If you were ever in any doubt that Rolex are, in fact, the preeminent masters of marketing, consider this. Rolex convinced their clientele back in the 4-digit era that wood was a luxury material. Wood; you know, the stuff you burn to keep warm, that’s always decomposing slowly. Granted, they...

For many, many years, I envied the one-watch man. I pictured a Swiss man who was given an IWC by his parents for graduation, never longing for more, wearing it to the grave. There are tales of such people, myth that intrigues us as addicts all searching for that next...

This is about as special as a Fifty Fathoms gets, mostly because it technically isn’t one. Tornek Rayville was (is?) a company created in the imaginative American spirit of creatively avoiding laws, to get around the US Navy’s ‘Buy America Act’ in 1933. That put Blancpain’s Fifty Fathoms well out...

More than any Hublot which may or may not be for sale, more than any Ming which may or may not tell the hour, and more than any Speedmaster which may or may not be a parts bin, what the watch world needs is understandable and attainably priced great watches....

Veblen goods are those for which demand increases as price increases, breaking traditional economic models. If this does not compute, ask a guy named Philippe Dufour to explain it to you. But I’d like to suggest there’s a similar but distinct phenomena in military watches. Usually, collectors uniformly aim for...

In the words of the esteemed Wiz Khalifa, ‘Yeah, uh, you know what it is, black and yellow’. He had it right. The 1675/8 is famed for its nipple dial with applied conical indices, but mostly for being the archetypal gold Rolex. While the GMT-Master was made for the jet...

In stone dial Rolex, most will know the sought-after, vibrant, verdant jasper. It’s a deep green with red veins. But jasper occurs naturally in varying shades and one of those is this rich red. It’s what’s known as a red jasper dial and it’s far less common than the already...

When you’ve stared at near endless examples of the same reference, some watches jump off the screen as utterly honest. They make your heart melt, to the extent that an inanimate object can have a soul, they do. The longer a watch has lived on the wrist of its owner,...

Nina deserves more. This is a ref. 885103/02, better known as the Nina Rindt, and it is one of the most attractive chronograph designs there’s been. Yes, full stop. When I say more, I don’t mean value. I quite like that these are still attainable on a relative basis. I...

Unless you’ve spent your entire life studying vintage Rolex, you probably won’t have heard of a tulip dial. Even if you have, you probably won’t have seen one with four lines. Yes, we’re back in the realm of obscure Wilsdorf details again, but this one is even more anorak than...

I suspect because ‘Deep Sea Master Mariner E558’ was a bit of a mouthful (brevity is lost on the Swiss), the watch you’re looking at goes by its nickname today: Barracuda. Things called Baracuda are inherently cool. Hemi Plymouths drag racing around Detroit in the 70s. Blancpain German military divers....

There is a Scandinavian ideal known as Janteloven, which is a bit tricky to define but I’m going to try. Broadly, it’s a laughably egalitarian ideal that eschews any expressions of extreme individuality or success. In plain English, it’s a concept that aims to make the opposite of ostentation aspirational....

Stone dial Rolex is having its day and I don’t think that’s for rarity alone. A stone dial gives what is ultimately a standardized product an edge of uniqueness as well as personal style. It’s kind of like ice cream, we all appreciate ice cream as a category and uniquely...

This is a 1931 Reverso, but not the sort you’re thinking. It’s not the ultra-thin edition from the 2010s, it was actually manufactured in 1931, the very year the Reverso was released and confirmed on extract. Save for the Cartier Tank, there may be no longer-lived commercially successful design and...

This is just a Heuer in the same way that an original Shelby Cobra is just a car; it isn’t. It’s more akin to a mythical beast, one that will get your blood pumping if you know what you’re looking at. Toward the later half of the 1960s, Heuer worked...

Cartier has done the sports watch but once. It’s the Santos, and while whether the bracelet is integrated or not is a matter of debate, pretty much everyone agrees that the ref. 2960 is in the spirit of a Royal Oak, Nautilus, or 222. It’s as close as Cartier ever...

I must admit to slightly enjoying antagonizing purists here; a closed mind is boring. This is a service dial, and that’s always less desirable, right? Well, not quite. The 6542 GMT-Master was created with radium dials and was famously recalled for its radioactivity. If one came in for service over...

For all their motorsport ties and Ryan Gosling ad nonsense today, Heuer sure knew how to do a travel watch. And travel does suit the motorsport lifestyle, more than a simple chronograph. This Autavia would’ve been perfectly suited to time laps at Silverstone, fly to Monte Carlo, and time again...