Jacques Cousteau – L’Odyssée A few days ago, The Odyssee (or L’Odyssée) movie has been released in France. It is a biopic about the life of Jacques Cousteau, his wife Simone and his sons Philip and Jean-Michel. It won’t be in the theatres before January 2017 here in The Netherlands, but it will be on […]
Omega’s remarkable first automatic chronograph In 1971, Omega launched the Speedmaster Mark III Automatic, the first automatic chronograph of the brand. It was presented as the next step in the Speedmaster-series: a self-winding Speedmaster. The watch featured the new, automatic chronograph movement c 1040, housed in a funky chunk of steel. In retrospect, there is […]
Omega Railmaster Wait a second, the Omega Railmaster is far too new to be featured on #TBT! Well, for sure, the discontinued watch from Omega is not so far removed from our mindscape, but it is gone. I had a recent visit from family and my Dad, who is seemingly a master in finding overlooked but […]
Over the last decade Omega has steadily developed new features to improve its watches, ranging from the Co-Axial escapement deep inside the movement to the ceramic case that made its debut on the Speedmaster Dark Side of the Moon. The Seamaster Planet Ocean Deep Black combines all of those innovations in a single watch, resulting in […]
The Omega Speedmaster Professional 145.022 was introduced in 1968 and comes in many variations. We get a lot of “help” requests in our Fratello mailbox asking us about this exact Speedmaster reference and how to prevent from stepping into pitfalls. In this first part of the Omega Speedmaster Professional 145.022 buyer’s guide I will answer […]
Today is… Friday! So not only it means that weekend is coming, but it also means that our 5 Cool Finds are online. To follow with last week’s article, we continue our “Cool Finds” selections, still with our trustful partner Chronext. What about the “5 Cool Finds”? Simple: 5 watches, not new, not vintage, most of the time young-timers (that we believe are the new trend) that we selected for you. Today, we go for one of the most sought-after categories, a type of watches that must be in every collection: dive watches. Here are 5 divers that look good now, that will look good in 10 years, that will look good everywhere and forever.
Watch Ambassadors Only yesterday, during a press event from a watch brand, the topic of ‘watch ambassadors’ and ‘red carpet brands’ was being discussed with a colleague watch journalist. Here on Fratello, we touched the subject before (click here for my rant on watch brand ambassadors) so there is no need to do that again. Instead, […]
Sigma 7 Yesterday, it was exactly 54 years ago that astronaut Walter ‘Wally’ Schirra orbited Earth 6 times in the Sigma 7 spacecraft. The name of the NASA mission was Mercury-Atlas 8, and Schirra picked ‘Sigma 7’ as the name for the spacecraft. Using the mathematical symbol for summation as appropriate for an “engineering evaluation”, and […]
It’s Speedy Tuesday! Just recently, we were able to lay our hands on an OMEGA Speedmaster Reduced reference 3510.50 timepiece. This discontinued model Speedmaster is often mistaken for the popular Speedmaster Professional ‘Moonwatch’. If you are not that deeply into Speedmasters and just like the look of the black face tri-compax lay-out Speedmaster, it is easily to fall into the trap that a lot of sellers of these watches (f.i. on eBay) will try to use on you. They will advertise with these watches as ‘Moonwatch’ as well. Although the OMEGA Speedmaster Reduced is a very nice watch, it is not a Moonwatch. Keep on reading if you want to learn about the differences.
Omega, founded in 1848, is one of the world’s oldest, most highly respected, and popular watch manufacturers, so it should come as no surprise that the brand is frequently the target of counterfeiters. If you are considering purchasing an Omega, here is some advice to help spot a possible counterfeit.