Atlantic Worldmaster Art Deco review

Hi guys and welcome to my first watch review, the Atlantic Worldmaster Art Deco, a watch and brand which are hardly known outside Eastern Europe.

Atlantic is a Swiss watch manufacturing company established in 1888, and since 1965 they began selling watches to the Eastern Europe countries. I am from Romania and I can confirm the brand (together with Doxa) was very popular here, and the watches were highly regarded. Many watches from the 1970s are still working today, although many were serviced in poor conditions (reusing parts from other dead watches), because of the lack of original spare parts. From a quality perspective I'd say the watches are somewhat similar to Tissot/Certina/Hamilton. You can find more about the company and watch lineup at atlanticwatches.ch.

The Worldmaster series has been their most popular lineup since the 1950s, and they have been using mechanical and automatic movements mostly from Unitas and ETA. Back when I was in high school in the 1990s I had a watch just like the white dialed one in the following picture (39mm diameter, domed acrylic crystal, hand wound), until I eventually lost it, so you can imagine the joy I have owning a brand new one again.

My high-school watch was identical to this one

I have purchased the watch from a grey market online shop (GMOS). The retail price on Atlantic website is 891 USD; and AD here sells it for a price of 866 USD. I got it for 521 USD. I knew the GMOS had old stocks, so I expected the watch to be few years old, albeit unused. And indeed it was; this model has been equipped with Sellita SW200-1 instead of ETA 2824-2 before 2020, and mine came with the ETA movement, so it is at least 3-4 years old. The movement is Top grade (with Incabloc shock protection), a higher grade than used on typical Hamiltons. However, because it stayed unused for long, the lubrication on the automatic movement has degraded and hand winding is rather stiff because of the sticky reversers, so I will have to take it to the watchmaker to refresh it. Nevertheless the watch is keeping time just fine and the ratchet wheel is intact, so it will only be <100 USD routine servicing.

Some specs:

314L fully polished stainless steel case

Diameter: 40mm

Thickness: 11.13mm

Lug to lug: 47.5mm

Lug width: 20mm

Crystal: domed sapphire

Case back: screwed in, transparent, mineral crystal

Crown: push-pull, signed

Water Resistance: 50m

Movement: ETA 2824-2 Incabloc (Top grade)

I have always preferred wearing watches on bracelets, except for when I go to the seaside. The engineer style bracelet is fully polished, it has solid links and signed butterfly clasp, it is 20mm width all around, and it has push pin adjustments. It is a very comfortable bracelet thanks to the small links that are smoothly flexing between each other. The cons are the hollow end links and the lack of half links, however the links are only 8mm long, so one can find a reasonably good fit. I have 7.5 inch wrist, and wearability is excellent. I find butterfly clasps rather annoying to open and close, but more comfortable than traditional clasps once closed. This one is milled, and one of the best I tried.

The sunray textured dial is stunning, and the carving is very well made. The hands and applied markers are fully polished - the hands and logo polish is plain and clean (with rounded edges), while the markers have a fine granite finish, to calm down the reflections. The domed crystal also helps bringing more light on the hands and markers. The red tipped second hand has been used on Worldmaster series since the 50s, and is the most recognizable feature of this line of watches.

The lume on the hands and every 5 minute dots is so poor I couldn't take a clear photo, but I wasn't expecting better on this dressy watch.

So there you have it; hope you enjoyed, excuse my clumsy English and lack of photography skills, and in case you want to know more about the watch, please drop me a line, I'll try my best to help.

Cheers!