October is the time for orange and black, however it appears the market favors that combination in all seasons. The 1163 is a sought-after reference as is, but three variants stand out as particularly attractive to Heuer’s fanatics. The first, the Jo Siffert, needs no further introduction. Formula 1 made...

The Seiko 5 is a watch that needs no introduction. I would be willing to bet that brilliantly humble, mechanical yet economical platform guided at least a quarter of you into the financially disastrous hobby in which we now reside. Recently, Seiko collaborated with fashionable upstart Rowing Blazers to release...

If you’re going green dial, why not go green dial from well before it was cool? The 1811 Yacht Club was introduced in the late 60s to be a casual yet luxurious mildly-water resistant steel offering. Its design brief was one well ahead of its time, front-running integrated sports watches...

Watch collectors are a community whose interest lives and dies in the finest of details. The Memovox is a model whose history has spawned a handful of very interesting and nuanced variations. I have yet to meet a grizzled collector who does not swoon at a vintage Memovox. The watch...

Overlooked Omega is not only an alliteration, it is a strikingly diverse and intriguing landscape. I am guilty of not yet having a deep knowledge of Omega’s observatory chronometers, the Ploprof story, or just where Armstrong’s 321 rests. Despite these sins, I am still a massive fanboy for all things...

When I say integrated sports watch, you almost imagine a RO, Nautilus, or Overseas. You almost certainly do not imagine a Laureato, Octo Finissimo (despite it holding all the records today), or this: an imaginative 1980s diver with a full integrated titanium bracelet. This is a under-hyped, comparatively economic, materially...

Inverse panda, pump pusher, steel bezel, single-line Cosmograph text: these are things dreams are made of. I admit to being a fan of this reference to an almost child-like extent. I’ll try to rein that in as I feature this example. You will be familiar with the Circuit de la...

An ultra-thin Calatrava may be executed to an exacting standard by a Lange or Patek. The Saxonia is a stellar (literally) modern Germanic discourse in simplicity. Patek’s Calatrava line may be the most historically storied time-only dial of all time. That said, I’m not sure either have executed their pure-dress...

One of the most singularly amazing recent trends of modern independent watchmaking is a decoupling of innovation from purpose. I’ve heard it said before that for something to be art it can have no purpose other than itself. In that regard, this Upside Down certainly earns its title as a...

I find it difficult to believe that a design from the 1940s can feel so perfectly at home eighty years on. Imagine being tasked today with designing a watch that would look good in the year 2100. That seems an impossibly difficult task with a low probability of success. This...

Rolex’s fabled gold Submariner may in fact be the single watch most classically representative of the ‘fuck-you-money’ attitude. Or at least, it was. See, the gold Submariner has gone through this sort of inverse bell-curve of public acceptability from the 1960s through today in 2021. To start, it was a...

Few self-proclaimed tool watches yield the kind of functionality on offer from this vintage Bivouac. Fewer still do so with such personality, coordinated design, and bizarre history. Unique to this watch, the outer dial scale is not a tachymeter or pulsations scale. It is a mechanical barometer/altimeter. The pressure drops,...

Though it is most famous the aesthetic, Breitling’s Navitimer by no means had a monopoly on the sliding scale rule chronograph. Breitling owned the patent from the very outset of WWII. This early 1940s Chronomat could easily masquerade as a model from decades later. The Chronomat’s design was advanced, its...

In the cult of Speedmaster, there is a sort of hierarchical nerd strata . . .or, perhaps I should say fractal. One may venture as deep in any niche direction as they desire. Like modern Speedmasters? That itch can be scratched by an Ed White 321, Apollo 8, or Moonshine...

In the Mad Men era of pie-pan Constellations, UG Monodates, and waffle Princes, value alternatives existed alongside these heavyweights. Tissot may be largely famed today for quartz consumables and bright orange adolescent designs, but it wasn’t always so. Seeming acknowledging their sinful modernity, Tissot have released one or two throwbacks...

It’s hard to articulate just how desirable I, and many other collectors, find the mythical Big Eye. So named for its oversized thirty-minute subdial, the two-register chronograph does not come in a more nuanced form. In production between 1963 and 1965, most estimate the quantity of genuine original dial examples...

The Germans have a thing for tradition, amongst a more broad fixation with efficiency and currywurst. I am not sure I would consider any modern watchmaker to be more traditional than D. Dornblüth & Sohn. Sinn may be more Germanic in their construction philosophy. Lange may be more Germanic in...

In any sane market, when a new model debuts, consumers prefer it to the previous. Take modern autmotive enthusiasts as an example. The new G82 M4 will likely be more appealing to a new buyer than the previous F82 M4 (okay maybe that’s a bad example). But as a general...