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...

The 5070 timeline makes no sense. You see, chronograph production through the later part of the last century was anything but continuous at Patek Philippe. It went 1463 from the early 1940s until late 60s. Then, well, nothing. Nothing at all for four decades, no only-chronograph was made. The 5070...

The transitional 16550 marked the start of the Explorer II as a dual-time zone watch. In one instant, the hour hand was able to jump and the GMT-Master II had a credible rival. Further, it also introduced a massive fault we’ve all come to adore: the cream dial. Early 16550s...

The 105.012 is the one that made the Moonwatch the Moonwatch, thanks Neil. It was the first to be called 'Professional'. It debuted the now formulaic asymmetrical lyre lug case with integrated crown guards (whether made by HF or CB, HF here). It's rather significant it you stop and look...

I wonder what Jean-Jacques and Rupert Emmerson would think of what the Crash has become. They did things so differently that now, six decades later, we still uphold the Crash as a symbol of creativity, freedom, and elegance. The Crash was born into the swinging-60s. Now, it’s just the Bond...

In 1947, this was the height of the Omega catalogue. Man hadn’t stepped on the moon, limited editions hadn’t been invented, and Ploprof was still just what you said when you sneezed. But post-war economic buzz was strong and this was Omega’s halo product. Known today as the Cosmic Complete...

Complicated and Nautilus haven’t really been dating long. In fact, we didn’t see a complicated calendar Nautilus until 2010, a good 26 years after AP made the 5554: this 5726. It wasn’t even a QP. It was, true to Patek Philippe form, an annual calendar. And in-line? It really makes...

This is a Pre-Daytona, the father of Cosmograph, but it’s way more interesting than it appears at first glance. This is the Pre-Daytona equivalent of a perfect Paul Newman: finding any 6238 with a black dial. For standard dials, the 6238 might hold the Rolex record for having the largest...

Finds. Meet Krayon’s Anywhere, a watch which unironically came out of nowhere as the successor to the Everywhere model in 2021. If that’s all a bit confusingly abstract, consider the Anywhere the world’s second most refined sunrise and sunset complication, with particular attention to finishing. But it's far from second-best,...

The new Carrera has become ungainly in age. The original Carrera was a minimalist’s chronograph made pure. And it’s not even that much more valuable. Jack Heuer was all about Bauhaus dials. Somewhat ironically, it then became the chronograph of motorsport. And that history is massive, even coming back with...

Meet the 1805. That’s right 1805, not 1806. This is one of those references that needs explaining, in fact often called a lost reference alongside the 1808, 1809, 1810, and others like the ‘King’ 1831. Any time the number of known examples of any given Rolex approaches single digits, it...

The 130 was the first ever serially produced Patek Philippe chronograph, the daddy of the Tasti Tondi and so much else we take for granted today. Made for an astonishing (almost) three decades from 1936-1964, there are a bewildering number of dials, calibres, and even case sizes: 130 production is...

In and amongst all the Lange 1s, blue dials hold a special place in collectors’ hearts. ‘Prussian’ blue holds special significance within German culture as it was discovered accidentally by a German painter and became the first ever chemically produced blue pigment. The Prussian King chose this color, framed in...