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CROTON CR307996 Stainless Steel, Tungsten, Ceramic, Diamonds, Sapphire & Swiss Rhonda 5 JEWEL Quartz movement 371 Renata Silver Oxide Battery

From the late Ken Schwarz
May his soul rest in peace! 

Having previously opened it to change the battery, today I opened it to inspect it! Have a look at the images of the insides :) 



When my dad died in 2015, I inherited this CROTON CR307996 with a Swiss Rhonda 5 JEWEL quartz movement that operates on a 371 sized silver oxide primary battery. With small natural diamonds as the hour markers, the black ceramic bezel also has a Day display hole where a small date wheel spools up 1 of 31 days it stores. The band made from stainless steel, tungsten carbide & ceramic. The top cover made of synthetic sapphire onto which silver was applied. The hour, minute & second hands are rhodium plated. Its a glib fashion stunner! Ken Schwarz had a lot more style & flare than me & really cared about his appearance. My mother Connie got this watch for him as a birthday or Christmas present. 

Today, on 01.22.2022 I opened this watch after removing the band with my new Eventronic toolkit. I wanted to inspect it, having learned a lot about watches & watch movements since I changed the battery in this one back on 07.16.2020 & it still works 1.27 vdc floating voltage when tested today! 


In the watch vice to open it, the case back shows the details, but quite scratched up from the much harder materials (MOHS measurement of material hardness) than the 304L stainless steel. 

New Battery (371) install date code
Blue ink on paper under office tape

The Renata 371 battery very high quality & long lasting, which along with this high quality low friction quartz movement gives it very good runtime (years) per battery. In sharp contrast with my Apple Watch SE which requires daily charging by comparison! 




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