I saw someone in the gallery asking about buying a Vostok Cosmodiver, so I'm writing this so you don't end up with the wrong version. Basically, this watch was split into 3 versions, and Vostok is currently pumping out a bunch of different variants. Here's the full story.
The Cosmodiver was a project started before the Russia-Ukraine war by a Norwegian guy named Ole Doka—the dude in the photo—who is the Managing Director of the largest space business conference in the Nordics. He started a Facebook community to design a watch. Vostok is pretty much the only company that's been actively taking on civilian watch projects since the Soviet era. They don't even charge for initial development; once the watch is done, they send purchase links to the participants. Even if people flake out on their promise to buy, Vostok doesn't sue—they just eat the cost and sell the remaining stock to the general public. So, if a 'Vostok Gallery' on DC inside gathered enough people to agree on a design and applied to Vostok, they’d make it. (Though there are some restrictions). Because of this, many amateur watch enthusiasts have knocked on Vostok's door, resulting in...
The Pripyat project themed after the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
The Mechta project (run by a Russian forum) honoring the Soviet satellite that first orbited the sun.
The Baikal project (run by a Spanish community) themed after the deepest, clearest lake on Earth.
And many other successful projects.
Notably, during the 1975 Soyuz mission, an astronaut wore a Vostok in space for 29 days—a Soviet record at the time—proving its reliability in extreme conditions. This is why Vostok is so linked to space themes, and why Ole Doka approached them.
While Russian communities deal directly with the factory, international projects usually go through one man: Dmitry Buyalov, the former chief designer who led Vostok’s golden age. He now runs his own brand capturing Soviet nostalgia and manages Meranom, an official Vostok dealer. He’s designed many of the masculine, Soviet-style pieces that Westerners love.
When Buyalov joined, he spent years convincing the management that they needed to outsource to China for better quality/cost parts to stay relevant, just like Swiss brands do. Vostok is located in a tiny town of 60,000 people far from Moscow, still holding onto a brutal 6% margin from the Soviet days and running almost everything on Soviet-era machinery. You can imagine how closed-off the management's mindset was, but Buyalov was the one who changed that.
So the Cosmodiver project was cruising along, until a ridiculous problem popped up.
They received a sample where the bezel numbers were misaligned, but someone approved it, and mass production finished. Vostok covers costs until the sample stage, but they couldn't eat the cost of a finished production run. We don't know if it was Ole Doka or Buyalov who gave the green light, but someone rushed it without checking the samples properly. The two were already clashing during the project, and this incident made things irreconcilable. Plus, as the project dragged past 1.5 years, Vostok started layoffs due to COVID. For whatever reason, Ole Doka unilaterally declared the Cosmodiver project canceled. The problem was that Buyalov had been fronting the production costs.
At the time, Vostok didn't have the tech to make the Cosmodiver dial. The dial was being made in a French workshop, hands and straps in China, and the bezel, case, and movement were in-house. Buyalov was managing the French and Chinese outsourcing. To recover his costs, Buyalov started selling the components on his site. Desperate fans bought the parts to assemble them themselves, which required buying two more Vostok watches just to harvest the case and movement. This is how the 'First Version' of the Cosmodiver was born. Ole Doka was naturally furious, but for some reason, it didn't turn into a legal battle. Then the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, and the West slapped sanctions on Russia, cutting off all shipping and payments.
Since relations were severed and legal issues became moot, Vostok just went ahead and released an official 987-piece limited edition. The people on the original waiting list got backstabbed a second time, while scalpers and collectors bought 3 or 4 units each of this limited edition, which only cost about $250-300 back then. This is the 'Second Version.' Ole Doka went ballistic again and ended up selling the IP to a microbrand so they could 'redo' the project. That led to the 'Third Version.'
International communities initially cheered for Ole Doka, but the mood has shifted. He ran the new project behind closed doors on Facebook with only people he could 'control,' and ironically, the new microbrand version—which cost 4 times as much—also had bezel alignment issues. Some Western fans are even whispering that he tanked the Vostok project on purpose just to jump to another brand. Anyway, due to the war and the creators' conflicting interests, the project never became one 'true' masterpiece. Yet, collectors love the drama; the 1st 'assembly' version goes for $600-$750, the 2nd factory version for $900-$1,200, and the 3rd microbrand version for $2,200-$3,000. Vostok, seeing no legal issues left, decided to make it a steady seller and is now churning out various versions. Some love it, some hate it. I'll probably buy one or two more.
I happened to snag one cheap from a quick sale. The date wheel is white, so the previous owner probably couldn't find a black one when assembling it. I'm going to tear it down and mod it my way anyway. Damn, it took three hours to write this. You guys better upvote, okay? ㅠㅠ
"The community is fascinated by the chaotic 'Days of Our Lives' level of drama behind the watch, with many users feeling the urge to buy a Vostok after reading the lore."
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