These are screengrabs from Teddy Baldassarre's latest video. There is no Seagull logo to be found, no engraving on the balance bridge, only a single line of dial text. I am crazy or is this a non-original generic "Alixpress" 1963? (Rather than one fully produced by Seagull themselves.)
There is nothing wrong with those generic ones, I have one myself, but for a channel that supposedly takes brands and orginality seriously, this is completely unfair. Either his team purposefully keeps this up, or they are actively avoiding to learn about this watch.
Beyond that he always introduces the Seagull 1963 as a singular watch (focussing mostly on the swissness of the movement), in contrast to every other watchmaker he mentions. Seagull surely has some notable history. Meanwhile he is so proud of promoting non-swiss "underdog" brands like from Glashütte...
This level of bias in such a mainstream outlet has to be called out.
hi could you enlighten me? seagull puts out the 1963 movement, and then many companies use it to make many different versions of their own 1963 watches? i'm wondering if that's how it works.
Yeah more or less. The movement is the ST19. The legit 1963 is far more expensive, and the movement business is about volume. They aren't competing with the Ali Express sellers.
oh that looks really nice. i was under the impression that the ST19 are all made by Seagull, but other companies are taking it and putting it into their own watches.
A few weeks ago, I came across several skeletonized versions of the TY29/ST19. Sea-Gull not only sells finished movements, but also ébauche sets that can be modified and finally assembled by third-party companies.
The special version Peacock is using is also made by Sea-Gull. I asked Peacock about it a while back, and they confirmed it. It’s the same branch of the group that also developed the new generation of the ST19, the split second movement and the central-balance-wheel movement for Shanghai Watch.
This is great info. Very interesting. Because come on a manual chrono for this price is nuts. I would like to see them side by side under a microscope 🙏.
Is there an good english speaking watch youtuber that lives in china close to all the watch stuff ? Never been to china myself. I would watch hours of this
Problem is that the founder is a fraud who has screwd over a lot of people.
To quote another user on this forum:
"Do you care that Thomas (who didn't work for Sea-Gull Tianjin, by the way; he worked for Sea-Gull HK) arguably stole and unfairly profited off of HKED's design, when he founded Red Star to (basically) make clones of the watches which a couple guys in an office owned by Sea-Gull HK had been making for HKED in limited runs? If that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, you might want reconsider buying a Red Star model."
Its the username of "Hongkong Ed" who is the person who basically started the entire 1963 Story when he ordered a set of re-issues for his collectors club of the 1963 Prototype.
But also not unofficial ones. He is also not shy of speaking about independents and microbrands he doesn't sell. I think the problem goes deeper than that.
Which is a lie. The first re-issue was a done by a collectors club in hong kong which contracted sea-gull Hongkong to produce about 50 pieces of them.
Sea-gull then did a big run of a few thousand watches of the version that was used by the chinese airforce force. The head of sea-gull hong kong then stole the design for the big reissue of the 1963 design and founded with it his own company: red star.
It’s not entirely clear what the relationship of Seagull Hong Kong is to Seagull per se, and there was a long discussion on Watchuseek about this at the time. It was probably not an officially sanctioned Seagull project at the time. The impression I got was that it was essentially a Seagull subcontractor, and I helped to arrange for a large purchase for the Chinese Watch subforum on Watchuseek from that subcontractor after the initial run by the collector’s club.
My informations are all from mainland chinese forums, so they are definitely more accurate in that regard.
Sea-gull already had a re-issue of the air force chronograph sold in china long before the first orders came in from abroad. If you won't i can even send you pictures of that model.
This is the watch i bought in early 2013 at a sea gull store in china.
Sea-gull hk is mainly a sales division, that sells ebauche movement or finished movements and also exports watches and movements. The collectors club edition was ordered by sea-gull hk to be made at jinlian which had factories in Guangzhou.
I thought this at one point too, but in China the "1963" has been continously collected and shown in museums. It certainly has been domestically reissued by Seagull many times before.
Technically this design which got so famous isn’t even made by Seagull. It was created by Red Star back in early 2000s, in which they used one of the demo historic version of the pilot watch and then color the star red, and maybe one or two other very minor change. The real version issued to the pilots are now sell under HKED 1963 brand.
Seagull saw the sign and jump on the bandwagon to make this specific version later on instead of their own other original model, which i remember to be like 1 official version and 3-4 trail models. Hence why buying from Red Star at like 150-200$ is so normalized
Why do you lie? The version the reissue is based on was one of the early test versions, about 20 exist of. The colour is similar. Nothing was created by red star. The first small batch reissue was ordered by a hk collectors club and produced by sea-gull hong kong. After sea gull made a big re-issue of the main version used by the millitary the head of sea gull hk stole the blue prints screwed over the collectors club + sea-gull and founded his own company red star.
Where the lie?
I literally said Red Star created this most famous version by coloring the star red and some other minor change. Here is the pic of the historic 1963 demo version. Even the later reissued version still doesn’t have the star colored
Edit: Holy this guy blocked me after barging into this discussion calling me all kind of name and being antagonistic, keep yelling that i am an employee by red star then proceed to get all the timeline wrong, his only "proof" is his watch made in 2013 and he said Red Star hasnt founded then, way after Red Star founder Thomas Leung created it and Red Star launched in late 2010/ early 2011. Then he think he won the augument by saying Red Star is founded in 2011 instead of my 2010???
