It’s not hard to find vintage-inspired military watches as the market is now flooded with them. If you want something affordable and authentic, Hamilton has you covered. Want to go high-end, IWC and Panerai have a lot to offer, among many others. Longines even has a wide variety in their Heritage collection. Most are excellent examples of a given time period and fine watches on their own, but few have truly unique personalities. The Longines Avigation BigEye bucks the trend with an atypical chronograph that hits a lot of the right notes, but its provenance is a bit of a mystery. It’s also not the first modern big eye chronograph with pieces like the Breguet Type XX having a similar dial. It’s arguably the best vintage-inspired Longines since the Legend Diver, however, and won the Best Revival award at last year’s Grand Prix de l’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG). That’s an eye-opening achievement, so let’s take a closer look.
