Hodinkee
Bring a Loupe: A 1961 Rolex Precision Ref. 4658, An IWC Rectangular Watch, And A Technos Skindiver Ref. FHF 969
Your weekly dose of watches from around the 'net.
2,352 articles · 17 videos found · page 42 of 79
Hodinkee
Your weekly dose of watches from around the 'net.
Revolution
Two Broke Watch Snobs
I know this may sounds weird, but these new offerings are actually making me rethink my apathy towards certain "smart watch" features, and I'm seriously considering buying one.
Revolution
Revolution
In the year 1995, the House of Perrelet produced a first of its kind, “double rotor” movement, in which they connected the rotor on their automatic movement to a rotor on the dial side of the watch. Such a creation provided a great canvas for the brand to express a new dimension of creativity. It […]
Deployant
The Zenith Extra Special is back. With a bronze vengeance. Find out what has changed and what hasn't.
Revolution
Fratello
From a watch with a full-ceramic bracelet from Tudor and a space watch from IWC to a timepiece by H. Moser & Cie. that requires the literal pushing of a button (pump) to power it, this year’s Watches and Wonders did not disappoint. In the frenzy of new watches and watch brands flexing their engineering, […] Visit What Is Your “Palate Cleanser” Wristwatch Following Watches And Wonders? to read the full article.
SJX Watches
Bremont’s Altitude MB Meteor Felix the Cat puts one of military aviation’s most mischievous mascots on the wrist in a 42 mm titanium pilot’s watch that turns the tradition of wartime nose art into a wearable 500-piece limited edition. Inspired by on the brand’s long-running Martin-Baker collaboration, the Felix edition pays tribute to the iconic cartoon mascot of the US Navy’s VFA-31 “Tomcatters” fighter squadron. Initial thoughts Bremont built its brand on military aviation-themed watches, and the Altitude MB Meteor proves it understands the cultural hallmarks of this niche better than most. The Felix edition taps into the enduring tradition of nose art - the cartoon characters, pin-ups, and mascots that have adorned military aircraft for over a century - drawing on one of the US Navy’s most recognisable icons. Creating visual coherence, the depiction of Felix is outlined in yellow, echoing the black-and-yellow stripes of the balance end of the seconds hand, which is meant to evoke an ejection seat grab handle. This has long been a Bremont motif, and is actually one of the brand’s strongest calling cards, dating back to the original 2007 collaboration with British ejection seat maker Martin-Baker (hence the ‘MB’ designation in the model name). The Altitude MB Meteor is the latest mission in this campaign, and retains the dual-crown architecture and textured case band of the original. That said, several details of the 42 mm case have been changed,...
Teddy Baldassarre
Citizen's fleet of Promaster Pilot watches offer an array of styles and complications for the aviation-watch enthusiast, and the Nighthawk models occupy a specific niche within the overall collection thanks to their bold, no-nonsense design drawn from military helicopter cockpits. Here is what you should know about the Citizen Nighthawk, and a showcase of the models that have most resonated with enthusiasts. The flight of the Nighthawk begins with the Promaster. In fact, Citizen’s Promaster collection - established in 1989 and built around the concept of rugged yet stylish, multifunctional timepieces aimed at sea, air, and land professionals - could be described as the massive aircraft carrier from which many Citizen pilots’ watches have been launched. From this now-emblematic collection emerged many of the famous Citizen tool watches we’re familiar with today, categorized under Promaster Marine (dive watches including the Eco-Drive and Mechanical Professional Divers as well as the high-tech Aqualand); Promaster Land (including the altimeter-equipped Altichron and ana-digi Combination Watch) and Promaster Sky, which includes GMTs like the Eco-Drive Geo-Trekker and the now-familiar “Hawk” watches with multiple aviation-centric functions, like the Skyhawk, Navihawk, and Nighthawk. What makes the Nighthawk models stand out from their high-flying peers? It is the most military in its aesthetic, with a dial design inspired by the instruments found in the cockpits ...
