In Lord of The Rings, the nine rings given to mortal men created Wraiths, Mordor’s most loyal servants. They roamed the lands ushering in Sauron’s reign, ending other ruler’s power. But in horology, the neo-vintage era had five emissaries to usher in the apocalypse of Japan’s quartz domination. Yes, there...

Today, the King of England wears Parmigiani Fleurier. Kwan Ann Tan has written an exceptional guide to Parmigiani’s earliest years and watches like the early Torics, heavily inspired by classic Roman architecture, are seeing scholarship translate to market value. In the coming years, the Tonda PF will bring the name...

In vintage, you’ll hear people who know a thing or two talk about condition like people in real estate talk about location. It’s everything. This is particularly the case in sport Rolex, where it’s well known that if you buy a watch with polished bevels Eric Wind will personally hunt...

This is the first time an AK-06 has come to auction and that’s really rather significant. Akrivia and the brand’s founding star Rexhep Rexhepi have enjoyed a deserved stratospheric rise recently, underpinned by the massive wave of independent watchmaking interest but not because of it. The true cause centers around...

For all the collectability that surrounds the cream dial 16550 Explorer II, you’d imagine a cream dial Royal Oak would see drastically more furor. After all, it was AP’s loyalists who practically burned Bennahmias at the stake, deservedly so, for the Code 11.59 release. One would imagine there would be...

If you have a robust memory, you may recall back in 2020 Lange released an 1815 Rattrapante in Honeygold, the brand’s first split seconds. Immediately and nearly unanimously, the watch world exclaimed, ‘Wow that’s beautiful . . .wait, didn’t they make one of those already?’ It just sort of seemed...

Some watches are special not for complication, rarity, or brand, but rather the life they have lived. More often than not, watches that fall into that latter category are steel Rolex tool watches. For a multitude of reasons that encompasses advertising, reputation, and design, people who really do things seem...

Journe’s Linesport collection, and particularly this monopoussoir rattrapante in rose gold, doesn’t fall neatly into any one bucket. It’s sporting, but no Tudor FXD Red Bull Chronograph. It’s independent and highly complicated, frosted rose gold, integrated, and like very little else out there. Despite the rattrapante, it’s not even Journe’s...

This is a 101.027X and unless you really know your Lange, it’s just like any other Lange 1. You’d be very wrong, however. Thought to have been made in 225 examples in the early years of modern Lange, it is today hunted by collectors like orphans on the plains of...

If you know where to look, there’s a lot of fun and value to be had buried in Omega’s neo-vintage era Speedmasters. The 3575.20 feels like a greatest hits album comprised of some of my favorites. There’s a bit of Italian Albino, 2915 Broad Arrow, and OG ‘Speedymoon’ all going...

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...

The award-winning documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a meditation on dedication to craft and the constant chase of perfection across generations. What seems like a simple piece of raw fish, seaweed, and rice has had more attention given to just its rice, what seems like the simplest of details,...

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....

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few weeks, you’ll know there’s been a bit of a debate on in the watch world. It started with an honest and fair question, or perhaps critique, poised by @horology_ancienne: what is the correct way to determine the RRP for...

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...