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Best Super NEWS Watches
Five Watches That Show Creativity Is Alive And Well In Watchmaking
Last month, Cole and I debuted the first of HODINKEE's new Point/Counterpoint column, with me arguing a pretty straightforward thesis: That the economic effects of the 2008 financial crisis knocked watch design into an obsession with retro and vintage which has become a permanent part of the watch design landscape. Since then, I've kept thinking about the question, and while the fun of Point/Counterpoint arguments C here and elsewhere C is to take a position and defend it, it's always a little artificial, like any other game. One thing kept nagging at me: 2008 was a long time ago C 13 years, in fact, and while I still think that it's absolutely true that the ongo...
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 A great vintage watch, or any watch at all, is one where you linger after putting it on your wrist in the morning. It's not the same as a T-shirt that you can throw on and immediately move to the next thing; a watch that inspires you earns a extra glance. It might be the recessed lume plots of a Rolex ref. 101...
History of Olympic Timekeeping
In sports, timing and accuracy are everything. Whether it's knowing which swimmer's hand hit the wall first or whether a world-class sprinter jumped the gun, fair timing, scoring, and recordkeeping at the Olympics are serious business. Athletes wait for four years between Olympiads (actually a bit longer in our current cycle): An accurate accounting of results is the least they deserve. Below, we single out some milestones, facts, and figures of Olympic timing, and also mention a cool Olympic-themed watch or two. Aqua Terra: As Danny Milton wrote in his introduction to the Seamaster Aqua Terra Tokyo 2020, Omega saved the shiniest for ...
Watches with Airline Logo Dials
You already know that commercial airlines have had a tremendous impact on watch development. Without Pan Am, for instance, there would be no Rolex GMT-Master. But we're not here today to celebrate aviation watches (or travel watches) in general. We're here to explore a niche within the niche: Watches actually bearing the airlines' logos. Traditionally the companies would dole them out as employee gifts, issue them to pilots and crews, and C sometimes C sell them publicly. Today they're a collectable micro-genre. Even now, when jumbo jets feel like buses with wings, airlines can still inspire wonder and create communities. An airline-b...
The Antikythera Mechanism is an ancient Greek astronomical computer of amazing complexity
Stop me if you've heard this one before, but the ancient Greeks appear to have been no slouches in the brains department. Submitted as evidence: the enigmatic bronze device known as the Antikythera Mechanism. It doesn't look like much C a few badly corroded lumps, nearly unrecognizable after two thousand years in Davy Jones' locker. The mechanism was discovered by Greek sponge divers in 1901, part of the wreckage of a Roman cargo ship sitting under 45 meters of water off the island of Antikythera, in the Aegean Sea. For decades nobody paid much attention to it. This despite the fact that as early as 1902, a Greek archaeologist (Valerios Stais) noticed that there ...
Eleven Stopwatches Just In Time For The Olympics
Tracksmith, the New England apparel company known for its stylish running gear (and great taste in watches), has partnered with longtime HODINKEE contributor and renowned vintage watch-dealer Eric Wind on a collection of stopwatches going on sale today, just in time for the end of the Tokyo Olympics. The partnership got underway after Wind was introduced to the company's co-founder and CEO, Matt Taylor. Years earlier, Taylor came across a vintage Breitling stopwatch that belonged to his father-in-law, a longtime high-school track and cross-country coach, and asked if he could keep it on his desk as a talisman of inspiration for his company. ...
Interested in selling a pre-owned watch? Get your quote. Want to sell your vintage watch through the HODINKEE Shop? Click here. This Week's Pre-Owned Favorites Did you catch those few HODINKEE Pre-Owned watches we listed last week? We quietly updated our page with some watches that should look familiar. And by that, we mean similar examples that have crossed our desks in the past. If you've missed out on something we offered in a previous drop and since sold, sign up for the waitlist and make a habit of checking in with our H Pre-Owned page.? In this week's curated drop, we have one of our biggest and best...
The Guide To Tokyo's Public Clocks
As the capital of one of the most punctual nations on earth, where a train going off schedule by less than a minute constitutes actual news, Tokyo is naturally home to a number of large-scale, important, and in some cases downright iconic public clocks. They range from the whimsically steampunk Ghibli Clock, with daily performances fit for a theme park, to an imposing 15-meter clock on Tokyo's fourth-tallest building, to an indoor pendulum clock that was once the world's largest. With the Tokyo Olympics drawing to a close on August 8th, we put together a guide to the city's coolest public timekeepers, a mix of tourist attractions and local favorites. We couldn't ...
Tom Cruise, Cuba Wears A Tag Heuer In Jerry Maguire
In the 1990s, Tom Cruise was a mega movie star C even bigger than he is now. In 1996 alone, he starred in the first Mission Impossible blockbuster (a franchise that's still going strong) and today's film of choice, Jerry Maguire. Not a bad year. The film follows the eponymous Maguire, a sports agent whose life gets turned upside down after getting fired from his agency, leaving him with only one client C pro football player Rod Tidwell (played by Cuba Gooding Jr.). In the midst of all that, Maguire falls in love with his only employee, Dorothy Boyd (played by Rene Zellweger). This is a sports movie, but also a romantic comedy, but really it's one big game of Tag C as in TAG Heuer. ...