Teddy Baldassarre
Teddy Baldassarre is an authorized luxury watch retailer of brands like TUDOR, OMEGA, IWC, Grand Seiko, Breitling, Blancpain, Glashütte Original, Zenith, Longines, ORIS, MIDO, Tissot, Hamilton, NOMOS Glashütte, Baume & Mercier, and more.
SJX Watches
Originally conceived for pilots of the US military (and covered here by Fratello), the Omega Speedmaster Pilot is now available to civilians. The origins of the watch explain the military-influenced, instrument-style dial design, which is meant to evoke the utilitarian nature of an instrument panel inside a fighter jet. The regular production version of the watch retains the same specs as the military exclusive, but with different livery. The case has the straight lugs of the Speedmaster “Ed White” but in a larger format thanks to the automatic cal. 9900 inside. Initial thoughts I’m something of an outlier amongst enthusiasts since I prefer automatic to manual-wind, even within the Speedmaster collection. While a manual-wind movement is traditional for the Speedy, I appreciate the day-to-day convenience of an automatic. Additionally, Omega’s latest-generation automatic chronograph movements are all impressively high-spec. While the Speedmaster Pilot may not achieve the same aesthetic purity as its manual-wind counterparts, it remains an excellent everyday option, especially with the military provenance. That said, the military provenance is not exactly military-issue. The watch was designed for military pilots who presumably buy it on a personal basis for off-duty wear; it is not an actual mil-spec instrument watch. This can be seen in the dial design, which has aviation-inspired elements, rather than actual, functional indicators for pilots. Even though this is m...
Hodinkee
In Greek mythology, there is the well-known story of Icarus, a heady youth whose lofty aspirations send him flying on homemade wings of feathers and wax. In its cautionary denouement, Icarus flies too high and gets too close to the sun, melting the wax, sending him crashing back to Earth. If Carina Massone Negrone knew the story of Icarus, she would also likely have known that the greater the altitude, the danger is not the sun's heat but extreme cold and a lack of oxygen. And yet, in 1935, the Italian aviator set an altitude record in an open-cockpit piston-powered airplane that remains unbroken to this day. Tudor has just debuted a short documentary film about Negrone, called "La Pilota: The Daring Story of Marchesa Carina Massone Negrone", which covers the flying pioneer's remarkable life and the watches—Tudors, of course—that she wore. Carina Massone Negrone was a "marchesa," a noblewoman by her marriage to a marquise, and could have enjoyed a life of ease in her palazzo in Genova. But her adventurous spirit compelled her to pursue activities that might have seemed "unladylike" in 1930s Italy. She was an avid swimmer and skier and fished the Mediterranean for sharks. And in 1933, at the age of 22, she took flying lessons from an Italian fighter pilot and became the first woman to get her pilot's license from the Reale Unione Nazionale Aeronautica. Only a year later, she set an altitude record for a seaplane by flying to 5,544 meters. But she wasn't done yet—far f...
Teddy Baldassarre
Many watch companies have a history of supplying timepieces for military units around the world, from Blancpain and Tudor’s dive watches for the French Navy to Hamilton’s field watches for World War II troops to IWC’s pilot watches for German and later British air forces. However, only one watch company has been an official supplier to the U.S. armed forces throughout nearly its entire existence, and it’s a company that many watch enthusiasts might be hearing about for the very first time: Marathon Watch Company. Read on for more background and a comprehensive rundown of the brand's collection. The Marathon Watch Company, one of the very few family-owned watch brands in existence and one of the even fewer based in Canada, traces its lineage all the way back to 1904. Its predecessor, the Weinstrum Watch Company, was founded by the Wein family, Russian immigrants who originally settled in New York City. (Another branch of the family changed their last name to “Wenger” and founded another Canadian watch business under that name, though it’s not to be confused with the better known Wenger company in Switzerland, today part of Victorinox.) In 1939, family scion Morris Wein carried on the family trade with the founding of Marathon, basing it not in New York but in Montreal, Canada, where the family had moved during the 1920s - not exactly a hotbed of watchmaking even at the time, but an ideal home base for the mission that the company began in 1941: supplying dep...
