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...

There’s Franck Muller as the 2000s knew it and then there’s early Franck Muller Chronographs, with almost no thru line between the two. I can’t think of single name with a larger spread between early elegance and senile nonsense, save perhaps some of the French fashion brands who enjoy burning...

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...

In the early days when Kari Voutilainen had just branched out from restoration work to making his eponymous brand, the Decimal Repeater was one of his signature complications; he invented it. Where a normal minute repeater will chime low for hours, sequence tones for quarters, and then a high pitch...

As a bitter old soul waiting to die, I can’t remember the last time a watch made post-2018 from a non-independent genuinely excited me. Except for one, which you’re looking at. It’s what happens when watch brands listen to their customers and aren’t afraid to be a little brave in...

This is a CPCP Tank À Guichets, or as I like to call it the Tankiest Tank. Cartier’s name is sexier, I admit. The Tank À Guichets has always been a limited release in Cartier, from first commission in 1928 until this 100 example run in 2004 over 90 years,...

This 3700’s dial is the only I’ve ever seen which is outrageous enough to make up for the fact that its case has ears. Now, far be it from me to criticize Genta’s pen and what today is an institution. But broadly speaking, I find every watch enthusiast is either...

You know that meme that goes ‘Mom, can we get X?’ ‘We have X at home’. This might be the only meme-appropriate watch instance where X is both less expensive and just as cool, but fits the format. This is a Lip 830, but it’s know affectionately as the ‘Paul...

I’m old enough in watch years to just remember a time when old Swiss men on the internet would call Lange ‘not as serious’ a brand as Patek Philippe. The comparison is useless, the two manufactures approach watchmaking with such distinct philosophies. But, if there were any remaining doubt, surely...

Tropical doesn’t always mean caramel. I find a lot of visual delight in the shade where dials are just starting to move off black, it’s subtlety. You’ll be used to seeing tropical subdials on the white dial 6265, often wildly so. But the black dials can also go brown, it’s...

When all you do is hunt watches all day like a shit Indiana Jones, it’s pretty easy to become jaded about even the greatest watches. You can find me a Jasper Day-Date and all I’ll want to do is compare it to the last one we featured. I love what...

True creativity, as in ground-up first principles approaches to problems, has immense value even when it fails spectacularly. JLC intended this, the Futurematic, to be a world-beater, the first watch without a crown to wind. The mainspring only winds from the motion of its bumper automatic, meaning those chronograph-like oversized...

I don’t know what a Royal Oak means any more, and I’m pretty sure you don’t either. Back in the 70s when lapels were wide enough to create lift at speed and you could actually say ‘rad’, it was one thing. A Royal Oak told the world steel could be...

For every modern run of the mill Aquatimer you’d only try on while waiting for a flight at the IWC boutique in Frankfurt, there is one which is incredibly interesting. The line has endured a massive degree of stochastic randomness with respect to greatness. Yes, many of the less thoughtful...

A childhood hero of mine, by the name of James May, used to famously spend his summers between doing Top Gear making shit documentaries learning about wine. He was accompanied by storied wine critic Oz Clarke and would drive around France in an attempt to be educated, but mostly an...