Features – International Watch Magazine

The Watches September 24, 2021

Conor McGregor Spins for Jacob & Co.

UFC Champ Conor McGregor recently raised the profile of the Jacob & Co. Astronomia Casino by posting a video of the roulette-wheel watch to his much-viewed Instagram account. In just one day, McGregor’s August 29 post on his “thenotoriousmma” Instagram platform received more than 1.2 million likes, and counting.

The Astronomia Casino features a fully operational roulette wheel. In the short video, McGregor is sitting by a pool. He pressed the watch’s pusher to spin the roulette wheel, calling for “Black 11.” The white ceramic ball instead falls on Red 14.

His caption accompanying the video was directed at the rapper Drake, who also owns an Astronomia.

Jacob & Co’s Astronomia Casino is one of the many iterations of the Astronomia timepiece, with a four-arm vertical movement. The watch’s roulette wheel, made in green, red, and black enamel with mahogany inlays, operates on demand and replicates the action of a roulette wheel. The white ceramic ball is separated from the movement by a near invisible sapphire crystal.

Above the roulette wheel Jacob & Co places a double-axis tourbillon, a rotating spherical diamond with the exclusive Jacob Cut, a rotating magnesium and lacquered globe, and a titanium subdial time display. The entire display revolves around the watch every ten minutes. (Source: Jacob & Co.)

The Watches September 23, 2021

Deep Blue Lights Up

By Gary Girdvainis

One of our favorite American-based dive watch specialists has released another water watch you’re sure to appreciate. Deep Blue’s Daynight Alpha Marine 500 Tritium T-100 Swiss Automatic may be a mouthful to pronounce, but you’ll like what you see at a glance.

The Deep Blue Daynight Alpha Marine 500 Tritium T-100 Swiss Automatic.

Deep Blue is known for its intense lume and superior water resistance, and this new model certainly fills the bill. The watch is cased in a 45mm 316L stainless steel case and is 15mm thick. Inside beats a Sellita SW-200-1 Automatic oscillating at 28,800 vph.

Visible through the 33mm dial aperture are the numerous flat and round self-illuminating tritium tubes, in this case complemented by a fully illuminated dial. Clearly its all about the glow on this watch. Even the 120-click ceramic bezel combines Superluminova numerals and markers with a tritium pip.

As expected, Deep Blues utilizes an extra thick sapphire crystal with AR coating underneath, and another crystal offers a view of the movement from the reverse side.

Water resistant to an impressive 500 meters, the watch head is held in place by a stainless steel bracelet with a multi-function safety and micro-adjustment deployant clasp. Price: $999.

The Watches September 22, 2021

Junghans Revisits its Max Bill Automatic

By Gary Girdvainis

Max is back and minimal is original. Sixty years after the launch of the Max Bill Automatic, Junghans has revisited not only that minimalistic design, but has dared to offer it in the authentic 34mm original size.

An original Max Bill watch from 1961 (left) and a new model, with date. Both are 34mm in diameter.

Tiny by today’s standards (for a men’s watch), the 34mm watch is powered by an automatic movement under a dial bereft of excess – or anything distracting, except, for some, a date display. Two dial options offer a choice between an numeral-free edition or a model with Arabic numerals in a fine font.

Whether with simple stick markers or Arabic numerals, the austere dial keeps the smaller size from feeling too crowded, while the almost-nonexistent bezel adds volume and expanse to the scant case.

Water resistance is nominal at 30 meters and good for splashes and rain, while a double-coated sapphire crystal reaches to the very perimeter of the case. A truly unisex watch, the modern rendition ranges in price from $1,095 to $1,195 depending on the case finish and strap or bracelet choice.

The Watches September 21, 2021

Only Watch 2021 Favorites: Zenith

We continue to highlight a few of our favorite watches from among the more than fifty watchmakers that have created timepieces for the Only Watch charity auction, which commences Saturday, November 6, in Geneva. Christie’s will auction these incredible watches to raise funds that benefit research in the battle against Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

While you may have seen a few of the watches set for auction earlier this year when Only Watch announced them, we thought you’d enjoy seeing many of these inspired designed again just ahead of the event.

Click here for details about the Only Watch world tour, which begins September 22.

