When one of the rarest and most significant watches of the 21st century lands finds its way into an auction catalog, you can expect nothing short of a frenzied, no-limits battle to acquire it. And that’s exactly what happened yesterday, at Bonhams in London, when a George Daniels Co-Axial Anniversary wristwatch hit the block, fetching an astounding £224,500 (approximately $293,000 at time of sale).
Ballast timepieces is in the business of creating big, bold timepieces that are inspired by naval history, particularly historic icons like submarines captained by the Royal Navy. aBlogtoWatch previously reviewed the Ballast Valiant BL-3105 here, and now we’d like to discuss the new Ballast Trafalgar BL-3133 watch.
Back in 2011 the original Mikrograph in rose gold made its debut for US$50,000. It could measure 1/100th of a second, thanks to a clever movement with twin balance wheels, one running at 360,000 beats per hour, or 100 beats per second. Those were optimistic and heady days, the same year TAG Heuer introduced the US$120,000 […]
In watchmaking, who thinks innovative materials usually says high price. That’s somehow a rule. Look at recent watches with sapphire crystal cases. Most of them are over half a million CHF – even the cheapest one isn’t cheap… Same goes for complex ceramics, or watches associating different kind of solid, ultra-light or ultra-resistant materials. Carbon fibre isn’t always ultra-high-end, however few are the watches with such material priced under 10k. Well, Dietrich watches, with their usual value for money rule, will bring you forged carbon cases, some with colored incrustations and even luminous cases (yes, for real) together with a mechanical movement for a price you don’t expect. Here are the Dietrich O.Time now in colored forged carbon.
The two-day Heuer Collectors Summit was held this past Monday, September 12th, 2016, at TAG Heuer’s headquarters in La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland. A highlight of the gathering was a soft debut of the upcoming 2017 TAG Heuer Autavia reissue watch.
Speedmaster Albino – White Dial Speedmaster for the 40th Anniversary Remember our Speedy Tuesday article about Speedmasters with white dials (click here), we already included the Speedmaster Albino, or ‘Bianco Italiano’ there. However, in this week’s Speedy Tuesday installment I would like to zoom in a bit on that particular model. Speedmaster Professional 3593.20 Officially introduced […]
One of the hottest topics at this year’s Baselworld fair was TAG Heuer’s ’20k tourbillon’. And that nickname is even more impressive when you translate it into US, which gets it much closer to 15k. It represents the brand’s comparatively accessible take on that most hallowed (and most expensive) of complications. …
Editor’s Note: As a GMT-Master II owner I’m a sucker for stories about any Rolex GMT models. It’s a kinship that’s formed when you buy into a brand, and then a model. In Jungian terms, you form a link that is like a telephone line, and every time you see one, it rings.…
One of the inevitable realities of modern luxury is that what was once necessarily done by hand can now, as a general rule, be either duplicated or convincingly imitated by machine, to some degree or another. In watchmaking you can do things the old fashioned way, which usually means the more difficult and less efficient way, or you can use as much mechanization as you can get away with, given the price range at which you reside. It’s the same in almost anything else worth taking an interest in, as far as history and craft are concerned – lace was made by hand for much of its history but by the late 19th century you could duplicate just about any kind of hand-made lace on a machine.
There are shockingly few choices for modern GMT watches, especially when you think about just how many options you have when it comes to chronograph. In our modern age of easier-than-ever travel, there’s no more practical complication. Alpina has just released a new GMT that is both a simple GMT at one level and a more complicated adventure watch at another. Let’s take a look at the Alpiner 4 Automatic GMT.