When you approach the entire world through watches, it’s easy to get a slightly skewed view of things. See, I imagine all Special Ops guys running around with Sea-Dwellers on their wrists. I imagine every runway model wears a vintage Tank. Every F1 driver must rock a vintage Autavia, right?...

Of all the varied types of ageing a watch may exhibit, what collectors call a spider dial must be the most contentious amongst people who really know Rolex. You think Israel v Palestine has some ardent extremists? Walk this GMT into the Hodinkee office and watch a civil war ensue....

The midsized neo-vintage RO known as the 14790 looks better to me today than it ever has. The tide of neo-vintage is rising anyway, but this ship has a hydrofoil on it or something. But they don’t all look like this. After introduction taking over from the first ref. 4100...

The vintage Tudor Ranger, prior to reissue, was hugely popular amongst a very tiny subset of Tudor scholars and enthusiasts. In fact, I wrote an article last year arguing that, with a little alcohol-induced scholarship, I couldn’t see why there was no hype surrounding it. To quote, ‘I mean, it...

If a watch collector hears the numbers 5402, they start thinking of early Royal Oaks. And then, like a meth addict seeking the pure stuff, they start looking to see if it’s a numbered A-series or latter B/C/D. They’ll even itch uncontrollably if you leave them wondering long enough. But...

It’s often said that the 5513 is the prototypical dive watch. It’s a panacea, sitting on top of modern dive watch genealogy like Gengis Khan in Mongolia. But what I find very interesting about that time in watch design is that it didn’t have to be that way. People tried...

JN Shapiro is living proof that you can wake up one day, have one too many espressos, and say ‘You know what? I’m going to make a watch better than the Swiss can.’ But then actually do it. The former part of that process, well, I must get a dozen...

Let’s not mince words, this 33.3 is achingly beautiful. And significant, as this calibre is the grandfather to all our beloved 321 chronographs. How often do you see an Omega chronograph with an onion crown, Breguet hands, Breguet numerals, and enamel dial? Yeah, it’s basically just this. It makes me...

Some watches just make sense. The 1016 Explorer, that’s a design that makes sense. The Speedmaster too, seems like someone thought about it. Even the Lange 1, in all its artfulness, was made according to ratios and math . . .as if the Germans could do anything else. Other watches,...

Emma Watson once famously advocated for modesty as the ultimate expression of sexiness. Here’s the quote: ‘What’s sexy about saying, ‘I’m here with my boobs out and a short skirt, have a look at everything I’ve got?’ My idea of sexy is that less is more. The less you reveal...

This is what we call a Dufourgraph, and that’s more interesting than it may sound outright. Think for a second of all the many watches nicknamed in honor of people. There are Paul Newmans, McQueens (he never actually wore that one, look it up), Jean-Claude Killys, Yves Kleins, Nina Rindts,...

For at least a decade, I have loathed derivative design. I don’t know what it says about all large Swiss watchmakers that the best ideas they can come up with already passed a half-decade earlier. The Submariner marching on without change like a 911 is one thing, but Omega literally...

The 1601 Datejust is precisely what someone who doesn’t know watches imagines when you say ‘a nice watch’. This is one unit of Rolex, in exactly the same way that you would purchase one foot of fabric for curtains (or one meter for our more cultured friends, we know we’re...

There’s something a bit bizarre about spending a quarter million on a military watch because it was once, ‘just a tool’. For example, I wouldn’t spend that on a hammer used to erect a barracks in Iraq because it was also once a tool. I wouldn’t even spend that on...

There’s nothing quite as brave as finishing second and handing yourself a jersey with ‘THE FIRST’ on the back of it. And yet, that’s this Zenith’s story. It’s not just brave though, it’s eccentric. Zenith also crossed the finish line with more style than anyone else by some margin. And...

Last week, I had to buy a new desk chair. This is a thrilling start, I know. But in the modern age that proved to be mind-bogglingly complex task. There were chairs that looked like they should be on the starship Enterprise or chairs that looked like they should be...

Very quietly, Lange have been releasing some absolute killer dials under the Little Lange 1 umbrella. Little is a bit of a misnomer, as there’s really nothing little about this watch in effort or proportion. This is more accurately the midsized Lange 1, a 36.5mm take on Germany’s best golden...

For many years, Tudor hardcores had been noting Snowflake Subs with an odd combination of round hour markers, snowflake hands, and shield dials. They all seemed to emanate from Canada and often retired Royal Canadian Navy personnel. Scholars had known for many years that there were Tudor Submariners issued to...