Chopard PuristS Hong Kong Get-Together: LUC 1963 Chronograph: by Hong Kong Chai

Jan 08, 2015,22:06 PM

Chopard PuristS Hong Kong Get-Together: LUC 1963 Chronograph

Dear forumners,

I received a report from 'HongKongChai' and agreed to post it here.

I hope you like it.

Regards,

MTF

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Report received from 'Hong Kong Chai'

After joining the PuristS IGOTT (International Gathering of the Tribes) at Las Vegas in 2011, where we had a long discussion on what a PuristS Chopard L.U.C should look like. Finally in 2014, this watch came into the reality! It came in time to celebrate the 50th year of ownership of Chopard by the Scheufele family.

Full details of this watch has been published earlier by MTF (please check that out) and we were all looking forward to seeing the real watch.

On the night of 18th September 2014, The Watch Magazine together with PuristSPro, organized a dinner in Hong Kong to see the #1 of 50 pieces of this watch.

We had a special guest Mr Vincent Lapaire who flew all the way from Switzerland to bring us this special watch (#1 actually belongs to Mr Karl-Friedrich Scheufele personally – we thank him for sharing his passion)

My excitement led me to arrive before cocktail time and therefore was delighted to get the chance to speak to Vincent before everyone else (^^) ; who gave me some update information about the L.U.C collections and news on the factory.

Vincent happily told me that 2014 is also the 10th year anniversary of Qualité Fleurier! Chopard certified about 1500 pieces of watches which is by far more than other founding members of the foundation.

The dinner started with an opening speech by Mr. Alfred Lung, publisher of The Watch Magazine. He highlighted his impression of his visit to all the Chopard factories in Switzerland in July and explained how hard it is for a watch to pass the Qualité Fleurier test.

All of us were then caught by surprise to see a welcoming video by Mr KFS from Switzerland and also a SKYPE interview with him by MTF!

After that, Alfred showed us a very informative video about the criteria for qualifying Qualité Fleurier. It was only now that I knew a Qualité Fleurier watch was subjected to a simulation of the wearer playing golf wearing it!

After the appetizer, it was Vincent’s presentation time. He showed us a few new L.U.C watches and he also brought along the raw movement of these watches to show us how well these movements were polished.

The highlight of his presentation was of course the explanation of the philosophy behind this L.U.C 1963 Chronograph PuristS' Edition. I was impressed with the fact that they took a step further by re-doing the base plate to accommodate the removal of the date disc from the base movement. I also appreciate the fact the watch is in steel rather than in precious metal. It must be the first time Chopard put a new movement into a steel case.

After the dessert, it was time for me to play with this watch for the first time! I must say that the real watch is far better than it is in the pictures and the pusher and the reset of the chronograph felt really good.

The other selections of this year’s L.U.C watches were equally remarkable.