Monochrome
Oversized watches are a thing of the past…? Well, on paper yes. For two to three years now, many brands have been scaling down their watches. Timepieces can move back to 40mm or sometimes even less. Yet, some models are made to be big and bold. 1990s and early 2000s Panerai, the IWC Big Pilot […]
Hodinkee
Plus a 43mm IWC Big Pilot in green and a TAG Heuer Autavia reissued for a legendary racecar driver.
SJX Watches
Following our round up of independent watchmaking highlights at the Sotheby’s upcoming Important Watches I auction in Hong Kong, we now turn to something more conventional and even fashionable: high-end sports watches. But naturally we’re not going to run through the unorthodox examples that need no extra publicity (though one “hype” watch might have slipped in). Our selection of a half dozen includes an early Richard Mille and possibly a value buy, a IWC Big Pilot’s Watch Monopusher Edition that has an interesting and little known movement. Important Watches I starts at 10:00 am (GMT +8) on October 5, 2022. Registration for bidding and the full catalogue can be accessed here. The RM002-V2 Lot 2161: A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus An entirely new collection that debuted just in time for the modern brand’s 25th anniversary, the Odysseus is an outlier for a watchmaker that historically focused on high-end, classical watches. Though the Odysseus sports a design that’s unsurprising for Lange, it is the brand’s first watch with an integrated bracelet. More notably, the Odysseus was the first regular production Lange watch in steel. But we’re not here to talk about the heavily-hyped steel model, instead this is the model in white gold, which arguably offers more value than the steel version at market prices. The integrated-bracelet sports watch arena has long been dominated by the Royal Oak and Nautilus, so what makes the Odysseus a contender? The same characte...
SJX Watches
Conceived sub-brand of RGM, one of the original independent watchmaker in America, Equation of Time is a maker of affordable watches often created in collaboration with collectors, with the latest being the Fat Arrow Collaboration Watch. The dial of the watch reproduces a 2015 artwork created by watch photographer Atom Moore that’s a riff on the pilot’s wristwatches supplied to the Royal Air Force in the 1950s by brands like Omega and IWC. Like the military-issue originals, the Fat Arrow Collaboration is a compact, hand-wind timepiece with the feel of a vintage remake, but st apart with a dial that’s clearly modern and definitely original. Initial thoughts The Fat Arrow Collaboration (FAC) is one of many watches inspired by vintage military timepieces, but it is cleverly different. It utilises the historical arrow emblem used to mark British military equipment as a decorative element. Mr Moore’s original artwork, Fat Arrow, is an artistically-altered photography of a CK 2777 “Fat Arrow” wristwatch, one of many that Omega supplied to the Royal Air Force starting in 1952. The FAC retains the feel of the vintage original with an identically-sized case, but with Mr Moore’s Fat Arrow mashup as the dial. That makes the FAC different enough, in fact, to be interesting despite being a no-frills watch. Fat Arrow by Atom Moore The dial is covered with both the “Fat Arrow” and “Thin Arrow” in all their respective iterations. That might sound excessive, but ...
Time+Tide
This month has been jam-packed with watch events, RedBar gatherings, an IWC Big Pilot Exhibition and much more. As a “pandemic hire”, I am suddenly getting the full watch industry experience. Back at the end of August I experienced three time zones, heading off to the COUTURE Watch and Jewellery show in Las Vegas from … ContinuedThe post FRIDAY WIND DOWN: Hollywood and Hamilton, Norqain and now onto Dubai Watch Week… appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
The Type XX and Type XXI chronographs don’t seem to get quite as much attention as you would think they’d get, at least in the USA, where the world of pilot’s chronographs skews much more heavily towards companies like IWC, Omega, and Breitling. Maybe part of the reason for that is that when you think of tool watches, you might think of an awful lot of companies but Breguet just isn’t one of them – tourbillons, certainly, and a history of making aesthetically irreproachable, often complicated, and very elegant watches from the end of the 18th century right down until the present day, but not tool watches as such. And yet, aviation is perhaps just as important a part of the Breguet family’s history as watchmaking, with the Type XX and XXI chronographs representing one of the most important aspects of the inventiveness that characterized Abraham Louis Breguet and his descendants.
