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Best Super NEWS Watches
What Watch Does Dustin Hoffman Wear In Kramer vs. Kramer?
Kramer vs. Kramer is a classic for a reason, and it's something of an origin story for the Oscar legend that is Meryl Streep. Released in 1979, it represents the end of the greatest decade in film history. It centers around the ending of a marriage, the fallout, and a tense custody battle. Dustin Hoffman plays workaholic New York ad man Ted Kramer, who must put his work aside and learn to be a father to the son he shares with Streep. He lives such a frantic life that hes always checking the time. And whats on his wrist is a real deep cut. Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep during a tense scene in Kramer vs. Kramer. Photo: Getty/ Michael Ochs Archives / H...
Hey, HODINKEE!: Why Are People So Obsessed With Reference Numbers?
I wear my automatic watch every day. Is there any degradation to the winding mechanism if I rarely, if ever, wind the watch with the crown? Should I wind it occasionally as a form of preventative maintenance?This sort of underscores just how mysterious watches are to a lot of us. Yes, there are certainly situations where prolonged inactivity isnt good for a machine C a car left garaged for too long, for instance C but in general wear and tear in a mechanism comes from use, not disuse. Automatic winding movements can and do run for months without the owner needing to touch the crown for anything except re-setting the date and time. Not only will not winding your watch do the hand-winding sys...
Buying, Selling, & Collecting: The Story Of My Life In Three Swatches
If memory serves, I was 11 years old when I first saw it. My fathers new job had moved us across the country to a small English market town, an alien place. Id started a new school where the boys spoke differently to those Id known, and I felt neither sure of nor particularly happy with where I was C or who I was. Toward the western end of the towns high street, beyond Woolworths and the banks, and where the street began to fall away to an old square where sheep were once traded, there was a small jeweler of no particular repute. In the window was an unremarkable cluster of watches, jewelry, and useless knickknacks, and in the middle of all that was a Swatch ...
Happenings: Dr. Sandrine Girardier To Lecture At The Horological Society Of New York
Jaquet Droz has an incredible history that includes more than just timepieces. Founded in 1738, the Swiss manufacture is well-known for its prodigious androids, fashionable birdcages and pocket watches with animated scenes. Jaquet Droz's amazing automatons complement their watch and clock expertise, making their work very desirable for collectors around the world. Pierre Jaquet-Droz was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 1721. Jaquet-Droz founded a watchmaking workshop and grew it through a combination of technical, artistic, and commercial skills, enabling it to reach international markets. His son Henri-Louis further developed the family business and div...
HODINKEE Radio: Dispelling Vintage Watch Myths With The HODINKEE Shop
Subscribe to the show: (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, TuneIn). Already heard it once or twice? Please leave a short review, and tell us which guests we should have on! Vintage watches can be a ton of fun. My first "nice" watch purchase was a vintage Univeral Genve and the endless hours spent scouring the internet for every little bit of information I could find was a fantastic introduction to the watch world at large. But I'll admit it was a bit scary too. There's someone out there willing to support any assertion as fact and certain topics produce more questions than answers. So, when we decided to tackle the topic of misconcept...
Inside The Design: Why Are Watch Dials So Busy?
Consider, for a moment, the dial of a Rolex GMT-Master. A blue and red bezel emblazoned with numbers hugs its face. From the center of the dial, four uniquely shaped hands stretch outward. In the place of numerals is a series of gleaming shapes: A rectangle, circle, and triangle. The watch is far from spare C the opposite, really. And yet, you could argue that the GMT is minimalist in its own totally not-minimalist way.Admittedly, it's a bit of a contradiction: The GMT's dial is filled with stuff, but it was a remarkably efficient design when first produced. Rolex created the GMT in 1955 for Pan American Airline pilots who regularly shifted between time zones. The pilots needed a workhorse o...
