Mondia TDBK 1376 | Automatic Chronograph

The automatic chronograph combined with a digital jump-hour display is on another level. The Mondia is a quirky mechanical marvel of the 1970s.

It's powered by the rare TDBK 1376 caliber of which 23,000 were made, but only a few thousand of them were used in jumping hour watches like this one.

TDBK stands for Tenor-Dorly, Dubois-Dépraz, Brac, and Kelek. Tenor-Dorly and Brac built the base automatic movement with the digital display, the chronograph masters at Dubois-Dépraz designed the module, and Kelek handled the final assembly. They packed mechanical complexity into a very compact space for an affordable watch — it was actually the thinnest automatic chronograph at the time it was introduced.

With all due respect to Hodinkee, their editorial back in 2018 that threw this watch onto a list of "Pretty Terrible Watches" couldn't be more wrong in my opinion. It is a mechanical achievement, not a failure. And best of all — the chances of me running into another person wearing this watch are extremely rare.

It took a long time to hunt it down, but that makes it all the more satisfying.