Vostok Amphibian 110SE

Vostok designed the Amphibia in 1967 for the Soviet defense department. Their job was to create an original design a reliable 200 meter dive watch. They hit a home run and still make several versions of the watch still today.

The official distributor announced that they were making some special edition versions of the Amphibia in 5 of the case designs. They had a couple clean dials, a couple stainless steel bezels (classic bezels were chromed brass) and the classic paddle hands.

All the options look good but I like the black bezel and dial with the date window. The biggest choice left was which case style to choose. My first choice was the 100 style case (fairly trim but not as small as the round 420 case). My 2nd choice was the 110 case. It’s a little bigger than the 100 and same profile as my Seiko Kinetic.

The people on the watch forum complained that only a few watches show up on the website and sell out in a few minutes. I went ahead and setup an account in case the model I want is in stock.  I see people posting about watches being in stock and then out before I can look at it. Then I see a 110 model with the dial and bezel I want so I order it. Now we play the waiting game.

The downside of ordering something from Russia is that the postal service takes a while to get to me. After all, the civilian Vostok watch I got off eBay 3 weeks earlier hasn’t shown up yet (it arrived a couple days later). I did see a 100 case watch in stock briefly a couple days later (tempting) but haven’t seen any more a month later so I’m glad I went ahead and got this one now. I’ve also thought about buying a spare 100 case and transplanting everything to it. I’d be too tempted to get another watch movement, dial and custom bezel and turn the 110 back into a complete watch again.

It took 18 days from order to delivered to my house (other watch took 22 days). The package was sitting on my desk when I got home and Ellen asked: “What’s in the package?”  I told her that there’s Russian writing on the package. “Ahh, it’s a watch. You and your watches”

We were going out with the kids so I put the watch on, threw on a flannel shirt and went out the door. Ellen said the watch looked nice and she liked the whole outfit.

I ordered this strap thinking the orange would go with the second hand and the black with white stitching would match the dial.  It also is softer than the one that came with the since that one is pretty stiff. Ellen said she liked the other strap and I’ve switched back and forth a couple times. I like both will probably keep swapping as the mood strikes.