Second Opinions: What We Talk About When We Talk About 'Mall Watches'
When I was a kid, one surefire way to get a rise out of someone was to say they had cooties. We're talking Central Pennsylvania in the 1970s so admittedly you can't expect the kind of precociously elevated derisory discourse I'm sure you can get from today's social-media enhanced, globally acculturated eight-year-olds, but we worked with what we had. (The term "cootie" is attested as early as 1898 ... but perhaps that is a digression for another day). The interesting thing about the word C with its non-specific connotations of dirtiness and contamination C is that nobody knows exactly what the word means. It is sufficient to understand that saying someone has them, makes them an outsider and...
Hands-On: The Tudor Black Bay Fifty-Eight 18K
The idea of a gold dive watch is neither new nor all that strange. After all, Rolex launched a gold version of the ref. 1680 Submariner in 1969 and has iterated several times upon the same theme. In a more modern context, Seiko makes dozens of references that combine a dive-watch platform with a smattering of gold-tone allure, Omega offers their Seamaster 300 in a trio of precious metals, and even Oris and Doxa recently have dipped a toe into the gold stream. Perhaps now more than ever, the lines between watches and jewelry are quite blurry, and watchmakers are boldly bending the traditional rules. Consider the new and polarizi...
Watch Spotting: The 2021 Oscars
The 93rd Academy Awards aired live last night from Los Angeles' Union Station, with Nomadland taking home the top prize for best picture. As you'd expect, we were glued to our television screens throughout the event, trying to make out who was wearing which watches. A toned-down affair with far fewer attendees than usual due to COVID, the 93rd was not lacking for wrist candy. Here's what we saw. If you spotted anything else, share it down in the comments. Daniel Kaluuya, Cartier Santos de Cartier Skeleton Pool/Getty Images Daniel Kaluuya took home the Academy Award for actor in a supporting role for hi...
Interview: Cyrille Vigneron, President And CEO, Cartier International
Cartier CEO and President Cyrille Vigneron is an industry veteran. The boss of Cartier since 2016, Vigneron has held senior positions at Cartier and at the Richemont Group for many years, with past posts including a stint as Director General for Cartier Europe, as well as serving as President of LVMH Japan. At Cartier, he has presided over a major shift in focus over the last five years, placing a new emphasis on classic designs (including the evolution of the Priv Collection of watches, which is a platform for revisiting designs from the past including the Tank Asymtrique, and this year, the Cloche. He has also been responsibl...
Steal Vs. Splurge: GMTs From Seiko And Grand Seiko
Short of bursting into the Seiko offices and interrogating the design team, theres no way to know for absolute certain that this years new Sharp Edged GMTs were inspired by Grand Seikos newly downsized Spring Drive GMTs. But they sure look like it. Here, we scrutinize the tiny differences in these colorful models C and help decide which ones right for you. Steal The Watch: Seiko Presage Sharp Edged GMT (available June 2021) Why Its Cool: This angular watch has a way with light. Its marked by alternating polished and matte surfaces, which reflect light brilliantly and enh...
The Value Proposition: The Mhle-Glashtte Panova Grau Is A Teutonic Treat
German design and engineering are legendary, thanks to countless brilliant examples from the Porsche 911 to the Barcelona chair. The superbly crafted Mhle-Glashtte Panova Grau watch isnt an icon. But it still has many of the traits that make those things great, and it comes with a shockingly fair price tag too. To me, it has everything that's great about typical German design. It's pared down, with a strong focus on only what's necessary; it's clean and stylish, and it has a real sense of timelessness. No gimmicks. And at less than $1,000, it's an ber deal. In watchmaking, it's tough sometimes to find real value for the money, whe...
How To Wear It: The Most Stylish Men Ever To Wear A Watch
Hello again. Sid here.In the world of watches (and clothes), everyone knows about Paul Newman and the other leading men of his era. You dont need me to tell you how great they looked. When I think about the most stylish watch wearers, actually, lots of other guys come to mind. The first is from my neck of the woods the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. For me, hes already got a head start because of his era. The sixties C the slim but not-too-tapered silhouettes, the coat-and-tie every day C influenced every single collection Ive ever worked on, from J. Crew in 1986 all the way to my own line today. MLK had a big job to do, and while he wasnt overly co...
