Seiko 7A38 - by the numbers

Yes, I know it's a bit  for this forum section (and the forum in general), but this is intended as a cautionary 'heads up' for any Yema Spationaute III owners. 

As background, here's a partial copy and paste from another thread.

Originally posted by myself on November 26, 2018 at 12:22 PM:

Did I mention that I also collect Aragatz mission related ephemera ?

Collecting space memorabilia can be a seriously expensive hobby (more so than watches). There is a bulletin board dedicated to it collectspace.com, though I've never seen a mention of the word 'Aragatz' in the few searches I've run on there.

I have had a couple of lucky cheap purchases, in the form of my Aragatz mission patch, which has been verified as genuine by the owners of spacepatches.nl 

Admittedly I hadn't searched eBay, looking for Aragatz mission related ephemera in a good few months. This afternoon, when I remembered, I came across this ! 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/202690167023

Allegedly: Original, from archives of mission flight engineer Sergei Krikalyov.

The US eBay seller alexpanchenko really should know better.

Alex Pachenko has been a dealer in Russian space memorabila for many years.

Here's a couple of his rather dated websites: http://www.ussr-airspace.com/

and http://incredible-adventures.com/alex_panchenko.html

As shown by Spacepatches.nl's Mir page under Soyuz TM-7 (1988/1989; EO-4)

This is clearly not an original Aragatz patch, but the Stewart Aviation reproduction, which going by their Space webpage thankfully appears to have been discontinued. The obvious giveaways being the missing inner gold border and green thread where it should be light blue.

Here's how a genuine original Aragatz mission patch should look:

(It's also black material on the reverse). 

Incidentally there are more convincing fake Aragatz patches out there, which if not 100% accurate, are a lot closer to the original design than the Stewart Aviation reproduction. This was one I saw listed by a Russian eBay seller, back in 2013.