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Vostok-Europe GAZ Limo watches released in 2020

Posted by Craig Hester on Dec 30th 2020

Vostok-Europe GAZ Limo watches released in 2020

Greetings everyone. Craig Hester here with R2Awatches.com. And thank you for joining us as we continue on our journey through all the watches and accessories that are available at R2Awatches.com. If you are watching this on YouTube, be sure to hit like and subscribe and ring that bell. So you get those early notifications. When we post up a new video, if you're watching this on Facebook, you want to join the group Vostok Europe Time Pieces, You know, let the name fool you. It's not just about Vostok Europe watches. It is about all the watches that we carry at R2Awatches.com, and it is the best place to be. If you want to know more about what's going on, you can catch our weekly exclusive show Chrono Spin, where we give away really cool prizes every week. Anyway, it's the best place to be. If you want to know more about what's going on in R2Awatches.com, that is Vostok Europe Timepieces on Facebook today, we are talking about the Gaz Limo from Vostok Europe.

These are all new Gaz Limos that have come out in the last year are really not too long prior to this, to this video being done. These were the newest models from the Gaz Limo line by Vostok Europe. Now, if you're not familiar with Vostok Europe, Vostok Europe is a boutique watch brand based in Vilnius, Lithuania. They hand assemble every single watch there and they design every watch in-house, at their facility there in Vilnius. I like to say that Vostok Europe starts with a blank piece of paper and finishes with a complete watch or more accurately a blank computer screen because they actually do their designing on a CAD program on the computer, for a brand its size. It's really amazing how much Vostok Europe does. They do a lot of things that you would expect to find it much, much larger watch brands than Vostok Europe.

So it is a very interesting boutique brand that we really are proud to have been representing now for 16 years in North America. So there is just so much going on with Vostok Europe so much for you to enjoy and their watches are, have become just a staple. Part of the collectors here are all around the world, in terms of a really impressive go-to boutique watch brand. As I mentioned today, we are talking about the Gaz Limo. The Gaz Limo or the Gaz 14 Limo, which was a Russian limousine, a Soviet limousine from the 1970s that was used by Soviet dignitaries. I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about that today. We really, I just really want to get across if there are other videos available on YouTube, where we go into greater detail about the actual gas limo itself, I will tell you that the earliest versions of the Gaz Limo watch did actually have the dial was based on the clock, which was an analog clock, in the Gaz 14 limousine.

And it is, and I said I wasn't going to talk about it here. I am talking about it. It was primarily associated with Brezhnev, and that time period. There are some interesting stories about that and I would encourage you to do some more investigating if you're really interested in the actual inspiration of the Gaz Limo. If I have a little bit more time before the video's over, I'll talk about it in more detail. Again, today's main focus is to bring you up to date on one, two, three, four, five new versions of the Gaz Limo in the tritium Gaz Limo collection. Now the Gaz Limo is really the only dress watch that Vostok Europe still creates, still builds. They do have in the sport line, they will sometimes have a rose tone or a yellow tone or something that might have a little bit more dressiness to it. But none of the other watches in Vostok Europe lineup are really what you would call dress watches. You could make an argument, especially with the quartz chronographs here, on these Gaz Limos that you might call this sport dress. These are certainly sportier for a dress watch, but if you're looking at the blue, by the way, ignore this on the side, that's just a protection to keep it from scratching before it gets sold. If you're talking about the blue and the rose or

The charcoal with the yellow and the duco white, those, I would definitely say are more in the dress category than they are in the sport category. Now, let me quickly go through the specs of the Gaz Limo that we're looking at right here. I'm going to use, let's use the black chronograph. as I mentioned, there are, there are two movements. You have the 6S21, which is the quartz chronograph movement. That's the one I'm holding in my hand right now, there are two executions with the quartz chronograph movement, and that is in the, what I would call all this is almost a blacked out version of the Gaz Limo. If the dial were a little darker, it could truly be called a black out, but it is definitely a dark version. It is a tone on tone with the gray and the black, and then we have the white on the stainless.

Those two are the chronograph versions. And then the other three have the NH35, the standard bearer NH35, one of the most high quality, mechanical movements on the market today in the other three Gaz Limos here, I'm just giving it a little bit of a wind, so you can see the sweep second hand on this. So you can tell that this is a mechanical, automatic, if it were a quartz, obviously that would tick as opposed to sweep in the way it is now, they are 45 mm time pieces. I'm going to actually pull out my specs here and go through them with you.

Forgive me While I get myself together here, 45 millimeters, you know, oh, I don't think I have my caliper here. I was going to recheck it with my caliper, but that's okay. We'll do without the caliper today, 45 millimeter case diameter, it's 15 millimeters thick, weighs 114 grams now at 45 millimeters. It was a time that that would be considered a big watch by today's standards. That's kind of a Goldilocks size. It's not too big, it's not too small. It certainly is a little large for what you would call a dress watch by this, but look at that blue and the blue on this rose tone version is just phenomenal. And by the way, the new straps, that extra, the double thick new straps at Vostok Europe has put on these are just a suburb. It is just an amazing strap and that is a 22 millimeter strap. They all do have the K1 mineral crystal system.