Today, we highlight the offering from Zenith, which has teamed with artist Felipe Pantone for a spectacular special edition of its Defy 21 Double Tourbillon, which here is cased entirely of transparent sapphire crystal – a first for any watch in the Zenith Defy collection.

This watch, based on one of Zenith’s most complicated chronographs, is regulated by two independent tourbillons. They operate at five hertz (for the timekeeping function) and fifty hertz (for the 1/100th of a second chronograph). Pantone has transferred his own style to Zenith’s movement’s decoration and the open dial.

As Zenith explains, it has coated the bridges to reflect a gradient of metallic rainbow tones, marking the first time we’ve seen three-dimensional PVD with silicon particles as a surface treatment on a tourbillon chronograph movement. This produces an-eye-catching spectrum of colors. Zenith then fixes its movement within a case given the same rainbow effect. The caseback sports a similar rainbow PVD coating on the bridges, where “Unique Piece” is engraved on one of them under the blackened star-shaped winding rotor.

Pantone then distorts the central hour and minute hands to resemble lightning bolts. Echoing the movement, Zenith applies a rainbow gradient of colors in PVD to the hands, while each of the applied hour markers is filled with a different color. Zenith and Pantone create a crazy moiré optical effect on the dial, produced by thin alternating white and black using fine laser-engraving and precise lacquering techniques.

Finally, Zenith will package the watch in a special box resembling an art book and add an original signed artwork by Felipe Pantone.

Only Watch auction estimate: CHF 180,000 – 220,000.

The Watches September 20, 2021

Only Watch 2021 Favorites: TAG Heuer

We continue to highlight a few of our favorite watches from among the more than fifty watchmakers that have created timepieces for the Only Watch charity auction, which commences Saturday, November 6, in Geneva. Christie’s will auction these incredible watches to raise funds that benefit research in the battle against Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

While you may have seen a few of the watches set for auction earlier this year when Only Watch announced them, we thought you’d enjoy seeing many of these inspired designed again just ahead of the event.

The watches will tour the globe starting September 22 in Monaco, and can then be seen in exhibitions in Dubai (September 30 to October 3), Tokyo (October 8 to 10), Singapore (October 15 to 20), Hong Kong (October 25 to 27), Macau (October 28) and finally back in Geneva on November 4-6. Click here for details about the Only Watch world tour.

Today, we highlight the offering from TAG Heuer, which has created the Only Watch Carbon Monaco made with echoes of the highly collectible black-PVD-cased Monaco Reference 74033N, known by aficionados as the “Dark Lord”. TAG Heuer made the original watch in limited quantities in the mid-1970s, and it never appeared in a Heuer catalog.

This one-of-a-kind edition is cased in carbon fiber and features the brand’s largest-ever sapphire crystal caseback, which TAG Heuer’s engineers designed to give the watch’s future owner a clear view into its bespoke movement. The watch’s skeletonized dial is worked from a single piece of carbon fiber.

Sitting on top of the carbon dial are three black galvanized brass plates. These form the watch’s chronograph and small-seconds subdials. Those orange hands echo the Only Watch’s 2021 color palette.

The movement here, while technically a TAG Heuer in-house Heuer 02 automatic chronograph, has been decorated by hand especially for this watch.

The movement is endowed with an unique rotor in the form of a hand-finished TAG Heuer shield, which is also decorated with a gradient orange to yellow color of Only Watch 2021. The seamless transition from orange to yellow was achieved by hand, painted by the master dial artist and micro-painter André Martinez from Le Locle.

Indeed, TAG Heuer utilizes specialists Artime SA to create a high-level of finish throughout the movement. And finally, TAG Heuer has created a new leather strap that looks like a metal bracelet. All new for TAG Heuer, the process starts as silicon is injected into the sole of the leather. This is then heat-stamped with a mold in the shape of a metal link bracelet, creating the three- dimensional effect. Very cool, and impressive.

Only Watch auction estimate: CHF 50,000 to CHF 100,000.

The Watches September 17, 2021

Only Watch 2021 Favorites: Blancpain

We continue to highlight a few of our favorite watches from among the more than fifty watchmakers that have created timepieces for the Only Watch charity auction, which commences Saturday, November 6, in Geneva. Christie’s will auction these incredible watches to raise funds that benefit research in the battle against Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

While you may have seen a few of the watches set for auction earlier this year when Only Watch announced them, we thought you’d enjoy seeing many of these inspired designed again just ahead of the event.

