- Joined
- Sep 30, 2014
Newest addition (and one I've been looking at for a while now, you don't see a lot of watches "Made in USSR" bearing the stars and stripes):
Vostok Komandirskie "Desert Shield" in brass
Vostok Komandirskie "Desert Shield" in brass
One of the most historically interesting Amphibias is the “Desert Shield,” a watch celebrating the success of the Iraq War military operation of the same name. Vostok produced (allegedly) 200,000 of these specially dialled watches, across a range of models – not only Amphibias. These watches were marketed to military personal for $99 ($149 for civilians), though apparently many were given away to troops stationed in Saudi Arabia.The Desert Shield Vostok was the brainchild of an American import company called Timepeace Russian Watches, and is an artefact of a fascinating period of US/Russian relations.Aside from the oddity of seeing “Made in the USSR” in the context of the jingoistic dial of these Vostoks, they are a great example of Glasnost, a policy encouraging openness and reform in the previously very closed USSR.That this watch, made in a Russian factory, commissioned by a company from Beverly Hills, was made possible by the reformist policies of Mikhail Gorbachev makes the Desert Shield Vostok a great memento of international geo-politics writ small.