Bulova gets really dismissed in the watch community and I blame the Citizen group for it. my love for Bulova runs long and deep and I'm going to tell you why. Back in the 70’s my dad bought this watch from the flea market for one dollar, the watch was in very poor condition but after showing it a little bit of love. The watch was as good as new! Fast forward to 2018 and while I was having dinner with my father I asked to see what was on his wrist. Just to give you a quick back history at that point I hadn’t seen my dad in years and we’ve never had a close relationship so I never even knew he owned any watches. To my surprise he handed me this beautiful Bulova Accutron railroad approved. I complemented the watch and gave him a brief history of why this watch was important in history. I handed the watch back to him and told me to keep it. Therefore this watch evokes a certain feeling every time I wear it. Bulova are a brand with a great history who continue to innovate and back in the day they were ahead of the game in terms of mass production of watches and also in other areas. They introduced the first complete line of jewelled wristwatches for men, then the first line of wristwatches for ladies, then the first line of diamond wristwatches.
They were especially ahead of the game when it came to advertising. In 1926 they ran their first national radio advertising campaign. Five years later Bulova watches launched the industries first ever million dollar advertising campaign, followed ten years later by the world’s first television commercial. Something even more important in American Hstory is theirinvolvement in world war 2. Bulova were involved heavily in military manufacturing during the Second World War, mainly in terms of producing high precision military watches. Their mass production facilities were used for other purposes as well, producing many other mechanisms for the war effort. Near the end of the war they opened up the Joseph Bulova School of Watchmaking which helped war veterans learn a trade for their return to civilian life. A Bulova Accutron chronograph wristwatch finally made it to the lunar surface in 1971, on the wrist of Apollo 15 mission commander David R. Scott. Scott wore the watch, which had been specially engineered to withstand lunar conditions, as a backup after the crystal on his NASA-issued Omega, according to records, had popped off. Scott’s Bulova watch — the only privately owned watch ever to visit the moon — recently sold at auction for $1.62 million. To commemorate the record-setting sale, Bulova released its Special Edition Moon Watch Chronograph — aesthetically a very faithful re-creation of the original (which was never made available commercially), but outfitted with a modern UHF (Ultra-High-Frequency) quartz movement, which Bulova says gives the watch an extremely high degree of timekeeping accuracy, losing just seconds per year. It also powers a continuous sweep seconds hand for the chronograph function, a feature rare in quartz chronograph watches. The classical tricompax dial features what the brand calls “super-luminous” treatment on the hands and hour markers and is surrounded by a tachymeter scale for calculating speeds. The bulova watch company was purchased in 2008 by Japan’s Citizen Watch Company. One of the most significant new product releases under the new management regime was the Bulova Precisionist, billed as “the world’s most accurate quartz watch with a continuously sweeping seconds hand.” Citizen developed and manufactured the Precisionist movement — exclusively for use in Bulova watches and this particular presicionist was my first father's day gift from my wife so it's extra special. Although the precisionist movement is certainly incredible, it gets overlooked in the watch industry and Bulova as a whole doesn't get love from collectors. In my opinion this is part to the design of the watches. Nothing to do with the aesthetics, but more the sizing and for many the pricing is high for a quartz watch. I know you can't compare the Grand Seiko spring drive movement to the precisionist movement, but when you compare the difference in price, it's pretty significant. I wish that instead of the Citizen group buying them out a person like Jean Claude Bieber would have stepped in to rescue the brand. I can certainly assure you, that if that was the case, Bulova watches would be more respected in the watch industry, but it's not too late Citizen. My advice to Bulova is to make your watch cases smaller and offer more mechanical movements in your collection. Furthermore please make the lunar pilot in a smaller case size and offer it with a manual wind movement, that way you can compete directly with the Omega Speedmaster. After all they both went to the moon.
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Thank you
Miguel

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