Momo Design Essenziale

When flicking through a book called "Ferrarissima" I noticed these cool adverts in it. One of them was by Momo. And I instantly liked it and looked it up and found one for sale on Ebay in Spain. As the price was right I bought it as well. 

For those not familiar with Momo, hereby the wiki link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(company)

I do happen to have Ferrari 400 with a Momo steering wheel, so this would be a nice match. So this was another reason why I bought it. 

I could not find out exactly when this watch was designed/produced, but since the book is from 1985 I think it's from that year. Another good reason to buy it as I like the seventies and eighties stuff.

As you can see on the photo it's a very minimalistic style watch and has a modest diameter of 32 mm

I also placed the watch on the actual advert in the book

As it was not running I had to open it up and hoping it was having a dead battery. I actually did not check the battery and simply ordered a new one (Varta V364). 

When opening it up I unfortunately made a scratch on the black coated cap, sigh!  Yes, just like the LED watch this one does not a small hole for a knife to open it. On the back the following is stamped: water resistant - ETA swiss quartz - all stainless steel. And also the following is engraved: "laiag"  I am sure what that means but was unable to find anything about it. The serial or reference is M0917A. 

With the cap off I could now see the movement which is having a nice blue circuitboard. It is actually a semi mechanical watch and having 7 jewels.

The movement is provided by ETA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA_SA

And having nr 956.032  Clearly I am a novice at this but it was very easy to look up information about this movement. If it was broken somehow you easily can purchase parts or a complete unit, ie:

https://www.esslinger.com/eta-2-hand-quartz-watch-movement-956-032-overall-height-3-6mm/

Since I was working on the other LED watch I figured it might have a poor battery, despite they were both new ordered. So when measuring they both provided 1.5V after all. Out of curiosity I also measured the battery for this Momo watch. To my surprise it also provided 1.5V. So when I put it back in and left it for a few minutes (it has no second hand/marker) it appeared to be working. How's that? I now have a brand new spare battery as it's still running nice and keeping accurate time.

I need to give the leather strap a bit of treatment but other than that it's a nice addition. To bad it's a little small. And I'm also slightly annoyed by the fact not much more info about this model is available on the internet. I sense it's quite a fairly unique watch in the sense of first Momo watches created. I also like the style of the "newer" Essenziale model watches.

Oh, in the advert it did mention it was available in black (men) and in gold. When checking again on Ebay I now found this 18k watch. Adding the photo's here for reference. Its listed for 495 GBP