After a chance remark at Dubai Watch Week, Ian Skellern reflected on if he had had a sufficiently interesting life. Here he shares a few anecdotes to let your decide if he’s more James Bond, Austin Powers, or just a wannabe Walter Mitty.
GaryG’s thoughts have turned to one major system that is always there, but generally hidden from sight: the movement. Here are a few of his favorites and why. And in the philosophy of putting my money where my mouth is, these movements have appeared in one or more watches that he has owned personally.
In the real world, some complications are pretty useless. And that’s not saying they aren’t cool. Here Joshua Munchow runs through his top 5 most useless complications and why they are simultaneously cool.
Type 20 is a specification by the French Ministry of Defense for the standard-equipment pilot’s watch chronographs. Unlike German pilot’s watch specifications, those for the French Type 20 are not clearly documented but are rather based on common characteristics shared by various manufacturers. Bhanu Chopra explains what makes these watches so sought after and goes through the main models and characteristics.
As anyone who has seen Tom Mosso talk in his numerous (6,000+) podcasts or a horological seminar, he has a prodigious memory for watch reference numbers and details. But there’s much more to Tim’s brain than that as Ian Skellern explains.
The rise of the internet, and the consequent evolution of the watch-watching community, has inevitably amplified the phenomenon whereby certain objects have come to exert an extraordinary hold over the collective imagination. Here, Colin Alexander Smith debunks three watch myths circulating widely and freely online and in print concerning former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s Rolex and Patek Philippe, the Khanjar Rolex Sea-Dwellers, and what in fact Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were wearing on their wrists as they summited Mount Everest.
For watch lovers, the name “Paul Newman” is associated first and foremost with Rolex, and in particular with a subset of that brand’s Daytona watches with specific dial characteristics, including a recessed outer seconds track and subdials that feature block-shaped hashmarks and Art Deco-style Arabic numerals. But what does this nickname mean for these references on the vintage market? And what does GaryG think about it?
Why is it that watch brands celebrate watch anniversaries so enthusiastically? The answer isn’t as complicated as you might think . . . here we illustrate the answer with some major brands like Rolex, Patek Philippe, Cartier, Chanel, and Omega, who celebrated major watch anniversaries back in 2017.
While we are now looking forward to the 2024 releases, Joshua Munchow looks back at 2022, which was a pretty tremendous year for watchmaking.
Many of the trends that we have experienced happening slowly over the last few years have continued. These include more dial colors, case materials, and a shift to smaller case sizes. However, it feels we have also hit a turning point where some changes are coming about.