Burgundy Dial 2960 Cartier Santos Carrée

Lacquer dial in a Santos is a particularly strange and attractive thing. Like seeing Dame Hellen Mirren act her socks off in Fast & Furious. Or perhaps more relevant, like a beautifully dressed Stella dial Day-Date that chain smokes and surrenders. This dial was made to celebrate the Santos’s 75th, clearly not to legibly tell the time. It’s a true Burgundy and interestingly the cabochon was changed to match. Cartier didn’t alter the recipe significantly very often back then, unlike the volumes of custom orders we see today.

In 1978 Cartier, having seen the Royal Oak and Nautilus, decided the Santos was most well-suited to adapt to a sporting lifestyle. The traditional case, which we’d now call Santos Dumont, was adapted to a fitting bracelet and renamed Santos de Cartier. The legend was born. This was a new category of sports watch, a touch more luxurious and Riviera than the porthole duo. One year later, in 1979, it was the 75th of the now Santos de Cartier and this was released to celebrate. Lacquer, red, literally timeless. One of very few Santos to not have a Roman numeral anywhere on it. It’s twinned with a brushed grey dial, arguably the two most desirable mechanical Santos of this period of Cartier with the boxier Carrée case.

This dial is one where, much like the aforementioned 5402 (and as our friends at Menta recently found out), you want it to read ‘Swiss’ and not ‘Swiss made’. The former is as it should be, the latter is a service dial. One should also be completely aware that these dials do spider and fracture over time. However, much like Subs, they almost always stay together in the way that the earlier 70s white spider dials don’t. Just how rare are they? Sometimes there are 2-3 on the market, sometimes not one. So let’s call it Cristallor-ish levels, but with 18 fewer bezel steps. There’s not been anything to rival this dial lacquer’s depth or style since. We can all only hope to hit our 75th on such a high.

This example is mega. Some of these were sold originally with brushed bezels, some polished like this. As mentioned above, you want to study dial condition and signature. The case here is extremely sharp, which is what you want to see. It comes recently serviced form a well-regarded Japanese retailer.