[Display Piece] NIVADA Chronosports ref.500-1 cal. Valjoux 7765 / Singer Dial

This is a store display piece, so please do not press the purchase button.

It is a prototype, one of roughly twenty produced.

In the second half of 2024, a reissue of this Chronosports went into production and on sale.

On the reissue's product page, my wrist and this very watch appear as a black and white wrist shot.

This Nivada ref.500-1 is an exotic vintage chronograph of the 1980s, carrying an exotic dial made by Singer — the maker of the famous Paul Newman dial.

After Paul Newman's Rolex sold for around 18 million dollars at Phillips in New York, this dial design became something everyone talked about.

But Rolex was not Singer's only customer.

Exotic Paul Newman sub-dials can be found on watches from other brands of the 1970s and 80s as well. This Nivada Chronosports is one of them.

Inside the beige sub-registers, Singer used the same font as on the Rolex Paul Newman Daytona.

The charismatic dial design is supported by large white indexes, a red depth marking, a tachymeter scale, a date window at three, a bidirectional rotating bezel showing hours and minutes, and a luminous dot at twelve.

Square-tipped lollipop hour markers inside the sub-dials catch the eye, and the rarity of a design with sub-dials at nine and twelve will not be lost on you.

The absolute highlight of this piece, though, is its condition.

Despite being more than fifty years old, it is almost perfect apart from slight storage marks between seven and eight o'clock.

The tritium lume on the hour markers and hands also remains in superb, rich condition.

The movement is the manual-wind chronograph Cal. Valjoux 7765. Its running sound is unusual, with a rich resonance to it.

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