One of the great advantages of belonging to the relatively close-knit community of watch collectors is having the opportunity to see and photograph a lot of great watches. Here GaryG takes on the formidable F.P. Journe Tourbillon Souverain with his mighty camera and collecting knowledge.
Congratulations to Raúl Pagès for winning the 2024 Louis Vuitton Prize for Independent Creatives with his RP1 Régulateur à Détente. The prize comes with a substantial grant of 150,000 euros and a 12-month mentorship with La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. Here’s why he won.
To my longtime friends in the watch hobby, and perhaps to regular readers here as well, the mention of my name may conjure up a number of connotations: patron of the independents, fan of A. Lange & Söhne, admirer of Patek Philippe grand complications, and longtime customer of Jaeger-LeCoultre, among other characterizations more or less favorable. But vintage?
Ian Skellern’s suggestion for an International Chronometry Competition is a group of well-heeled collectors – brands/independents are also welcome to participate, but I suspect they will wait to see how it goes – set off from, say, Geneva, but could be New York, Dubai, or Singapore, wearing one or two watches, on a two-week world tour. Here he explains how it might work.
Many watch enthusiasts dream of owning at least one timepiece by Omega. And maybe even a second or a third. The Swiss brand definitely ranks among the most popular watch firms. To give you an idea of the overwhelming variety in the current Omega watch world, Sabine Zwettler has put together a guideline for reference numbers.
Mechanical watches have become about so much more than precision. They are status symbols, works of art and passion, a testimony of human ingenuity, and much more. Precision, as long as it reaches a certain standard, plays second fiddle. Martin Green thinks that brands should devote more emphasis to precision and he has an idea to encourage that.
A watch strap is the ubiquitous “accessory” to a wristwatch that can completely change a person’s feeling about said timepiece. A strap is the single most functional component on a wristwatch that you interact with. Joshua Munchow takes a closer look at why that is true.
Increasing demand for timepieces, especially Rolexes, with the Omani emblem is understandable given the high quality, good condition, demonstrable provenance, and rarity of most of these watches, combined with the fact that they had often been presented to their first owners in the 1970s by Sultan Qaboos in person as a token of gratitude for services rendered. Colin Alexander Smith takes a very close look at the meaning behind these rare timepieces and in this updated version of the article debunks one theory behind the dial symbol.
Many premium watch brands look for that certain “extra element” to get ahead of the competition, and one hot item is straps. If it is true that shoes make the man, then the strap must make the watch.
For less than $3,000 you can get a pretty cool watch with an interesting story to tell. But which one: Japanese, German, or Swiss? Jan Lidmaňský highlights three possibilities from Seiko, Union Glashütte, and Oris.