It’s quite a luxury Cartier enjoy to both be viewed as a design-first watchmaker and simultaneously preside over a handful of the most timeless cases ever penned. Rolex’s Sub, Patek Philippe’s Perpetual Calendar, and indeed Cartier’s Tank all take a different approach to marketing, one best explained by looking at...

There are tales from years ago of clients requesting their Pateks from Tiffany specifically to not bear the Tiffany name on the dial. Even today, there are a tiny subset of collectors who believe having two names on a dial detracts from the watchmaker’s equity. Today’s market, however, violently disagrees....

We now live in a world where a good Milsub is a 500K proposition in USD. So how does it make any sense at all that Bundeswehr-issued Ocean 2000 is still just over 20K? This is a combat diver issued, under-hyped, comparatively economic (I suppose anything is when contrasted against...

What happens when you take a master of grand complications and finishing and apply those talents to a time only watch? Arguably the most coveted watch from a living watchmaker. This is watch which has seen its retail price (not secondary market, mind you) raise from ~50K CHF in the...

Meet the king of sleeper split seconds. Blancpain’s six masterpieces are widely regarded to be some of the greatest forgotten feats of neo-vintage fine watchmaking. But this 1186 with an extremely rare tritium ‘Military Dial’ is not just forgotten, almost no one knew it existed in the first place. The...

Yes, Rolex made an orange racing dial, white gold Daytona. Rolex almost never create limited editions or collaborations. But the operative word there is almost. If you’re 22 SAS, a winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, or Dutch Football Team competing for the World Cup, you just might...

Although AP might’ve been first to the integrated bracelet, they were a good 3-4 decades behind on the travel watch (depending on your definition). In fairness, it took VC an extra decade. This is the Royal Oak Dual Time; AP don’t make it anymore, discontinued almost a decade, but it’s...

Lug design counts for at least half of the way a watch wears, its importance cannot be overstated. Assuming a case is reasonably proportioned, which is a tall order for some brands, the lug makes or breaks it. In car design, brands carefully construct a wheel & tire package with...

The dial says Breguet, but really this QP is a Daniel Roth, the first creative project he undertook after working for JLC and AP. And this ref. 3057 is indicative of truth that is not logical but seems to hold: the very start of a creative career is often where...

You don’t get to put the word complicated ahead of Rolex very often. When one does think complicated Rolex, it’s always the Padellone and Jean-Claude Killy that come to mind. But that’s not quite right, because there’s the 4113 split seconds. And, more attainably, the other one everyone forgets: the...

Some watches command premiums for reasons I find quite tricky to describe. The number of digits in Daniel Roth’s new price list under LVMH, for example, seems to have been defined by a roulette wheel. This is a strategy, I assume, borrowed from Biver. But others command a premium because...

I can recall very vividly a few years ago reading a post from a well-known watch writer titled, ‘Not every unknown vintage Cartier is a sleeper’. With full respect to the author, actually, I believe the exact opposite to be true. And the market is proving out such. The thing...

The recent lacquer dial, for all the attention, was not the first. Nor was the Canopus. In fact, it goes way back to a watch called the Stafford, more on that later. But, prior to the Canopus, Alaska series, Mitsukoshi, Apollo XI 35th, and Snoopy series, there was this: the...

The story of the 1415 World Time is in many ways the story of the world becoming connected for the very first time in the early mid-century. It spanned the introduction of both the telegraph and later phone, starting production in 1939 when WW2 also began. For the first time...

A true gilt dial always hits a bit different. When we hear the word gilt, the first thing that usually comes to mind are Subs. But that era of Rolex saw gilt print on dials of Day-Dates, Datejusts, and every sport watch right down to the Thunderbird. It was just...

Omega’s classic DON bezel can exhibit some of the most varied ghosting you’ll find on any vintage watch. I’ve seen their palette age naturally to bright burgundy, green, and blue depending on the environment. Anyone who’s bought a box of crayons can tell you, those three are nowhere near each...

There may be no better pairing in advertising historically than Concorde and the GMT-Master. Generally speaking, technology improves over time. The world marches on, iPhones get thinner, energy gets cleaner and more efficient, and AI will write your children’s homework and text your wife for you better than you can....

I’m not sure a single watch has ever been so drastically ahead of its time as IWC’s Ocean 2000 was when it arrived to the civilian market in 1982. It defies categorization and expectation in every dimension. In the 80s, Rolex’s 16660 Sea-Dweller was capable of diving 1220m. IWC hit...