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...

In the latter portion of my formative years, the three apes of Top Gear invented a phrase that has since fallen by the wayside, but is one I find quite useful: ‘MFB’, short for mother-f*cking Bentley. This was a slightly more nuanced point than it seemed at face value. At...

In stone dial Rolex, most will know the sought-after, vibrant, verdant jasper. It’s a deep green with red veins. But jasper occurs naturally in varying shades and one of those is this rich red. It’s what’s known as a red jasper dial and it’s far less common than the already...

When you’ve stared at near endless examples of the same reference, some watches jump off the screen as utterly honest. They make your heart melt, to the extent that an inanimate object can have a soul, they do. The longer a watch has lived on the wrist of its owner,...

Nina deserves more. This is a ref. 885103/02, better known as the Nina Rindt, and it is one of the most attractive chronograph designs there’s been. Yes, full stop. When I say more, I don’t mean value. I quite like that these are still attainable on a relative basis. I...

Unless you’ve spent your entire life studying vintage Rolex, you probably won’t have heard of a tulip dial. Even if you have, you probably won’t have seen one with four lines. Yes, we’re back in the realm of obscure Wilsdorf details again, but this one is even more anorak than...

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. Things called Baracuda are inherently cool. Hemi Plymouths drag racing around Detroit in the 70s. Blancpain German military divers....

There is a Scandinavian ideal known as Janteloven, which is a bit tricky to define but I’m going to try. Broadly, it’s a laughably egalitarian ideal that eschews any expressions of extreme individuality or success. In plain English, it’s a concept that aims to make the opposite of ostentation aspirational....

Japanese watchmaking goes so much deeper than Seiko, Grand Seiko, Credor, or even Kurono. Given the media we consume, it’s easy to believe that all dials from Japan are inspired by a single particularly shaped snowflake that landed on Kintarō Hattori’s nose on the 3 of January in 1912. Or...

The 3705 is a pilot’s watch, yes, but for TIE Fighter pilots. Remember that scene in A New Hope where Vader had his own TIE Fighter? This would’ve been the perfect watch for a space dogfight on Vader’s wrist. The 3705 isn’t just a ceramic flieger, it’s the first ever...

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...