FHB Classic F-504

Today's watch is from a new brand to this blog, and a brand which has been a little weird to research.

The watch is by a brand called FHB which stands for Felix Huber Basel. Felix Huber is a known name in the Swiss watch world, having worked at the Catena and Zeno Watch companies. In 1973 Felix Huber bought the rights to the Zeno name and ran the company. According to the FHB website, it was in the 60s that the FHB name was started, watches were designed, but it seems never released (as it wasn't deemed the right time for a small Swiss workshop to get into electronic watches). In 1995, the Felix Huber designs were rediscovered and the FHB brand was reborn. The strange part about this history is that it was written in Japanese. Even though the company is counted as being Swiss (and the watch states Swiss made on the back), the official FHB website is entirely in Japanese. I guess this means that the watches were re-released mainly for the Japanese market, and not many of the watches are seen on English language sites.

This particular model is called the F-504. The F504 is one of the standard designs from FHB, and was originally designed in May 1978 (with the face stating D Code Mai 78). It is a 3 hand dial design with date window and a round case. The bezel rotates and features different cities /time zones for calculating world time. The case is a mixture of steel and plastic, with a water resistance of 3atm. The face, back, and clip for the strap shows the FHB Classic logo which is the letters FHB with an elongated top line to the F with a lightning style underline which also crosses the word classic which is in a script font. The strap is plastic, but needs to be cut to size, so watch out that it is long enough if you buy one second hand.

This case design is still available, but this colour variant isn't, so I'd guess this is maybe from the 2000s. The sale price for the F504 is ¥16,000.