Recently, a well-known collector and watch media personality stated in an interview that, ‘As vintage becomes more unattainable to most, collectors are turning to neo-vintage.’ That’s about as correct as George W. Bush was when he stated, ‘We know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.’ Neo-vintage isn’t on...

Meet the only Rolex dial, Datejust or Day-Date, that can make Lapis look utterly plebeian. When you hear someone say jasper dial Rolex, they’re normally talking about a green hardstone with red veins. But jasper occurs naturally in varying shades and one of those is this rich red. It’s what’s...

We tend to think of Patek Philippe as the sovereign monarch of timeless, elegant designs. Their image is monolithic, imposing, and changing only at a crawl. Well, no; at least, not entirely. People say the King Midas is divisive, but it doesn’t even come close as polarizing as the 3633....

It’s 1965, you’re an Israeli, and you’re a fighter pilot. Lyndon B Johnson is increasing supply of serious military hardware to your country. Tension between Palestinian and Israeli interests are on a slow boil, you’re in a hot part of the world. The Suez Crisis, Six-Day War, War of Attrition,...

When I was growing up, Lululemon didn’t make socks. The 90s were tall white Nikes. Then for all of the 2000s and early 2010s, if a sock extended above your ankle you were a virgin. Now, the youth who say things like ‘rizz’ and ‘that slaps’ are wearing Nikes almost...

There’s no AP catalogue that shows this watch exists. It’s a 25720PT Star Wheel, obviously, but not as you know it. Toward the end of production, a handful of very rare, very unusual iterations were created. There are fewer than five known with gem set bezels. In yellow gold, a...

Normally, a box & papers should be the cherry on top of a watch purchase; the quality and flavor of the ice cream itself is far more important. However, a handful of watch presentation boxes have had so much creative effort and love poured into them that they become collectible...

In the same way that when you distill Journe to just the essential elements you wind up at a Chronomètre Bleu, when you distill Voutilainen you wind up at the Vingt-8. The Vingt-8 was Kari’s first entirely ground-up design, movement and all, introduced 2011. Kari chose the most simplistic watch...

This is a Daytona with just one line of text. One. Walt Disney was said to repeatedly answer questions with, ‘observe the masses and the do the opposite.’ In the modern era, the Rolex Daytona has more script written at 12 than a Star Wars opening crawl. Today, it reads...

We all know the three neo-vintage QPs that brought watchmaking back from the dead, but the pair of openwork or skeletonized references from AP and VC have always stood a bit apart, out of the spotlight. They’re not just less often seen, they’re divisive. Perhaps they skirt too close to...

In art, design, music, and many other creative disciplines, you are taught the rules first so that you may choose to break them deliberately. This, I never used to understand, why not just lean in to unbridled creativity? I’m not sure I have the answer, but it’s probably something like...

Swatch Group haven’t managed to fuck up every one of their brands just yet. The day a Swatch x Breguet ‘collab’ arrives will be the day I lose faith in modern mainstream watchmaking. Some things weren’t meant to be distilled. Breguet stands for watchmaking quality above all else. Even if...

Volkswagen’s GTI has many unique talents, but one is criminally overlooked. It looks right dropping off McDonalds at your kids football match or friends of the royal family at Balmoral castle. It makes sense in the parking lot of a Moxy or being valeted at Four Seasons. Somehow, it exists...

Omega gave the world the 861 Speedmaster in 1968. Despite many loupe-carrying nerds decrying the changover from column wheel to cam switching, the movement proved so effective for Omega that it remained in production effectively unaltered until 1992. And even then, the change wasn’t huge moving the 1861. Effectively, you...

Stone dial Day-Dates are having their moment. But this, a bloodstone, defies comparison within Rolex. There are maybe a handful of dials as rare as a white metal bloodstone Day-Date across all Rolex models. There are fewer than 10 known, 8 is my best estimate currently. That makes this humble...

There’s no CNC machine at Haldimann, an independent whose philosophy is about as far from Rolex as watchmaking gets. The most modern machine they have is an optical microscope from the ’60s. I suspect if you showed an iPhone to Beat Haldimann he’d shout witchcraft and report you to the...

The Octa Lune is a bit of an enigma. It’s far from the most complicated Journe, but also not exactly a Chronomètre Bleu. The dial seems haphazard until you stare at it awhile, but then after a time nothing else feels as artful. This is probably why it’s one of...

These days, I’m finding a significant amount of delight in the darker corners of Lange. Things like the guilloché Lange 1s, solid backs, steel examples, first gen Datos, early MiGs, obscure Cabarets, but particularly Lange’s simplest offering: the Saxonia. Lange broke its own rules in the early years, one of...