Raketa: 471302 (Hunting of The Hex Ghost)

Studying watch catalogues is always fun, and when comes to soviet watches catalogue, something that always puzzle me is why the watch is displayed in catalogue but never seen in real life. One of logical explanation is that back in those days, the watch factories were basically state owned, and the catalogue may include those watches that were made but never go into mass production eventually.

Somehow I am infected with habit of finding ghost or the so called "unseen" watch.

In one of catalogue released in 1983, such Raketa watch is displayed, with case shape in hexagon, I have never seen one in years of collecting soviet watches and the journey to look for it never stop since then.

2609НП/471302

Lo and behold, finally such Raketa watch shows up in the sales and I able to buy it. Here are the photos of it.

The watch is in good condition. The dial is silver in color and has sunburst radiated form. The hands are in black color so it gives the stark contrast on top of silver dial and making reading time as simple as it can be. 

Now comes to the interesting part, the back cover has that "half circle" cut of museum tag with the movement number 2609НП and model number "471302" which match exactly to the catalogue. But there is more to this, to open the back cover, there are two pieces of "sliding lock" which has to be pushed from the side. Apparently it has "unique" case construction that I have never seen in any other Raketa watches. See photo below -

To be frank as the watch is in good condition and running good time, I didn't want to take any risk to open the back cover myself. If any of reader come across another example of this model, do let me know.

Happy hunting ;)