The watches will tour the globe starting September 22 in Monaco, and can then be seen in exhibitions in Dubai (September 30 to October 3), Tokyo (October 8 to 10), Singapore (October 15 to 20), Hong Kong (October 25 to 27), Macau (October 28) and finally back in Geneva on November 4-6. Click here for details about the Only Watch world tour.

Today, we highlight the offering from Blancpain, which created an Only Watch version of its highly collectible Tribute to Fifty Fathoms No Rad watch. The mid-1960s series is characterized with a stamp on the dial with a “no radiations” logo indicating that Blancpain did not use luminescent radium.

Here, the logo remains the dial’s highlight, but the logo’s original yellow and red colors have been replaced by Only Watch orange and yellow. Blancpain fits the watch’s unidirectional rotating bezel with a sapphire insert, direct from the current collection.

And while it may not always come across in images, the domed glassbox-type sapphire crystal Blancpain attaches here is outstanding. It quite effectively contributes to the multi-level effect of the dial. From the back, you’ll see a black rotor in solid gold bearing a special “Only Watch” inscription.

Only Watch auction estimate: CHF 12,000 to CHF 18,000.

The Watches September 16, 2021

Only Watch 2021 Favorites: Maurice Lacroix

We continue to highlight a few of our favorite watches from among the more than fifty watchmakers that have created timepieces for the Only Watch charity auction, which commences Saturday, November 6, in Geneva. Christie’s will auction these incredible watches to raise funds that benefit research in the battle against Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

While you may have seen a few of the watches set for auction earlier this year when Only Watch announced them, we thought you’d enjoy seeing many of these inspired designed again just ahead of the event.

The watches will tour the globe starting September 22 in Monaco, and can then be seen in exhibitions in Dubai (September 30 to October 3), Tokyo (October 8 to 10), Singapore (October 15 to 20), Hong Kong (October 25 to 27), Macau (October 28) and finally back in Geneva on November 4-6. Click here for details about the Only Watch world tour.

Today, we highlight the offering from Maurice Lacroix, which has teamed with Mahindra Racing to create a special edition of its Aikon Master Grand Date. The one-off model for Only Watch 2021 features a 47mm case formed using the same carbon fiber actually used by on a Mahindra Racing car.

This is the first time Maurice Lacroix Aikon made using a carbon fiber case. The bright-dialed watch, sports its embossed off-center hour and minutes display in the official Only Watch orange color, framed with a yellow circlet. The hands and indexes are executed in black and lined with yellow SuperLuminova, just above an open-worked small seconds dial. The main area of the dial is actually the reverse of the mainplate and here is vertically brushed and capped with orange PVD. The curved balance bridge is presented in black DLC and features an open-worked, twin-beam design that clears a direct view of the escapement.

Maurice Lacroix will invite the successful bidder for this watch to attend a 2022 round of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship as a guest of Mahindra Racing, where they can look forward to a full VIP hospitality package.

Only Watch auction estimate: CHF 12,000 to CHF 18,000.

The Watches September 15, 2021

Only Watch 2021 Favorites: H. Moser & Cie.

This year more than fifty watchmakers have created timepieces for the Only Watch charity auction, which commences Saturday, November 6, in Geneva. Christie’s will auction these incredible watches to raise funds that benefit research in the battle against Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

While you may have seen a few of the watches set for auction earlier this year when Only Watch announced them, we thought you’d enjoy seeing many of these inspired designed again just ahead of the event.

The watches will tour the globe starting September 22 in Monaco, and can then be seen in exhibitions in Dubai (September 30 to October 3), Tokyo (October 8 to 10), Singapore (October 15 to 20), Hong Kong (October 25 to 27), Macau (October 28) and finally back in Geneva on November 4-6. Click here for details about the Only Watch world tour.

Today, we highlight the offering from H. Moser & Cie., which has placed its much-acclaimed Cylindrical Tourbillon made in partnership with MB&F last year into the exceptional 40mm H. Moser Streamliner steel case.

