My grail Vostok

I bought an old Vostok. But not just any Vostok. I bought my grail Vostok, a Soviet-era manual wind dive watch with a rare civilian dial showing a map of Antarctica and bright red Cyrillic letters stating that it is. But it wasn’t. More about that later. Anyway, this “Vostok Antarctic” wasn’t a grail initially, although stories of expeditions to exotic locations have fascinated me since childhood. And I love tough, inexpensive watches. With its Antarctic flair, it was certainly at the crossroads of my interests in expeditions and tough watches.

The first time I became aware of the existence of Vostok Antarctic was through a chance encounter with a website while googling for parts for another Vostok watch I own. The site displayed three not-so-great photos of Vostok Antarctic but one did show the dial clearly. It was a civilian dial, a rare feature for Vostok which is better known for military-themed dials. I imagined the watch being issued to scientists stationed in Antarctica as part of their standard equipment or handed out as a memento to those who had been there. But the site was an archive page, not a web store selling watches. After admiring the photo for a few minutes, I soon forgot about it.

The second time I came across Vostok Antarctic was on ebay from a Russian seller specializing in vintage Vostoks earlier this year. Fortunately, it was available for purchase. But there were two issues. First, the asking price was quite high for a Vostok. The seller definitely knew it was a rare watch. The other issue was that the seller would not ship to Korea. After contemplating for a few days, I reached out to the seller and asked about the possibility of shipping it to Korea. The seller responded that shipping could be accommodated. Yes!

Still, it was not possible to bid on the watch because the item “does not ship to Korea.” Finally, after the seller updated the shipping details, I was able to bid. I did and won the watch. Yay! But the joy was to be short-lived. You see, during this back and forth about shipping, Russia invaded Ukraine and sanctions kicked in. Neither ebay nor paypal would process my payment to the seller. In the end, the ebay transaction got cancelled. I was devastated. It soon became apparent through news reports that this was a minor inconvenience compared to what the people in Ukraine were suffering. I decided to forget about the whole deal and moved on. And through this ordeal, Vostok Antarctic had quietly transformed into a grail watch status within me. I knew because I found myself combing ebay for old Vostok watches almost every day. There were hundreds of them and none carried the particular dial showing the map of Antarctica.

A few weeks later, another Vostok Antarctic appeared! Not on ebay, but on etsy. This time, the price was reasonable and the seller was based in Ukraine, meaning there were no sanctions to worry about or payment issues. Which begs the other question, whether shipping would be possible out of a war zone. I cautiously inquired about this and received a positive reply from the seller assuring me that the Ukrainian post office was open for business. So the watch was added to my cart and payment went through smoothly. The next day, the seller messaged me saying that he had shipped the watch at a local post office and had included a small gift in the package, an original Vostok box. Wow! He also gave me a tracking number. I tracked that number. Every day. For five weeks!

In the first week, my package was transferred to a sorting facility in Kyiv and marked “ready for dispatch” the following day. And that was it. There were no further updates for the next four weeks. I was calm though. If worse comes to worst and the package gets lost in transit, I would take comfort in the fact that a small token of contribution was made to a fellow watch collector in Ukraine. Nevertheless, the wait was painful. Then, in the fifth week, the package arrived at my house unannounced! Turns out, it was addressed to North Korea. And, somehow by a miracle, it was routed to South Korea. I messaged the Ukrainian seller about this error on the shipping label. He was relieved to hear that the package had arrived safely and went on to explain that the Ukrainian postal service was also known to confuse Austria with Australia. No big deal.

The watch was beautiful, just as I had imagined, slightly better. Ran without a flaw. Couldn’t be happier. The plastic box that came with it looked as if it was as old as the watch.

By the way, according to the Ukrainian seller, my Vostok Antarctic was not Antarctic but an “Apatity Development of the Arctic limited edition”. Apatity is a town in the Murmansk Oblast on the Kola Peninsula, north of the Arctic Circle. The map on the dial is that of Murmansk Oblast and the red Cryllic letters read “Apatitstroy”. From googling, it appears “Apatitstroy” either refers to a construction company based in Apatity, or a Soviet hockey team that had represented the arctic town. Can’t believe I had confused Arctic with Antarctic. Guess you can’t blame this one on the Ukrainian postal service.

Despite all that, the watch is still my grail Vostok and I am happy to finally own one.

(What is your grail watch?)