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When it comes to watches, many of us find the complex mechanical watches to be technical marvels, and we’re of course drawn like moths to the flash and dash of the smart watches out there. But what of the “lowly” quartz movement? I recently got to see just what all was comprised of one when I sent my Mido Ocean Star President over to TotalWatchRepair for some TLC.
This Mido Ocean Star President is one that I picked up on eBay for a song (hat tip to Victor for letting me know about the watch). It came in, and it looked good, and worked just fine. That’s the thing about quartz watches – either they work or they don’t. However, giving it a quick cleanup with a damp cloth, I saw that there were some condensation beads on the underside of the crystal. So, when I got back in touch with TotalWatchRepair, I knew I had just the watch for them to go over.
Now, with an older watch, water tightness is never really guaranteed, but I figured that would be worth it to have it looked at. And hey, quartz movements – particularly older ones, as in this Mido – still have some mechanical bits to them that could use some TLC. So, off the watch when to the crew over at TotalWatchRepair. Once they got it in, they ran through their estimate process. Along with the general cleaning maintenance, they felt the crystal needed replacing as well as the date disc, so that went into the work order.
As with when I had a mechanical watch serviced by TotalWatchRepair (I wrote about that here) I managed to slow down the watchmaker. I had asked for photos of the process as I knew it would be interesting to run through with the readers here. Still, servicing ran at a decent clip, and I had it back to me and on my wrist about 5-6 weeks after I sent it in (and again, my photography request did slow things down a bit).
Along with having the serviced watch back, I really got a kick out of having the photos of the serviced movement. I’m more used to see the smaller quartz movements in my kids watches, and those seem to have a ton of plastic. This Mido, on the other hand, you can definitely see the influence of the mechanical watch industry on the plate and components involved here. After this servicing from TotalWatchRepair, this looks like something that should be really for the long haul on my wrist.
If you’d like to get your watch looked at – quartz or mechanical – you can head on over to TotalWatchRepair and kick off your free quote process. Depending on what all it is you’re needing done – and the brand of the watch – your routine service maintenance will run in the $300 – $450 range. totalwatchrepair.com