To review, the caliber here is designed as sculptural work of art and is topped with a domed sapphire crystal. It features a one-minute flying tourbillon equipped with H. Moser’s cylindrical hairspring, produced by Precision Engineering AG, H. Moser & Cie.’s sister company.

And with the case and bracelet, with its articulated links and brushed and polished finishing, also weighing in as functional eye-candy, we expect this watch to exceed its auction estimate.

Only Watch Auction Estimate: CHF 60,000 – CHF 80,000.

The Watches September 14, 2021

Only Watch 2021 Favorites: F.P. Journe

This year more than fifty watchmakers have created timepieces for the Only Watch charity auction, which commences Saturday, November 6, in Geneva. Christie’s will auction these incredible watches to raise funds that benefit research in the battle against Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

While you may have seen a few of the watches set for auction earlier this year when Only Watch announced them, we thought you’d enjoy seeing many of these inspired designed again just ahead of the event.

The watches will tour the globe starting September 22 in Monaco, and can then be seen in exhibitions in Dubai (September 30 to October 3), Tokyo (October 8 to 10), Singapore (October 15 to 20), Hong Kong (October 25 to 27), Macau (October 28) and finally back in Geneva on November 4-6. Click here for details about the Only Watch world tour.

Today, we highlight the offering from F.P. Journe. The independent watchmaker’s entry into the auction is a stunning central-dial automaton inspired by a mechanical hand created by Ambroise Paré (1509-1590), the father of modern surgery, this unusual 42mm tantalum-cased watch displays time via hand-signs. The hand will rotate to the hour marker (indicated by the pointer) and will show a specific number of fingers to indicate the hours. At 1 o’clock, for example, only one finger will appear while the others remain clenched (see below).

The automaton is powered solely by the Octa movement’s mainspring.

F.P. Journe devised the movement from his Octa Caliber 1300, which celebrates its 20^th anniversary in 2021.

Journe explains: “This watch was born in 2012 while having dinner at Francis Ford Coppola’s house in the Napa Valley. He asked me if it could be possible to tell time with a hand in a watch. I replied that the idea was interesting and required thinking about it. But how to display 12 hours with 5 fingers? It was not an easy matter and this complex challenge inspired and motivated me. Once I figured it out, Francis immediately sent the sketches for the fingers positions. After more than 2 years, I could finally focus on “Fecit”. After 7 years of development, I am proud to present the FFC prototype”.

We expect the final sale price for this watch to exceed its auction estimate.

Auction estimate: CHF 300,000 – CHF 400,000.

Only Watch 2021 Favorites: Bell & Ross

With the ninth edition of the Only Watch auction only weeks away, we’re reminding readers about the lineup of incredible watches set for auction at the biennial charity event.

This year more than fifty watchmakers have created timepieces for the charity auction, which commences Saturday, November 6, in Geneva. Christie’s will auction these incredible watches to raise funds that benefit research in the battle against Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

While you may have seen a few of the watches set for auction earlier this year when Only Watch announced them, we thought you’d enjoy seeing many of these inspired designed again just ahead of the event.

Note than some of our readers may be able to see all the Only Watch offering in person in the weeks just prior to the event.

The watches will tour the globe starting September 22 in Monaco, and can then be seen in exhibitions in Dubai (September 30 to October 3), Tokyo (October 8 to 10), Singapore (October 15 to 20), Hong Kong (October 25 to 27), Macau (October 28) and finally back in Geneva on November 4-6. Click here for details about the Only Watch world tour.

Today, we highlight the offering from Bell & Ross, which has devised this BR01 Cyber Skull Sapphire, an orange-tinged, all-sapphire example of a series of Skull watches Bell & Ross has offered in recent years.

Bell & Ross machined the sapphire case from three blocks of sapphire and created the skull itself from six blocks of sapphire. The Skull dial was metalized on the back with the Only Watch orange color, a hue that also happens to be one of the colors of choice to enhance legibility in airplane cockpits. The back of the watch also features a special engraving for Only Watch.

In addition to clearly impressive sapphire work here, Bell & Ross has added a fun technical feature that will likely bring grins to the wearer. The automaton movement activates the jaw, which opens and appears to snigger when the wearer winds the spring.

Only Watch auction estimate: CHF 90,000 – CHF 110,000.