Posts Tagged ‘Royal Oak’
6005ST Audemars Piguet Rectangular Royal Oak
To some, this is one of the most blasphemous watches to come out of Le Brassus. It wears the name Royal Oak, but wasn’t designed by Genta. It’s not even a mechanical watch, no, it hails from the height of quartz. The ref. 6005 Rectangular Royal Oak is part uncanny valley, part Porsche SUV (something…
Read MoreTropical Dial Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Mid-Size
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 in 1992, it remained in…
Read More5402BA Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
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 forgotten that the…
Read MoreTiffany-signed ‘Owl’ 25572ST Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Day Date
I’m calling it now; this is the sickest Royal Oak I’ve stumbled across this year. Not only is it one of my favorite iterations, ‘The Owl’, a dual-register Day Date. Not only is it a cream dial, beautifully ageing over time. It’s Tiffany-signed. Any one of these bullet points is enough to get me to…
Read More1 of 50 ‘Al Naboodah’ 15313ST Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
I don’t know anything about Al Naboodah, an Emirati family holdings group. But I do know they’re doing alright fiscally, because if you’re not you don’t get to order a small run of 50 Royal Oaks with your brand logo colors around a few indices. On the surface, this is a very simple vanity play…
Read More14790ST ‘Yves Klein’ Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
We love a Royal Oak around here. However, not all are created equal. In the pantheon of neo-vintage Royal Oaks, a few dials are clear standouts. Right up near the top are the rare, electric-blue Yves Klein dials. Klein was a French artist who became known for frequent use of a vibrant blue hue which…
Read MoreTuscan Dial 258205SP Audemars Piguet Royal Oak QP
There are a lot of criticisms one could lobby at the Royal Oak compan . . .errr, I mean Audemars Piguet. However, the more deeply I investigate interesting edge cases of the Royal Oak, the more I respect their resolve. See, the Royal Oak hasn’t remained one thing. AP have clung to its inherent appeal,…
Read More‘The Owl’ 25572ST Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Day Date
Not all Day Dates come in Oyster cases. Shortly after the 5402 graced the world with its presence, AP experimented with a few variations on the theme. Out of this early/mid 80s era came many of the iconic complicated Royal Oak offerings we revere today. However, the very first complicated offering to feature in AP’s…
Read MoreTropical 14790ST Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
Through both a design and historic lens, the 14790 is perhaps the truest iteration of the 36mm mid-sized Royal Oak. After introduction taking over from the first ref. 4100 in 1992, it remained in production longer than any other mid-sized Royal Oak to date. This open window allowed for a huge degree of variants to…
Read MoreTropical 25686ST ‘Yves Klein’ Audemars Piguet Royal Oak QP
There are some watches so attractive that I feel something adjacent to physical pain at the fact that they will never be in my watch roll. Usually, they are highly unique: things like a Frodsham Double Impulse, a ‘Vieux Panier’ Vacheron 43031, royal blue dial E855 Memovox, . . .the list is endless. However, sometimes…
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