Archive for January 2023
Tropical, Gilt Dial 1675 Rolex GMT-Master
At a collector meetup last year, I encountered a very tan, thin, well-dressed Italian man. He had the kind of skin that let you know he’d spent every day of summer strolling around outside Capri. His glasses were Tom Ford. The calfskin boots he wore had been on foot at least ten years. He spoke…
Read More6005ST Audemars Piguet Rectangular Royal Oak
To some, this is one of the most blasphemous watches to come out of Le Brassus. It wears the name Royal Oak, but wasn’t designed by Genta. It’s not even a mechanical watch, no, it hails from the height of quartz. The ref. 6005 Rectangular Royal Oak is part uncanny valley, part Porsche SUV (something…
Read More‘Orange Boy’ 11630 Heuer Autavia
In watches, as most luxuries, there is often an asymptotic relationship between the amount a watch commands and the extra value you receive. In tangible terms, it means this: a 20K watch will not give you twice the enjoyment of a 10K watch, often it may give you about 1.5x as much additional enjoyment as…
Read More‘Padellone’ 3448/1 Patek Philippe
If you didn’t know watches, you’d probably think being nicknamed ‘frying pan’ was an insult. But when Padellone (the Italian) precedes Patek Philippe, you’re looking at what might just be the most elegant perpetual calendar ever. At the very least, it was the world’s first scaled production, self-wound perpetual calendar. The ref. 3448 was made…
Read MoreChinese Dial Cartier CPCP Tank Cintrée Dual Time
China has 160 cities with over a million people. Their intense public transport spending has meant the entire country is connected by high speed rail, cars are not needed. China is producing everything for everyone, everywhere. The more mathematically minded, on the spectrum-types are working extremely hard (perhaps at gunpoint?) to not just compete with…
Read More1 of 10 London Edition Urban Jürgensen Big 8
The subtlety of one color can make a watch. I feel, perhaps too strongly, that British racing green may in fact be the classiest hue to ever exist, full stop. This isn’t some childish James Bond Aston fascination or anglophilic pandering, no. On its own merits, the precise deep green with just a hint of…
Read MoreH40 Roger Dubuis Hommage Monopusher in Rose Gold
It is an unfortunate truth that, in our little world, hommage is often a dirty word. This doesn’t have to be the case, it’s just what happens when inspiration is taken lazily. Too many companies can easily copy design elements, grab a Miyota, and call it a day. But the H40? That’s an hommage like…
Read More1807 Bark Finish, Havana Dial Rolex Day-Date
At the risk of being terribly passé, I’m about to quote myself. Sorry. In writing about about different 1803 a few months back, I said that ‘The joys of Rolex Day-Date collecting are in many ways like the joys of mild alcoholism. In both, the satisfaction is to be found in minor variation.’ Since that…
Read MoreMk2 072/001 Enicar Sherpa Graph
Before Rolex had named anything the Daytona, before Paul Newman had a salad dressing or Cosmograph named after him, and before the Speedmaster had gone to the moon, there weren’t many renown chronographs. In fact, the wrist-worn chronograph was really only gaining popularity as a thing in the decade previous. Which makes it all the…
Read MoreJ14066 ‘Left Crown’ Seiko Crown
James May, an intelligent man, once stated that ‘No one truly understands electricity.’ He’s right. I have a degree in physics. I can describe its effects, predict and calculate ohms, probably wire a house with some effort, but at a certain level we all have to have faith that there are electrons in this wire…
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