Vintage IWC is like chocolate cake. There are fancier desserts and there are more simple deserts. But chocolate cake sometimes just really, really hits the spot like nothing else can. The creativity and sheer dogged ambition of the brand under Günter Blümlein really has no late-80s peers. The team reached places...

The 310.225 is probably not a reference that will ring any bells. It’s a Langematik Perpetual and the Lange QP is obscure enough in its own right. But the .225 designates the matching platinum bracelet, manufactured near 2010 by Wellendorff. And it’s not the straight link Wellendorff we know. The...

The Tortue case essentially has three neo-vintage titans, of which Cartier owns two. The first is the Monopoussoir, one for CPCP. The second, Patek Philippe’s 5040, has always seemed a slight bit more beautiful and cohesive than the ref. 2646 CPCP QP. But for a minute repeater, there is no...

Finds. The rather unimaginatively nicknamed Big Triangle is something rather unusual in vintage tool divers. It’s a well-known, beautiful watch from a mainstream manufacture that isn’t unjustifiably stratospheric in price. It was produced widely, even after official production stopped (more on that later). But it’s a lyre lug, bakelite bezel,...

Birch is the kind of adjective you expect to find next to ‘Eames Chair’, not ‘Day-Date’. Before Rolex were entirely luxury-first, they tried all kinds of unusual things in order to get an order from their clients. You could order a stone dial, a stella dial, or indeed wood. Wood isn’t...

  Shortly after the debut of the 5402, Audemars Piguet became very experimental with the Royal Oak as a canvas. Aiming to bring the Royal Oak to the wider market, Audemars Piguet debuted the Day Date version of the Royal Oak, this ref. 5572. Note, that is a four-digit reference. AP...