Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Parnis Cushion Watch with Sea-Gull 3600 Manual Movement

by Tom Adelstein


This is a Parnis Cushion, hand winding men's wristwatch. It's true in design to the Cushion models of the mid -1920 and early 1930 Art Deco watches. It's approximately 7-10 mm larger than the vintage models to reflect the styles of today.

The Parnis Cushion uses a Sea-Gull 3600 movement, 516L marine grade stainless steel case, hardened mineral glass on the front and back. The dial is silver and black with raised Arabic numerals. The dial is sunken and has the second hand at the 9 O'clock position reminiscent of the first American strap watches dating back to 1917.


It comes with a genuine leather band and vintage style buckle. The crown owes its design to the 1920 Fahy coin edge cases.

The Sea-Gull 3600 is "parts-compatible" and exchangeable with the ETA 6497. This is generally a different approach  for Sea-Gull, but logical given the added demand for their movements. Sea-Gull had engineered their own movements, similar to Miyota and ETA, but not at the parts level.

When ETA ceased selling their movements to companies outside of their parent's Swatch Group ownership, things became desperate in Switzerland.  Demand for replacement movements has risen to dramatic levels. The quality and interchangeability of Sea-Gull's ebauches allows Swiss watch companies to continue their production at a lower cost that with ETA.

The ETA 6497 movement retails for $269. Sea-Gull and Sellita have filled the gap left by Swatch/ETA, but for considerably less money, which makes a watch like the Parnis Cushion a bargain.



The Sea-Gull 3600 has Geneva stripes and a swan neck regulator (speeds up and slows down the time). It has a time reserve of 48 hours after full-winding. Beats per hour are 18,000. The 3600 has 17 jewels.

Parnis is popular, because of its use of Seagull movements and watch designs. They are high value watches, which means you get more watch for the cost than with competitive brands.




I expect these watches to take a dramatic jump in cost. The cases compare with top-of-the-line Hamiltons that have MSRP's of $1000 +.