I’ve heard it said that the movement is the heart of a watch, the case its body, and the dial its soul. This analogy is tenuous at best, a bit like when you hear food critics start talking about the emotion contained within an entrée. That’s just a dinner and...

It is not difficult to understand the timeless appeal of a well-executed dress watch. When complication is removed, effort in finishing is allowed to be a watch’s main focus. Total simplicity, finished to an absurd standard. I believe this appeal is, in large part, responsible for the recent astronomic rise...

Provenance is funny thing. What is it exactly? This 7169/0 has only ever had one owner who kept all the ephemera and serviced it regularly. But it is still ‘just’ a well-preserved Monte Carlo. I know multiple collectors who are only interested in one-owner watches. This intrigues me. It’s a...

With every day that passes, the horological marketplace which consumes my attention becomes a more diverse and interesting place. It would be callous of me not to discuss this development. A Collected Man, the long established leader in independent retail, recently changed the game by announcing ‘exceptional’ auctions. These single...

I would be willing to bet a great bottle of Glenrothes that, if you asked industry luminaries for their top five most beautiful Patek Philippe references of all time, the 3417 Amagnetic would feature in the majority. This is an elegant Calatrava belying the soul of a steel tool watch....

Opulence is often said to be distasteful by definition, but a gold nipple dial? C’mon, that’s an exemption many amongst us and I will gladly make. While the GMT-Master was made for the jet set, Rolex recognized early on that its well-heeled, travel-hungry clientelle could afford a little extra aureate....

Why spend hundreds of hours whittling away at each individual component a perpetual calendar movement until just the necessary structures are left? Openworking, or skeletonization, yields no performance benefit. You even wind up with less gold. But the resulting calibre is so breathtaking to look at that an openwork 25668...

Romain Gauthier make some of the most intimidating watches of any modern independent. This is due to their immense finishing, masculine proportion, precise manufacturing, and, perhaps most of all, industrial aesthetic. There’s also the fact that RG produce just a few dozen watches per year, far fewer than almost everyone...

Very little can truly be described as timeless. A Patek Calatrava deserves that laudable adjective like little else. The 2508, produced between 1951 and 1960, is a high point of the Calatrava lineage for many. It debuted a larger 35mm case manufactured by Taubert & Fils (later known as Borgel)...

AP’s 5548 is lore: conceived in secret by a crack team of watchmakers (veteran watchmaker Michel Rochat, founder of the technical department Jean-Daniel Golay, and founder of the after-sales service department Wilfred Berney) to return complicated mechanical watchmaking to its rightful throne in the wake of the quartz crisis. But...

This, I could fairly argue, is perhaps one of the most attractive vintage dive watches to ever exist. The Navies of France, Germany, and the United States all used the now-legendary Fifty Fathoms at some point in time and in so doing made it a relatively famous and desirable tool....

Credor never made an Alpinist proper but, in the GCBR993 Phoenix, they came within a bee’s dick. This Phoenix hails from the late 90s, a time when Seiko was first attempting to take Credor well upmarket. The distinction between Grand Seiko and Credor was in the design: Grand Seiko was...

Tropical dials have a tendency to polarize watch collectors like few other topics. Godiva 1665 DRSDs, caramel 321 Speedmasters, and latte Cosmographs all have one thing in common: encompassing adoration or outright hatred. Think Patek’s green 5711 caused division? Bring a hazel-tan 3700 to your nearest watch group. I’ll warn...

More than any other watch, the 6542 embodies the romance of the jet set’s dawn. All the details align to that era. The radium (or not). The understated proportions. The bakelite bezel. This was a watch made to live life the fullest with. However, not all examples age quite this...

Imagine being invited into Jean-Frederic Dufour’s palatial office, sitting in some absurdly sumptuous modern leather chair, and asking him if he might be able to remove the name ‘Rolex’ from his dial for you. Just a few pieces, of course. You think asking an AD for ceramic Daytona is implausible?...

A bastion of utility with elegant design in the modern era, the Santos Dumont is what a pilot’s watch looks like when dressed to the nines. The ‘Dumont’ here is important, a deliberate naming choice made by Cartier to reference the full name of Louis Cartier’s pilot friend who, in...

The uncanny valley is a widely-observed phenomena whereby a humanoid figure (such as a figurine, robot, or CGI character) creates increasing feelings of unease or distrust the more closely it approximates a human appearance. Viewers of HBO’s Westworld will be familiar with this feeling. For example, dolls are inanimate objects...

It somehow feels wrong to describe a Rolex as neo-vintage, and yet here we are. Everything about the 16610 is neo. I tend to over-index on four and early five digit Rolex, purely as much of modern Rolex lacks the romance I so desire in a steel tool watch. However,...