The K1 mineral is I like to say the best of both worlds, or what you might refer to as gorilla glass. The K1 mineral, if you look at the mohse scale, a Sapphire is nine on the hardness mohse scale. The hardness scale that's called the mohse scale, and a regular mineral. Crystal is a five, the K1, or gorilla glass is a seven it's right there in the middle. So you get nearly the scratch resistance of Sapphire and you get nearly the shatter resistance of mineral. So it really is the best of both worlds. What else? Ah, tritium tube technology. One of the things you don't commonly see in a dress watch is tritium tubes. That typically is the purview of only sport watches. But Vostok Europe has built a line of Gaz Limo watches for quite a while now, that have tritium tube technology. Now, what is tritium tubes? Tritium tubes are laser sealed glass tubes that are filled with a substance called tritium. And that tritium has a 12 and a half year half-life. It constantly agitates and activate the luminous material inside the tubes so that it gets so that it's lit up all the time. Unlike a watch that has,

let's say, the watch I'm wearing the Taskforce Marauder from Vostok Europe. It has traditional superluminova. I can put it under light. When you turn off the light, it's going to, it's going to be really bright for awhile, but then it's going to fade. Tritium tubes are not as bright as superluminova when you first charge them up, but they stay constantly lit. You can throw this watch in a drawer for a year and you come back a year later, you pull it out. It's going to give you the same luminosity that it did when you put it in the drawer. So that's one of the things that's really great about the tritium tubes. Now, one of the things that Vostok Europe did in these executions of the Gaz Limo is they counter sunk the tritium tubes. Since this one is not considered a sport watch, there wasn't really a need to make the tritium be super bright. They just wanted it to be there. So they counter sunk it underneath the dial that makes for a much smoother look. Usually the tritium are sitting above the dial. And in this case they're actually counter sunk below. Now I mentioned there were two movements, one of the one I talked about the NH35, that is your classic Seiko movement, bulletproof, just some of the best movements made in the world. In this particular case, there are three executions with the NH35.

And Again, I'm winding it up to show you how it's sweeping. Then we have the 6S20 here. What is really cool about the 6S20 is even though this is a quartz movement, like I always like to say there are quartz movements, and then there are quartz movements. I know that a lot of you, aren't going to believe me when I say this, but the truth is for actual costs for the movement, the 6S21 actually costs more than the NH35. It is a more expensive movement if you're just talking about buying just the movement as, because it is what is considered a hybrid movement. And I'm going to show you what that means. You'll see the

actual second hand is Ticking, like a quartz would tick, okay? Because the quartz is being the quartz. Part of the movement is driving the constant secondhand. However, when I activate the chronograph, I want you to look

And see how it is almost sweeping, like Mechanical chronograph would. It is just about sweeping like a mechanical chronograph. Well that's because this movement has mechanical parts in it, and that's why you have the mechanical nature of the sweep second hand on the chronograph. Now this is a full function chronograph. So what that means, I'm going to reset it. This is a 60 minute summing action over here on the left. So when I start the chronograph, it's going to measure a lapse time up to 60 minutes. And in terms of one pass around, if you can keep up with the fact that it's past 60 and gone to another, you can actually measure more than 60 minutes if you wanted to, but this is designed to do 60 minutes worth of measurement. Let me quickly, again, show you the five executions that we have here. We have the white, duca white with the blue, black sub dials. I love that color combination on here with the 6S21. Then we have, I have the duca white with the NH 35. We have the dark gray, almost a blackout. It's a black, it's a tone on tone, dark gray with black, with 6S21,

We have the rose tone. Again, these are just protective covers. I didn't take them off of this because it didn't want to scratch the watch. These are just protective covers that blue is not part of the watch. With the tone, it's a beautiful, beautiful Sunray blue dial. And then we have the Sunray charcoal with the yellow gold accents. And these are all a closed case back with the name of the watch Gaz Limousine on the back, whether it is the chronograph or the automatic mechanical, the case back is the same. So there you have it. These are the new gas limos again, named for the Soviet Gaz 14 Limousine, which was a vehicle that had a lot of innovations for its time. It was the vehicle that was driven around when Brezhnev and Nixon went around Red Square. That was the Gaz Limo. That's part of the interesting stories of the Gaz Limousine. That is the history, as you know, every Vostok Europe has a story. You don't, they don't just, as I always like to say, they don't just build a watch. They build a story. So that is the story. And this is the dress watch that is available from Vostok Europe, the Gaz Limo line. And until next time, keep watching.