC from 1984) but with today's astronomical prices, I simply have to be realistic 

Thank you for taking the time to read. It is a little past 2am here and I am still processing this... but I have a feeling I'll fall asleep soon with a smile on my face.