EDITOR’S PICK: 44 of the best watches from 2016 you can buy from $500 to $5000
Editor’s Note: Way back at the start of this year, Justin put together a series of ‘best of’ lists covering off some of 2016’s finest timepieces – watches that offered maximum return for minimal investment. Now, as we hurtle head-first into that golden period in Australia known as EOFY (end of financial year), we start thinking about tax returns, bonuses and bargains. Sure, you could use this (hopeful) windfall to do the prudent thing and pay the bills – or you could buy a watch. So we thought now was the perfect time to revisit these lists in the form of one mega-smorgasbord list of 44 watches to whet your appetite. 8 watches under $1000 Seiko Turtle Reissue SRPA21K OK, so this guy’s a total no-brainer – a reissue of Seiko’s classic (and now quite collectable) 6309 series day-date divers. The originals were in production from roughly 1976 to ’88, and this past year saw countless fans shouting “Shut up and take my money” as the numerous variants of the Turtle reissue sold out, time and time again. The line includes something for everyone, including a gilt-dial variant, all black, all blue, a very cool grey made-for-the-Thailand-market Zimbe Turtle, and of course…
The post EDITOR’S PICK: 44 of the best watches from 2016 you can buy from $500 to $5000 appeared first on Time and Tide Watches.
Watching Andre Agassi play changed my tennis game, but reading his biography, Open, changed my life. I love tennis. And I was impressed, of course, by Andre’s second coming, when, in 1998, he rose from a ranking of 110 to number 6 in one calendar year. It was a quantum rankings leap that remains a record. But putting the whole context of professional tennis aside, I’ve never read a biography so excoriatingly honest. It is a self-examination few would have the mettle to undertake. “I’ve never been scared to admit my weaknesses because I’ve always needed to as a tennis player,” is one of his opening lines. Regular viewers of Time+Tide will recognise this as more of an ‘About Time’ episode, where we ask amazing people how they manage their time, and seek their thoughts on how to jump through those rare windows in life that open up. It’s about timing. I’ll be honest here. For the watch obsessed, there’s not a lot to learn. And we captured most of it in the shorter version launched earlier in the week. But for the human beings among us that are striving to be their best, to reach the heights, though? This…
At Baselworld Tudor unveiled a campaign and brand tagline – Born to Dare. Today we got a better understanding of what this means with the announcement of David Beckham as global brand ambassador and famous face of the Born to Dare campaign. At first the news of a luxury watch brand announcing a new endorsement might not seem particularly daring, but in this case it represents a significant new step for the brand, and a legitimately daring change of direction. This is the first time in many, many years that Tudor has had this level of celebrity ambassador, and certainly the first since the brand’s heritage collection-driven renaissance from 2010 onwards. It signifies an evolution in their marketing. For years Tudor has traded on their stealth kudos, perceived as a brand for people in the know. They also pitched themselves as a brand for adventurers, urban and otherwise. For many, Tudor is the quintessential ‘first good watch’. David Beckham changes all that. Not only does the addition of a top tier global ambassador like Beckham place Tudor in the spotlight, it also speaks to the maturation of the brand. The watches are getting more sophisticated; in-house movements and complications are increasingly replacing ebauches; and…
Co-presented by Belle magazine and Coco Republic, the leading name in furniture, property styling and interior design services, last week’s Belle Coco Republic Interior Design Awards brought together Australia’s best interior designers to celebrate the spectrum of their creativity working across residential, commercial and hospitality projects over the past year. The seventh industry awards night featured two new categories: the Rado Emerging Design Star and Best Work With Colour. The winner of the Rado Emerging Design Star award at the Belle Coco Republic Interior Design Awards 2017 was Yasmine Ghoniem (Amber Road Design, Sydney), who said of her accolade, “The talent [tonight] was absolutely immense, which makes our Emerging Design Star win even sweeter.” Rado has long championed rising design talent, so it was great to see the watch brand’s support of Australian design circles. The brand has a longstanding involvement with design events and the promotion of inventiveness through the Rado Star Prize France, Italy, US and Switzerland, which showcases the work of fledgling designers. Yasmine was also nominated in the category Best Work with Colour and was definitely one of the most vibrantly attired at the event. Green is her favourite colour but among her prizes was a chic Rado True Open…
TAG Heuer is not a brand to waste an occasion, and with Chris Hemsworth, his mate Matt Damon and a cast of VIPs all staying in a super-yacht in Port Hercules on the eve of the 2017 Monaco Grand Prix, there was always going to be a watch announcement. But this one was particularly poignant. It was, in fact, 30 years ago that Ayrton Senna won his first Monaco Grand Prix. The three new Senna commemorative watches – two Formula 1 models, one time-only, one a chronograph as well as a Carrera Heuer 01 – are bold and sporty with high-contrast red, black and white colour schemes. The hulking Heuer 01 with the Link style bracelet is the real standout, it combines design codes from two recognisable TAG Heuer collections, resulting in a brutal Doctor Moreau like hybrid. And when we say it’s heavy, you’d better believe it. The links are solid. This watch weighs a ton. TAG Heuer Senna 2017 Special Editions Australian pricing Carrera Heuer 01 Senna Edition $7950, Formula 1 Chronograph Senna Edition $2100, Formula 1 Senna Edition $1850
