Christian’s story really got to us. After becoming a customer, Christian shared this amazing story with us briefly in an email, and we invited him to share some more context and tell the entire story. Hope you guys enjoy it as much as we do!
I was invited by Vincent to write about the story with my Seagull 1963 and I’m more than happy to…
For me, this seagull watch has a very special, emotional meaning. To explain why, I’ll take you back to 2014, where I was living in Vancouver, British Columbia. I moved out of the nearby town called Richmond two years prior to that and frankly, I did not want to go back.
Just after I left my hometown, I got in some argument with my father about something stupid. My father and I didn’t speak for two years and frankly, I felt very bad about the whole situation. My old man was a real ‘history fanatic’, and he also happened to love watches with a history.
I remember we were watching discovery channel and there was a documentary about the Chinese army. That’s when the Seagull 1963 and the story of the project D304 came up, and my dad started telling me these stories about how they had these secret codes for every project they were rolling out. He told me how they re-issued the Seagull 1963 after the Tianjin factory stopped producing them.
He kept going on about the vintage look, the open case back and the amazingly finished column-wheel with st19 hand-winding chronograph movement. Fast forward to 2016, two years after me and my father had the argument, we still barely spoke.
I decided it was time for a change. If two men of few words have an argument, you need to think of a way to spark a conversation. And in this case: the tale of project D304 / the Seagull 1963 popped into my head.
That’s when I decided to get the Seagull 1963 38 mm acrylic version for my father, and I decided to get the 38 mm sapphire version for myself. So there I went, back to Vancouver, with the two boxes I ordered.
After knocking on the door and asking whether I wanted to have some coffee or tea, nobody said a thing. Then I took the two d304 aviator watches out of my bag and gave one to my dad.
He wiped his tears and we afterward, we laughed and reminisced about old times. Ever since that happened, we stayed in contact and I visit them every few weeks. For me, this watch will always be the symbol of how I made up with my dad. Who knows what would have happened if that hunch to buy those Seagulls 1963s.
I hope that my story actually inspires someone, and I want to thank Seagull1963.com to share it here.