To view the entire current selection of vintage watches available in the HODINKEE Shop, click here.Questions? Send us a note, or let us know in the comments. Want to sell your vintage watch through the HODINKEE Shop? Click here. Want to sell your pre-owned watch through Crown & Caliber? Click here. This Week's Vintage Watches On this week's HODINKEE Radio, Saori Omura and Brandon Frazin from the HODINKEE Shop's vintage team made an appearance to clear up some of the common misconceptions in this space. Every week, right here, we aim to lower the barrier to entry in owning and enjoying a vintage watch because, to many, it can seem ...
Hands-On: A Moser With The Eye Of The Tiger
Heres an existential question: If you cant tell the time on your watch, is it even a watch? The new piece from the pranksters at Moser has no markers, no numerals, no nothing but a wild tigers-eye dial and a spinning tourbillon. Its meant to be a piece of functional art C worn by those who dont need to know the time, because the world operates around their schedule. Fran Leibowitz would love it. Back in the 1970s, she appeared on a Canadian talk show and between drags of a cigarette expressed her disdain for digital watches and their wretched accuracy. "10:17 isn't a real time, she said, because you never have to be anywhe...
Hands-On: With The (Often) Cheapest Watch On Amazon
On any given day, the answer to the question, Whats the cheapest watch in the world depends on where you look and what you look at, but a good candidate is often a humble little piece from Casio that doesnt have any name other than EAW-MQ-24-7B2. Its a small (35mm) round, plastic quartz watch that comes in a blue and white cardboard box, inside of which is a plastic bag (you can call it a pouch if you want) that contains the actual watch, along with a six-language instruction manual. Im looking at mine as I write C it cost 14 dollars and 79 cents on Amazon C and while theres no mistaking it for anything other than exactly what it is, what it is is not without charms of its own. ...
One of the most noticeable trends in technical watchmaking since the end of the Second World War has been the evolution of watches with higher and higher frequency oscillators. A pendulum clock might have a pendulum that beats once per second. A watch has a balance, which can swing back and forth much more rapidly C a modern watch movement usually runs at 28,800 beats per hour, or eight beats per second. Some movements (the Zenith El Primero, for instance) can beat even faster, at 36,000 beats per hour. The new Slimline Monolithic Manufacture, from Frederique Constant, has a new type of oscillator, which runs at 40Hz C that's a staggering 288,000 beats per hour. The watch was introduced in M...
Auctions: A Mysterious Unsigned Chronograph Minute Repeater Is Coming Up At Phillips
In 1991, a collector walked into Jean-Pierre Hagmann's workshop in Geneva with an unusual request. He wanted to commission a custom chronograph and minute repeater in the same watch. Hagmann was C and still is C known for his incredible casemaking, but he knew just the person to ask about solving the problem when it came to the movement. The workshop next door belonged to F.P. Journe, and Hagmann was delighted to learn that Journe had actually produced a module for Piaget that exactly met the customers request. According to Phillips, Journe supplied the module to Hagmann, who produced the case for this commissioned piece. This i...
Sunday Rewind: The Story Of New York City's Sidewalk Clock
New York is full of horological curiosities, and it's certainly been difficult to explore them the past year and a half. But now that there's a renewed sense of optimism in the air, it's time to make some summer plans. If you're in New York, the sidewalk clock should be on the list to see for yourself. If you're not in New York City, Stephen wrote a fantastic piece on this very clock way back in 2013 that will make you feel as if you're right there, standing at the intersection of Maiden Lane and Broadway, looking down and imagining what this landmark of lower Manhattan might have seen over the years. ...
Watching Movies: Ryan Gosling Wears All The Omegas In 'First Man'
First Man (2018) stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong C tracking the famed astronauts earthly beginnings as a pilot through his first small steps on the Moon. Director Damian Chazelle puts the audience inside the claustrophobic cabins of multiple space-faring vessels in a way never before seen on screen. It's a movie about NASA, the 1960s, and the lunar landing C so you better believe its full of Omegas. Gosling's Armstrong wearing an Omega Speedmaster Professional reference 105.012. Why We're Watching We learned some sad news this week as Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot Michael Collins died at th...