Speedy Tuesday began as a blog post. On a Tuesday in May 2012, Robert-Jan Broer, the Dutch watch journalist and founder of the Fratello watch publication, posted a Speedmaster wristshot to his personal blog and Twitter account with a casual line about how Tuesday could be "Speedy Tuesday" for Speedmaster fans. The post was not a campaign; it was a single moment of casual enthusiasm. By the following week, other Speedmaster collectors were posting their own watches on Tuesdays with the hashtag #SpeedyTuesday; within a month it was a recurring weekly event across the small but passionate community of online watch enthusiasts.
Broer was already a recognised voice in Speedmaster collecting; he had founded the dedicated blog I Love My Speedmaster in 2010, and Fratello (founded 2004) covered Omega heavily as part of its broader Swiss-watch editorial mix. He had been collecting Speedmasters since the late 1990s and knew the global community of Moonwatch collectors personally; the Speedy Tuesday hashtag tapped into a network that already existed and gave it a weekly anchor.
"It started because I wanted to post a watch picture on a Tuesday. That's the entire origin story. There was no campaign, no plan, no marketing meeting. There was a Tuesday and a Speedmaster."- Robert-Jan Broer, on the origin of Speedy Tuesday
The tradition grew organically through 2012-2016 as Instagram became the dominant platform for watch photography. By 2014 #SpeedyTuesday was producing several hundred posts per Tuesday; by 2016 it was several thousand globally, and the hashtag was the most-used single-watch-model tag on Instagram. Major Speedmaster collectors including Albert Ganjei, Chuck Maddox, and various Omega ambassadors regularly posted; eventually the brand itself began noticing.
In January 2017, Omega CEO Raynald Aeschlimann announced the brand's response: a limited-edition Speedy Tuesday Speedmaster. The watch, ref. 311.32.42.30.04.003, was a tribute to the 1957 CK 2998 (the second Speedmaster reference): black dial with reversed sub-counters (the so-called "radial" layout, with the seconds at 3 instead of 9), Old Radium-toned indices and hands, blue-strap option, hesalite crystal, and the "Tuesday" engraved on the caseback. 2,012 pieces were produced, the number specifically chosen to reference the year the Speedy Tuesday tradition started.
The 2017 LE was sold exclusively through Omega's Instagram account, with no boutique distribution; buyers had to watch the Omega Instagram for the announcement and email a private order address. The watch sold out in just over 4 hours on 10 January 2017; Omega received roughly 30,000 enquiries for 2,012 watches. Within weeks, secondary-market prices were 2-3× retail. This was the first time a major Swiss watchmaker had launched a limited edition exclusively via social media, and it remains a frequently-cited case study in modern luxury direct-to-consumer marketing.
A second Speedy Tuesday limited edition followed in 2018: the "Ultraman" ref. 311.12.42.30.01.001, produced again at 2,012 pieces, named after the 1971 Japanese science-fiction TV series whose hero wore an orange-chrono-hand Speedmaster on screen. The Ultraman dropped on 10 July 2018 and again sold out within hours via Omega's Instagram. Both LEs are now significant collector pieces; auction prices typically sit at 2-4× original retail, with the "tropical" survivors of either edition reaching higher.
Beyond the limited editions, #SpeedyTuesday remains the most-active watch-community ritual online as of 2024. Tuesday Speedmaster posts run into the thousands across Instagram, X, Threads, Bluesky, and Reddit r/Watches; Fratello continues to publish a weekly Speedy Tuesday article on its homepage; Omega regularly posts on the hashtag from its official account. The tradition has spawned imitators (Submariner Sunday, Royal Oak Wednesday, Daytona Friday) but none have reached the same density. Speedy Tuesday is the canonical example of how a single offhand blog post can grow into a multi-year, brand-shaping tradition.
