Watch Dandy

We may only be three months into 2020, but Seiko is dropping new novelties like the world could end tomorrow … which, given the current state of affairs, does feel ever so slightly plausible. Anyway, I know what you’re thinking: “enough of the doom and gloom, what about the watches?” Well, the Japanese watchmaker has released myriad new timepieces so far, some limited and some not, across their various collections. So we thought we’d round them up, present them to you and then, in a manner not dissimilar from the tasks my former educators had to undertake, give them a report card rating. Let’s hope Seiko has performed better than my scholastic efforts. The Seiko Astron Novak Djokovic 2020 Limited Edition   Report card score: A Seiko really came out swinging with their first unveiling of 2020, paying homage to their long-term partnership with current World No. 1 tennis ace and 2020 Australian Open winner, Novak Djokovic. The Seiko Astron Novak Djokovic 2020 Limited Edition picked up where the 2019 edition left off; however, while last year’s Djokovic Astron rocked a black-on-black aesthetic with some serious stealth vibes, the 2020 incarnation was all about celebrating both the colours of the…

The post The Report Card: Seiko’s 2020 novelties so far appeared first on Time and Tide Watches.

Sometimes, a Time+Tide Watches reader will share a small piece of watchmaking history that makes us turn to each other and wonder how we hadn’t know about it before. This is exactly what happened when Colin strolled into the T+T HQ to look at a couple of DOXA watches, with a familiar looking watch on his wrist, with an unfamiliar name on its dial. He was wearing a Sinn 903 Chronograph, which looked a lot like a Breitling Navitimer from across the room but, as he explained, it was one of the unusual effects of the quartz era. In 1979 Breitling saw parts of its company go into liquidation due to bankruptcy, and Helmut Sinn, the founder of Sinn watches, bought the rights to use the layouts of Breitling’s 806 and 809 Navitimer watch dials. This is the story of Colin’s Sinn 903 Chronograph. During the quartz crisis, Sinn bought the rights from Breitling to manufacture the Navitimer, but they couldn’t call it a Navitimer … so it’s identical; it is smaller, slightly smaller in diameter, but it’s exactly the same. There are a few people who just assume that Sinn ripped off the Navitimer, sort of like Steinhart take…

The post What Sealed The Deal: Colin’s Sinn 903 Chronograph appeared first on Time and Tide Watches.

Sometimes, a Time+Tide Watches reader will share a small piece of watchmaking history that makes us turn to each other and wonder how we hadn’t know about it before. This is exactly what happened when Colin strolled into the T+T HQ to look at a couple of DOXA watches, with a familiar looking watch on his wrist, with an unfamiliar name on its dial. He was wearing a Sinn 903 Chronograph, which looked a lot like a Breitling Navitimer from across the room but, as he explained, it was one of the unusual effects of the quartz era. In 1979 Breitling saw parts of its company go into liquidation due to bankruptcy, and Helmut Sinn, the founder of Sinn watches, bought the rights to use the layouts of Breitling’s 806 and 809 Navitimer watch dials. This is the story of Colin’s Sinn 903 Chronograph. During the quartz crisis, Sinn bought the rights from Breitling to manufacture the Navitimer, but they couldn’t call it a Navitimer … so it’s identical; it is smaller, slightly smaller in diameter, but it’s exactly the same. There are a few people who just assume that Sinn ripped off the Navitimer, sort of like Steinhart take…

The post What Sealed The Deal: Colin’s Sinn 903 Chronograph appeared first on Time and Tide Watches.