One of the most useful everyday complications is the GMT or dual time zone. If you travel a lot or do business internationally it’s certainly a lot easier to check your GMT than to fiddle with you phone trying to find the world clock app. Given the usefulness of this complication to the jet set, it’s also a genre dominated by pilot’s style watches, and for whatever reason, it’s a little under represented in the entry-to-mid tier price points. Well, all you thrifty frequent flyers can rest easy, as we’ve scouted out five of the finest affordable GMTs on the market, all priced at well under 5K. We also managed to do it without including a single ‘homage’ to the mighty GMT-Master. Farer Lander, Oxley and Ponting First cab off the rank is the brand new, just released trio of automatic GMTs from UK-based Farer. Farer first came to our attention because of their bright and playful mid-century styled dials, and these newly announced automatic GMTs are no exception. There’s the blue-dialled Lander, the surprisingly colourful black-dialled Oxley and – my personal pick – the white, blue and orange Ponting. All are powered by an ETA 2893-2 and are well-sized at…
I don’t know about you, but we’ve had to drag ourselves away our screens and from the unholy timesucking triumvirate known as Twin Peaks, Master of None and Better Call Saul to find out what’s been happening in watchland. So, settle into your booth at the Double R diner, order some cherry pie and a cup of coffee, and find out what’s been going on. What happened? If you’re particularly keen T+T followers (well done you), you’ll have seen this pic on our FB, asking what watch Jac Nasser is wearing. Well, luckily this is one easier to spot than Jimmy McGill’s digital or Ryan Gosling’s LaLa-Omega. BHP Chairman Jac Nasser is wearing an F.P. Journe Tourbillon Souverain, a very respectable choice, and a particularly nice tourbillon. If you want to make a subtle power statement with your watch on the cover of the AFR, this is the watch to do it with. Stealthy but recognisable. On a sadder note, Roger Moore, best known as for his turn as James Bond, passed away. And while he wore Pulsar, a few Seikos and a GMT-Master, it’s the Sub with the buzzsaw bezel he wore in Live and Let Die that most of us…
If you dive, or even if you don’t, then you may know that a diver’s regulator is the hub of their equipment – it is what makes breathing underwater possible, after all. We may not be referring to that type of regulator here, but the latest offering from Oris, the updated Regulateur ‘Der Meistertaucher’ (Master Diver), has been purpose-built for divers with a dial design seldom seen on a dive watch. In fact, Oris is the only manufacturer that currently offers a regulator dial on a dive watch – pioneered back in 1999 and featured in a handful of their collections, including the Aquis line, to which the ‘Der Meistertaucher’ belongs. So, what is a regulator dial? First introduced in observatories of the 18th century, these dials were found on highly accurate clocks that clockmakers would use as a reference when setting or regulating the pieces they were working on. They’re distinctive thanks to their non-coaxial layout, meaning the hour and minute hands are separated, with the minute hand traditionally remaining in the centre while the hour hand is shown on a separate sub-dial – it’s located at three on the ‘Der Meistertaucher’. What this means is that the watch shows the…
On Monday we told you about a Rolex ‘Paul Newman’ Daytona that was being auctioned by Sotheby’s Australia the following night. Well, on Wednesday we discovered that the watch hammered in at $219,600 (including buyer’s premium), making it the most expensive wristwatch ever auctioned in Australia. To find out more about what went down in Sydney on Tuesday – and what this means for the Australian vintage watch scene – I spoke to Hamish Sharma, Head of Jewels at Sotheby’s Australia, who was still recovering from such an exceptional result (the Important Jewels auction realised just over $1.8m, with 78.4 per cent sold by value). T+T: Congratulations on such a strong result. What was it like on the night? HS: Well, we really need to start before the night. The Rolex had a phenomenal amount of interest prior to the auction. A lot of people came to view it, and there was strong international interest. A lot of people just wanted to see the watch, collectors that already owned vintage Rolex, and wanted the opportunity to see the Paul Newman up close. When it came to the actual auction people weren’t mucking around, there was strong and serious interest. There…
Editor’s Note: For my money, the Rieussec is one of the most interesting collections in Montblanc’s fine watchmaking line up. And, like most of the brand’s complicated pieces, it offers tremendous value for money. A beautiful column wheel chrono with a vertical clutch and some very pretty architecture, combined with a truly distinct style and of course that rich eggshell dial. What’s not to like? The story in a second: This version of Montblanc’s distinctive Nicolas Rieussec collection has a nighttime party trick that’s worth staying up for. A nineteenth-century French watchmaker credited with inventing the chronograph, Nicolas Rieussec was an important man in the history of horology. For this reason, Montblanc decided to honour him with a series of – you guessed it – chronographs, inspired by his 1825 design. And you don’t need to have any great understanding of classical French watchmaking to appreciate the ample charms of this limited-edition piece. The first Montblanc Rieussec emerged in 2010, and every subsequent model has followed the same essential formula, with dials and case materials receiving tweaks along the way. So, while the Homage to Nicolas Rieussec II isn’t a new piece (it was released in 2014), it’s worth a…