Gotta break it out for the 60th anniversary of the first human flight to space — April 12, 1961. It’s actually quite attractive, in a retro way, with a red sweeping hand.
Engraved with his name (more on that below) on the backing, it came from his daughter Elena Gagarina with the note (translated): “Watch purchased by Gagarin in 1967 and used by him. Gagarina”
“When Barack and Michelle Obama visited Moscow in 2009, it was Elena Gagarina who escorted the First Lady through the galleries. Fluent in English, she is the custodian not only of Russia’s royal jewels but also of every Yuri Gagarin statue, every postal tribute, and every published encomium. All must pass her personal inspection. “There are good sculptures and bad sculptures, good stamps and bad stamps,” she says. “This is the role which is given to me by law: that all images of my father and stories of his life I should see.” — Air & Space Magazine
(By strange coincidence, I was in the same Moscow hotel at the same time as the Obamas.)
It is a 23 jewel, 20 carat gold watch. The May 1, 1967 date is Interesting — it is the the National Day of Worker Solidarity, the day Brezhnev wanted the first Soyuz flight to launch, and Gagarin was the backup pilot for that mission, which ended tragically with the first death during a space mission: “In 1967, the first Soyuz smashed full speed into the ground. And everyone knew it was going to happen. The inevitable feeling that there would be a fatal end of the mission loomed in the air on launch day. Gagarin was particularly agitated, acting out and making strange demands. He wasn’t supposed to go to the launch pad with Komarov, but he did and demanded a pressure suit as well. Some see Gagarin’s actions as his attempt to elbow his way in to the cockpit to save his friend’s life while others suggest this was his way of getting a pressure suit for Komarov. It wasn’t much, but it would give the cosmonaut an added defense against a defective spacecraft. Another reading of Gagarin’s actions is that he was trying to disrupt launch procedures enough to cancel the mission.”
“Komarov’s death seems to have been almost scripted. Yuri Gagarin said as much in an interview he gave to Pravda weeks after the crash. He sharply criticized the officials who had let his friend fly.” — NPR
Yuri Gagarin died in a plane accident in 1968, just 9 months before the Americans orbited the moon with Apollo 8.
The Soviet space program has been in a long period of internal decay ever since. Bloomberg writes: “Sixty years after Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight, Russia’s space industry can’t get its act together. But space lore remains powerful, and Gagarin a national hero. A majority of Russians still believe their country is a leader at the final frontier. But Russia is not the force it was. The industry has been hurt by Western sanctions. Worse, a combination of bureaucracy, military secrecy and a state-dominated economy have failed to foster private space enterprises of the kind driving innovation in the U.S.”
P.S. Before purchasing the watch at a space auction, I noticed that a letter was missing in the engraving! They updated the listing to note that. Remaining optimistic, I bought it anyway as no-one else bid on it. If someone wanted to make a fake, you’d think they would not skip a letter. Hurts resale value. Perhaps it was personalized by someone inept… or chiseled under the influence. I figure it just might really have belonged to the first man in space despite the typo in the engraving; perhaps that’s why he got rid of it! 🙂 And maybe someone in flickrland can help shed light on this. I have emailed Elena to ask if she remembers writing the note.
After his world tour, Gagarin became deputy director of the new Cosmonaut Training Centre. I have several Mir trainer panels from there: 
And for that fateful 1967 flight, here is a detailed analysis of the electromechanical clock that flew on the early Soyuz spacecraft, from my space 
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