# Molnija



## Mr Levity (Feb 24, 2013)

I saw this on flea bay and just liked the look of it. So I bought it and am just waiting for a funeral to wear it to  I only wear a suit for weddings and funerals, and there are no weddings planned.

I can't find any information on it apart from the fact that it's Russian. Can anyone help please ?


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## Julian Latham (Jul 25, 2005)

Molnija 3602 manufactured in Chelyabinsk.

The SU, (Soviet Union) on the movement and the level of finish puts the manufacturing date to late 80's or early 90's - either before or shortly after the dissolution of the USSR. The plant continued to produce watches as part of Russia and marked movements with 'RU' (Russia).

Now this seems pretty straight forward - but we are talking about Russia !!!!!!

After the dissolution there was SU marked stocks of parts to be used up. Ukraine became the centre of small scale operations with 'Franken' watches put together with whatever was available. Many of these bitsa's were good watches capable of excellent time keeping - some were not - few of them 'factory produced' in Chelyabinsk.

More recently the source of Molnijas has been the Balkans - particularly Romania and Bulgaria. Juri Levenburg in Germany often has the open face Molnija's for sale, some very attractive dials with very clean, obviously unused, cases.

There are Chinese made clones of the hunter cased watches - they have a Chinese standard 17 jewel wrist movement and are complete cr*p.

Julian (L)

Edit - The movement is an old design by either Cortebert or Lip (I have seen arguments for both) bought with tooling immediately after WWII and set up in the south Ural Region late in 1947. The quality of movements went into steady decline as cost cutting began to bite. In the dying days movements were bare, unpolished, brass, very tiny jewels, really sad but the design had a very good run spanning over a century in various guises.


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## Mr Levity (Feb 24, 2013)

Many thanks. I like it and it keeps good time. That's good enough for me.


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