Time+Tide
Lately I have been parading up and down the virtual streets of SoMe, carrying a whopping placard with the words “Go Small or Go Home”. With a dainty 36mm watch sitting smugly flush on my medium wrist, I have been writing stories on anything from TAG Heuer’s bargain gold Carrera to the IWC 36mm Pilot’s … Continued
Time+Tide
Fears unveils its latest 2026 releases, including a range of pastel dials, a jump hour, and their first pilots' watch in 180 yearsThe post Fears unveils its 2026 Spring novelties, including their first pilots’ watch in 180 years appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Teddy Baldassarre
It’s easy to think of watches as falling purely within the accessory realm, valued for their aesthetic and their finish detail. Sure, they fulfill a practical utility by telling the time, but that could be considered a redundant byproduct these days, as most of us are rarely outside of reach of any number of devices that provide the same utility. How watches serve their purpose today is very different from how they were used in the past. While much of that is out of necessity for the sake of self-preservation, the humble, purpose- built tool watch carries a deep history of use as just that, a vital tool used by servicemen and women. The stories that these watches tell serve as a reminder of the role watches once played, and connect with a new generation of enthusiasts. Every military across the globe has a history of using specialized tools in their endeavors, and watches have been a big part of that kit - from UDT divers and their dive watches, to pilots relying on their wrist-bound timers to calculate fuel flow rates. These watches enjoy an enviable lore that inspires many of the designs we see today from brands large and small. One particular outfit known for its use of spec-built watches is the British Special Air Service, or the SAS. While much of the information about the SAS is highly classified, we do know a thing or two about the watches these specialized service members have employed throughout the years. [toc-section heading="A (Brief) History of SAS"] P...
Time+Tide
After the impeccable German brand A. Lange & Söhne was all but pulled apart by the wars of the 20th century, it took almost five decades to come back from the dead. Günter Blümlein, who had done great work with IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre, reached out to the surviving great-grandson of Ferdinand Adolph Lange and helped … ContinuedThe post The A. Lange & Söhne Grand Lange 1 slims down to become a collector’s dream appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Hodinkee
More than 30 years later, he's got the same motorcycle. The same cocky smile. And the same watch.
Time+Tide
There has been a huge amount of attention paid to Longines’ new Spirit Collection since it was launched. And rightly so. It offers a contemporary and value-packed new proposition right in the spot where buyers want it; which is a watch that can be a daily wearer that’s robust enough for most situations and well … ContinuedThe post Longines are quietly having another cracking year, spanning divers, pilots and vintage appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Hodinkee
A look back at the launch of a stand-out Patek.
Time+Tide
Sinn is a brand that is stealthily emerging from the shadows. The Frankfurt-based manufacturer favours slow incremental changes to their product line, making their watches better every year, but never reinventing the wheel as they go about it. This year, the new collection has looked to improve on a few older references, as well as … ContinuedThe post 8 deadly new Sinns from 2020, including dress watches (yes, really), refined pilots and divers appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Revolution
The LVMH Watch Week has kicked off, as has Zenith’s 2020 watch releases, featuring new takes on the El Primero, and updated Pilots.
Time+Tide
Some boardroom discussions would be fascinating to observe. The brand decisions presumably make sense at the time, but can appear a little odd to the rest of us. Every so often, however, a brand makes a bold play to distinguish itself from its price-point competitors and it kind of works. Sometimes because the brand chose … ContinuedThe post Drone pilots? Snooker players? Four watch ambassadors straight out of left field appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
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