11 of the best Grand Seikos – and why they matter
Editor’s note: From dive to dress and some gorgeous dials in between. Cam has a look at 11 of the best Grand Seiko watches of recent times … Just 10 years ago, buying a Grand Seiko meant either having to buy a plane ticket to Japan, convincing a relative/friend/acquaintance/that-guy-you-met-one-time to buy a ticket to Japan, or navigating your way around Japanese online retailers – searching every page for an image of your heart’s desire and then using Google translate to confirm that they even offered international shipping. You see, despite having a history that stretches back to 1960, it wasn’t until 2010 that Grand Seiko was properly introduced to the world. Once one of Japan’s best kept secrets, Grand Seiko was born from Seiko’s desire to show the world what Japanese watchmaking could do. And in the years since, the innovative brand has become one of the most influential. Still, as Felix put it last month, “there remains an air of mystique around the Japanese brand”. And while his excellent video explained some of the essentials, I thought I’d add some more meat to its bones with this list of 11 key models from the collection, and just why they…
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Franck Muller’s tagline is “the master of complications”, and this watch delivers on that promise in dazzling style. This fully set Franck Muller Double Mystery from their Round collection (which goes to show that there’s more to the brand than Curvex cases) is a great example of working smart. The movement on show is the Double Mystery — the mystery being that there are no traditional hands at play here, rather two triangles nestled amongst the brilliance of the fully set dial. Of course it doesn’t take long to work out that these markers sit in two rotating discs, creating an illusion of floating time. It’s one of my favourite romantic complications, and Franck Muller has deployed it here to good effect. It’s a smart complication because while it uses up a fair bit of energy to move a full disc (or two) rather than more lightweight hands, it’s a complication that can be added to a base automatic movement, allowing the brand to spend their time focusing on other things — like that exceptional case. Speaking of the case, let’s break it down into numbers. It’s white gold, 42mm across (which means that, even though it’s billed as a women’s watch,…
If you pay attention to the more business-to-business end of watchland you might have noticed that UK-based mega-retailer Watches of Switzerland (not to be confused with our local Aussie retailers of the same name) recently listed on the London Stock Exchange. They noticed it over at Axios, where this interesting piece on the business of telling time comes from. Lots of it will be anecdotally familiar to people in the trenches of watch collecting, but it’s interesting to see it picked up by capital N News. Our key takeouts? Yup, Ecommerce is still the next big thing, but we’re not sure what it’s going to look like: Luxury goods giant Richemont, owner of Cartier and Jaeger-LeCoultre, is going for broke, investing nearly $3.4 billion in used watch seller Watchfinder and other online vendors last year. They’re not alone. And the industry is finally engaging with second-hand watches in a serious way, with AP, Breitling and LVMH all planning to address the secondary market, which could be bigger than new. This, combined with supply issues among certain brands, is why we’re seeing a situation where “used watches sold online in 2018 regularly fetched higher prices than new ones”. It’s the wild…
At long, long last we were able to host the Australian launch of the Longines Legend Diver Black at our headquarters in Cremorne, Melbourne this week. It heralded the watch officially going on sale in our shop, where it will be available for the next two months exclusively in Australia. To say that the moment was long-awaited would be a dramatic understatement. We’ve wanted to share this particular watch — a big, blacked-out, contemporary step forward for Longines — since March last year when we first laid eyes on it. The dress code was black, anyway you like it. The weather was black, as Melbourne loves it in winter. But the mood was as warm and spicy as the just-launched Four Pillars Bloody Shiraz Gin, dancing on guests’ tongues the minute they arrived and were handed one as a welcome cocktail. The star of the show though, without question, was the heart of darkness focused in two shiny display cabinets and on the wrists of Andrew and Felix – the Longines Legend Diver, in black. On the night, in order to allow guests a chance to try it on, we wore it on our ‘Midnight Dark’ premium ballistic nylon NATO strap,…