This is the rarest racing dial and a dream Speedmaster. It’s known as the ‘Red Racing’ or sometimes ‘Black Racing’, as both colors are distinct to this dial. Apart from the real astronaut watches and prototypes, they’re as special as Speedmaster collecting gets. There are two iterations, one with a...

Staring into an onyx Datejust is the horological equivalent of a black hole. Both aesthetically and financially, they will suck you in. Normally, I would always slightly preference a Day-Date, everything else being equal. But in stone dials, Datejusts really sing. You get more of the stone, to start. But...

Minutia in Rolex is really the name of the game, it’s a lifetime’s learning. The dial on this 7928 is spectacular, but it’s not even the most impressive part of this Sub and that’s where the minutia comes in. The very earliest Submariners, big crown and small, lacked crown guards....

At its release in ’94, this ref. 2050 was the thinnest perpetual calendar calibre ever at just 3.1mm. It remains to this day a technical marvel, yet it’s all but entirely forgotten. The 2050 was a flag placed in the ground for Schaffhausen in what was a very active battle...

This is a Linz-signed Oyster Perpetual, and it’s about as emblematic of an entirely different world in watches as it’s possible to be. If you’re used to Rolex, this dial might look a bit strange to you. Let me give you a hint: look under the coronet. Imagine any retailer,...

JLC have a really rather robust history of distinct dive watches, but one is almost always left out—quite unfairly. 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....

The RT series Resonance (RT stands for Resonance Trois) is the most bizarrely distinct in all his five series so far. For no logic I can understand, Journe decided to make the left hand time zone a disc display, while the right remained unaltered. It was the tenth anniversary of...

This innocuous Calatrava might at first appear to be simply the most timeless design in the world, and it is, but it’s different to almost every other Patek Calatrava that came before or after. It’s the ref. 2526 and its dial is entirely enamel, unlike most Patek Philippe dials where...

At the center of vintage Rolex collecting lies the Daytona, it’s the sun around which everything else orbits. Except, if we’re keeping the astronomy analogy, it’s really a binary star system, as vintage Cosmograph is split between Paul Newmans and everything else from 6239 until the end of Zenith calibres....

If you really know your Day-Dates, this wood dial will immediately look a different to what you’re used to seeing. It’s made of sequoia, not the birch, mahogany, or walnut you’re perhaps more familiar with, and it’s what came first. In fact, this isn’t just the first wood dial Rolex,...

Watches really don’t have to be new, expensive, or complicated to be interesting. This is a Longines from 1938 with an exceptionally lovely sector dial. It might look like a famous Sei or Tre Tacche, but no, this is a snap-back with a flat bezel that goes by the reference...

If an alien was beamed down to Earth, or Mark Zuckerberg asked you (which amounts to the same thing, really), you’d have a hard time explaining why the 2499 is a million (and up) dollar watch in USD while this 3970 is a ‘mere’ 150-250K-ish watch, broadly speaking. But, show...

This is where the Basculante started, except this one is so vintage that back then Cartier just called it the Tank Cabriolet Reversible. The Basculante naming convention only became standardized around the ref. 2390 in the 90s and this incredible time capsule dates from the 1940s. If you’re a student...

Early Autavias are amongst the beautiful professional chronographs ever made. They have the historic chops to rival pre-moon Speedmasters and even Daytonas. Speaking plainly, the other two evolved more gracefully with age in the decades that followed. The current TAG Autavia I regard as a shell of its former self....

Middle Eastern signatures are one thing, but when you see a polychromatic painting of a Quraysh Hawk in enamel, it’s always an occasion. Made for the emir of Dubai Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, examples are far less in number than say an Oman Khanjar dial. More importantly, for us...

Many will argue this is the first-ever Explorer, ref. 6350. But others will state it’s the ref. 6150. In the 6150, only some examples actually said Explorer on the dial and it wasn’t yet an officially certified chronometer. By this 6350, both traditions were firmly in place. It’s kind of...

When this IWC sold new in 1995, it had an MSRP almost identical to a top-of-the-range BMW 5 Series (thanks @alteuhrener for that excellent bit of trivia). Today, it’s far less than half that. And yet, today as back then, it’s one of the most elegant minute repeaters ever designed....

If you thought integrated bracelets started and ended with the holy trinity, that’s not even close to accurate. Omega had an entire range by the 70s, an effort which is easily and often overlooked. But it really shouldn’t be, particularly if you’re out for a value. This is one of...