Hodinkee
Introducing: Monta 10th Anniversary Neuchâtel X Collection in Opalin Silver
What We Know It's hard to pinpoint the moment when microbrand watches went from just good to genuinely competitive, but without a doubt, Monta was one of the brands that showed that the transition was more than just happening; it had happened. Thinking back now, it seems obvious, but 2016 was a very different world in microbrand watches. When I got into watches around 2010, microbrands were a bit of a Wild West, with brands popping up and disappearing often just as quickly. Put another way, they were daunting. A lot of the early micro-brands were born out of forums and felt like a mismatch of parts sourced from wherever they could be had. By 2016 (or 2018, when James offered up a primer on microbrands), that was increasingly not the case. In 2026, the microbrand movement has come even further, and Monta is no small part of that history. Now, the brand — based in St. Louis, but whose watches are "conceived" and made in Neuchâtel — is celebrating its tenth anniversary with a pair of limited editions, the Monta Skyquest Neuchâtel X and the Monta Triumph Neuchâtel X. At their core, each of these limited-edition watches is a relatively straightforward re-dial of the standard collection Skyquest and Triumph, but each is filled with detail meant to elicit memories of the mid-century sports watches which served as clear inspiration for these models. The most obvious change here is the shift, in each case, to an Opalin silver dial with painted indices and numerals, and "vint...