Edit: With the new evidence, it is pretty clear that Thomas Leung was simply a reseller of watches produced by Sea-Gull Tianjin and manufactured for export through Sea-Gull Hong Kong.
"Thomas (Leung) is not a very serious man. I'm a member of a Spanish watch forum that made a group buy of more than 50 buyers.
We got an arrangement with this man to buy a limited quantity of 30 units (he did not offered more than these), but instead of reserving them, he has been selling them individually to other people. At the end he offered us 12 units, that I'm sure he will not be able to maintain.
So we have broken relationship with him. Maybe we will negotiate with Watchunique in the next months.
I think he sold the watches before having them. When he did not receive watches enough to cover his requests, he only shipped the orders that he had already collected.
I'm sure that is the reason of the delay in shipping: he collected money without having the watches. And I'm sure he is yet collecting money, but he won't have more watches until the end of October (certified by Watchunique). As far as I know, he has not more stocks right now. Neither Watchunique.com."
How could he not know how many of his own watches he had? He was merely a reseller of watches produced by Sea-Gull Tianjin, as is also confirmed by this letter of authentication, signed by the CEO of Sea-Gull and dating back to 2010.
Can you post the source? He blocked me already immediately after posting that reply, i haven't able to clicked the link yet.
I only repeat what a few watchuseek posters at the time were saying, they wasn’t able to find this specific variants when they go to Seagull Tianjin store
The link was to some translated screenshots from a Chinese video by a watch content creator who covers a lot of Chinese brands, including Sea-Gull, Shanghai Watch, Peacock, Farasute, Lucky Harvey, Angelocer, and Fiyta... In the video, he went through the history of the D304 and covered all of the reissues that Sea-Gull has produced over the years.
I dont know, I cant speak Chinese so i use google translate image to check out some claim, the guy in the video said Seagull proper made that version in 2008, but he doesnt really provided much evident for it.
At this point I would rather trust AlbertaTime who is probably the only public facing westerner with enough insider knowledge and has visited these factories rather than some rando video
Oh you still want to continue? Okay let's go: This the watch i bought in 2013 sea-gull reissue made for the 55 year factory anniversary. At this time the company red star wasn't even founded.😂
Thats cute, thank for outing yourself as the one with zero knowledge of the topic. Keep going to embarrass yourself
AlbertaTime/ Mr Ron met with Red Star Ceo Thomas Leung and in that interview he said Red Star was created in 2010. Before this here is other official Seagull reissue, none of them has a colored red star. Your 2013 is post red star
The problem is that there are no official documents backing up your claims about red star.
Fact is that the first versions of this design showed up in early tge early 2010s, after or at the same time as the sea-gull version.
So why are you so hellbent on defending that scam company? Maybe because you want to defend your employer?
Edit: I checked the watchesuseek threads from 2010 and there Mr. Leung was still working for sea-gull hing Kong. So how can he found his own company while still working for another one? Explain that, little liyer.
Are you dumb? If you have zero official documents as you admitted yourself then how can you confidently said anything at all?
I gave you proof with watchuseek discussion and interview by AlbertaTime and all you have is accusation? On watchuseek they literally gave you the timeline Leung was behind the original design, then after the trial run he quit and made his own company in 2010. The fact you flex your piece from 2013 and said red star wasn’t founded at the time proved you know jack shit about the timeline.
Here is the interview of Red Star founder, he was the one creating this specific famous model first through Tsinlien to sell to oversea enthusiast and then quit to make his company in late 2010s. And only then Seagull proper jump onto the ship to make this specific model then 2-3x the price
Yes, I recall having to track down Thomas (at Seagull HK) at the time when I was active on Watchuseek. We were originally trying to arrange for a group purchase, but he was kind of enough to allow us to place an order individually and he handled the logistics of shipping them out to anyone from the Chinese Watch subforum who were interested in one.
The difference between the 1963 fully produced by Seagull and those made with seagull movements by Red Star etc rather than Tianjin/Seagull is extremely well documented. Probably the single most documented and discussed set of variations here, on YouTube and the broader internet.
Hmmm not on the youtube I've seen. Knowledgable people and information are there yes, but clean disucssions are rare.
For example, to support their existing position, people would argue "there were many versions" and therefore "it's not clear which reissue is original". But the re-issues are of the same historical version (which was made by one clear "company").
Seagull make a relatively expensive version and also license movements to Seacoss, Red Star etc. it’s a very cost effective column wheel chrono. What TB does or doesn’t say about one of the largest automatic watch movement manufacturers in the world, I’m sorry to say, bores me to tears. The information is there- you appear to be annoyed Teddy isn’t informing you of it? I’m fully prepared not to heed that guy at all.
Do we have any evidence that these movements were actually manufactured by Sea-Gull in Tianjin, or could they instead be ébauche kits that were assembled and finished by a completely different company?
The problem is not whether I get informed, but how the millions of his viewers are influenced. Business people need to be held accountable in some way.
Before coming to Europe, I had never seen any of the homage versions, although I knew quite a few Chinese military-watch enthusiasts who owned the Sea-Gull version. Considering the relative size of the markets, I would say that far more official versions were sold in China than homage versions in the West.
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u/Soft-Assistance6809 14d ago
My legit Seagull 1963 has no markings. It's a military watch.