Monday, April 22, 2013

Let me start counting my horses..... Rado Green Horse

Rado Green Horse



The history of Rado began in 1917 in the small Swiss town of Lengnau when the three brothers Fritz, Ernst, and Werner Schlup opened the Schlup & Co. clockwork factory. 40 years later, in 1957, it became Rado Uhren AG and the first watch collection was launched under this name. Today, Rado is a Swiss luxury watch company; differentiate itself from the rest by using high-tech materials and being innovative in its watches manufacturing.


What I have here is a Rado watch from circa 1970's-1980's. I classified this as from the Rado Seahorses collection. During that era, Rado produced so many varieties of entry level automatic watches. Below is a list produced by  C. Bradley Jacobs on all the variants:


The Seahorses family include the Green, Purple, Silver, and Golden Horse. "The Green Horse line of watches are noteworthy for their popularity and longevity" wrote C. Bradley Jacobs in Vintage Rado Automatic Watches; Originally published in International Wristwatch Number 69, July 2003. 



This watch is made of solid stainless steel. The case width without crown is measuring 34mm and the case thickness is about 8mm. This is a vintage watch with acrylic crystal. The silver tone dial has aged gracefully. The date window are highlighted using silver frame. This watch employed the black striped steel hands and striped steel bar hour markers to tell time easily. 


Rado Green Horse has the Rado's famous red rotating anchor logo. The rotating logo was first introduced in 1962. The rotating logo on the dial of Rado automatic watches is an often overlooked feature that helps set these watches apart from other automatics of the same era. Another interesting feature of this dial is the twin green coloured seahorse motifs. At the bottom of the dial is a proud declaration of "SWISS MADE". 


The crown is signed with the anchor logo. The bracelet's clasp is with the Rado logo and wording embossed.  The bracelet is made of full stainless steel. 




This is a beautiful case back engraved with RADO wording and decorated with 3 seahorses and 3 stars. The seahorses might be a symbol for the watch being water sealed. The case back is screw into position. 


This watch utilised the gold plated automatic ETA 2872 with 17 jewels and quickset date function. This watch is running at a rate of 19800 bph. The watch also features a sweep secondhand. 



7 comments:

  1. I have a question for you, I have seen some that day swiss made and some that don't, do you know why that is?

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    Replies
    1. Rado should be Swiss Made..... and using Swiss ETA movements as both is under Swatch Group.

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  2. Where can I buy replacement ss bracelet?
    Thanks

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  3. Is it worthy ?. how much ? Thanks.

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  4. Thanks for Sharing!
    To Buy Rado First Copy Watches in India visit here: Rado First Copy Watches

    ReplyDelete
  5. I bought a Rado watch and wanted to search more about this. It's bracelet is not Original I wanted to know it's present value and wanted to to restore it to Oriental parts.

    ReplyDelete