Darwil – a brief history and a personal relationship

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Re: Darwil – a brief history and a personal relationship

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Re: Darwil – a brief history and a personal relationship

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This made my day

https://darwil.ch/


They actually copied start od this thread for Instagram. I dont Know if I should be glad or offended... Or perhaps demand free watch as payment. Image

I actually owned Agent 007 in the beggining of the hobby.

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Re: Darwil – a brief history and a personal relationship

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Re: Darwil – a brief history and a personal relationship

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One of 100.

Review to follow.


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Re: Darwil – a brief history and a personal relationship

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Yugoslavia was an interesting project. I am 60-ies generation, living in the Republic of Slovenia. Yugoslavia was a federation of six countries - republics, each with the status of the country but a common military, monetary system, and foreign politics. Communism? Well not really, even not a socialist country as we knew Eastern block countries but a kind of self-management society. The living standard, at least in Slovenia was high - I served obligatory military service in the Republic of Macedonia in 1985 and found out that my student pocket money in a grammar school was higher than a month's salary in the "south". Travel all over the world in 60-ies to 80-ies was very easy and very common among youth, and the passport was among the best ones...I had no problem traveling to Canada, the Soviet Union, or China and European countries were "right there". Trst (Trieste) was only an hour of car drive from the capital and "the stuff", like watches, there was very inexpensive compared to prices in Yugoslavia.
My grandfather was a close friend of the owner of Darwil in the end of the 50-ies - I think he was a Slovene but living in Switzerland/Italy.
All family was loaded with Darwill watches and when I was 6 years old I got as a gift for my first communion a golden plated automatic 41 jewels watch (kind of marketing trend in that time with adding rubis even with no reason) - religin practice was a very free choice at my place (Republic Slovenia) and my granddad was a high diplomat and we never had issues, he was even never forced to be in a communist political party - so communism was more or less a "hype", most probably more real in other republics which were kind of the other world.
My grandad got that watch as a gift from Mr. Wilfan, then gave it to me. Btw... the name Darwil is from the name DArko WILfan - the founder.
I am attaching photos of my watch which I wear the past 35 years on daily basis - is it with less than a minute error in a month's time...not understand modern watch calibers with errors of 10 seconds per day... and never serviced. I wanted to check at the watch service some years ago and the servires said there is no need as the timekeeping is punctual. He said that that model is the same as Rolex model made in that time (1955), maybe even made in the same workshop but rebranded to Darwil instead Rolex. Just to say about Mr. Wilfan... he is very underrated and was to early bird - his idea was as nowadays Casio is, various models affordable for everyone.
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Re: Darwil – a brief history and a personal relationship

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^^^^ A fascinating story. Thank you for taking the trouble to write it all.

Guy

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Re: Darwil – a brief history and a personal relationship

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Rare 18k gold Darwil today.
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Re: Darwil – a brief history and a personal relationship

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Diver today.
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Re: Darwil – a brief history and a personal relationship

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Not a diver but it has caseback and crown , both screw in type. From 80-ies, IIRC.
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