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...

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....