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[Swatch] X Blancpain seems to be a dud (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by greyblacknavytan@alien.top to c/watches@style.land

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I was walking by the San Francisco Swatch store and dropped in to take a look at the Blancpain collaboration. The Swatch employee said they still only had limited colors of the MoonSwatch available but every color of the Blancpain was in stock. I’m not interested in either but it confirmed my suspicions that the Blancpain isn’t nearly as popular as the MoonSwatch, especially at the higher price point.

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[–] Starwood_Watches@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It’s all of this, plus the fact that the Blancpain Swatch has a non-serviceable movement so when it dies, it dies for good. At least with the MoonSwatch if it dies you can easily have the battery replaced.

[–] orangeblueorangeblue@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You can just swap the whole movement out.

[–] Starwood_Watches@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That’s not true, those cases are sealed shut from the factory, you literally have to destroy the case to even get to the movement.

[–] orangeblueorangeblue@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The case back on the FF Swatch is glued, not integral to the case, so you shouldn’t need to destroy anything to remove it.

[–] Starwood_Watches@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Is swatch manufacturing the Blancpain differently than they do most of their other watches with the Sistem51 movement? I have owned a couple and the cases are sealed shut, not able to be opened without damaging or breaking it.

In my opinion if it’s glued shut that means it’s non serviceable, they do not intend for you to open the watch which again supports my first point that once it dies it dies for good.

[–] orangeblueorangeblue@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Some metal case Sistem51 models since 2016 have had removable casebacks, so serviceable models have been around for a while. The older plastic models were not serviceable.

This site claims that Swatch told them the FF case back was removable.

Supposedly the FF is glued to be able to get to the “50 fathoms” depth rating, probably it’s less a less expensive/complicated option compared to a screw-down back (the indentations on the case back look decorative, I don’t think they’re deep enough to survive being gripped by a tool). FWIW, Fratello’s blog post quotes Omega’s VP of Product as saying the case back can’t be removed, but I’m not sure how reliable the source is given the supposed statement from Swatch that it can be removed. To reconcile these two statements, I’d speculate that the Omega VP is erroneously applying the MoonSwatch’s reality to the FF, but who knows…