Lincolns Design Director Kemal Curic On The New Shinola Concept
Kemal Curic's creative vision combines inspiration and progress with a faithfulness to Lincon's heritage. Later this month at Pebble Beach, Lincoln will present a collaborative concept version of the Aviator, a midsize luxury SUV that has come to embody the company's mantra of Quiet Flight, with fellow Detroit-based brand Shinola. We recently connected with Curic, Lincoln's Director of Design, to discuss this collaboration, automotive design, and the connection between cars and watches. How did Lincoln and Shinola link up for the new Aviator Concept? CURIC: The story of the Lincoln Aviator and Shinola sta...
The Seiko 5718-8000 is a bit of Olympic History
The Tokyo 1964 Olympics were the first-ever Olympics to be broadcast live by satellite. Suddenly 800 million viewers could witness C in real time C nations interacting in the Olympic arena. Tokyo, its people, and technological prowess, were put on display for the world to see. The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were a boon to an already rising nation. It was Seiko's big shot to fulfill the executives' desire to become a truly global brand. Shortly after the Rome Olympic Games in 1960, Seiko made the preparations for the '64 games a top priority, with a massive engineering effort to produce a number of timers, clocks, and stopwatches, as well as a thorough marketing effort t...
Sunday Rewind: The Legend Of Squale
Gather 'round the campfire, kids. We're revisiting one of the best tales in dive-watch history today, as told by our intrepid dive-watch columnist and Editor-at-Large, Jason Heaton. Heaton chronicled the history of this underrated dive-watch specialist back in 2014, just as the modern iteration of the company was seeing a surge in popularity among collectors, worldwide.? An early Squale ad In addition to creating watches of its own, Squale C whose name derives from the Italian word for "shark" C was a major player in the production of dive watch cases. You might recognize vintage dive watches from the '60s, '70s, and '80s that...
What Does Watch Frequency Mean?
If you've ever been on a watch website, let's just say HODINKEE, you've probably seen a slice of technical information pivotal to understanding how your watch works C the frequency of the movement inside. So what's the deal? Are watches that beat faster more precise? The new El Primero 3600 Automatic inside the Zenith Chronomaster Original allows you to track elapsed time in intervals of up to one-tenth of a second. There's plenty of conjecture online about the exact relationship between frequency, precision, and rate stability. And every time I think I have a solid understanding of the whose-its and whats-it of beats, balance...
The Cartier Tank Must 'SolarBeat' Review
Talking about, and writing about, and reviewing, the Cartier Tank C pretty much any Cartier Tank C is not the easiest thing in the world because after a hundred or so years of Cartier Tanks, not only has much of what can be said, been said, you're also talking about something that is as much of a cultural institution as it is a watch. You might as well try to critique the Mona Lisa, or Queen Elizabeth II, or Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey, or a Brooks Brothers button-down collar shirt C you can do it but the sheer inertia of your subject means you are no more likely to affect the course of your subject through history than a remora is likely to alter the course of a whale shark. ...
Limited-Edition Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Salmon Dial
This ones more about what we dont know, or at least didnt. A limited-edition Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar on global release is the kind of watch that should have the rafters echoing with the clamoring of the faithful, but this one appears to have slipped all but unnoticed to the foot of the parish newsletter.?Why? Because upon launch last December, the Ref. 26615TI.OO.1220TI.01 was only available in Japan. The first 150 pieces were reserved for the Japanese market, and the first 100 of those were sold exclusively through the venerable retailer Yoshida. And perhaps because travel to Japan these days is off the cards for much of the world, the international watc...
The Candy Sweet Brew Metric Choronograph
At the end of last month, I wrote a story about a great-looking new chronograph from NYC-based Brew Watches and mentioned how I was curious to check it out at some point in the future. I didnt have to wait long, as a loaner of the new Metric arrived at my door just a few days later. Opening its simple box, the Metric?C here in its colorful Retro Dial iteration C is very close to what I expected from the original brand images. To recap for those that missed the original post, the Metric measures 36mm wide and 41.5mm lug to lug, and is just 10.75mm thick with a sapphire crystal, steel caseback, and 50 meters of water resistance....
Best Watches From The Olympics
An Olympic Games like none other came to a close this weekend. And while the stands were mostly empty, our watch-loving hearts were full. Here are a few of our favorite world-class watches on the wrists of top-tier athletes (and the occasional coach). If you need us we'll be training for Winter Olympic watch-spotting. Danny Milton Is Giving A Medal To ... Draymond Green's Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar In White CeramicDraymond Green was the unofficial king of the watches at this year's games. As Logan Baker said, "We saw him with the Royal Oak Concept Black Panther Flying Tourbillon, and aft...
HODINKEE Radio: Watching Movies & Collecting Hype
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! We've got a super fun two-parter for you this week on HODINKEE Radio. First up, I sit down with our own Danny Milton to talk about his "Watching Movies" column, which has quickly become one of the most popular and most talked-about features on the site. Danny shares how he got the idea to push silver screen watch-spotting a few steps further, what he's learned about both movies and watches in the process, and how these columns sometimes end up totally different from...
Bulgari Octo Finissimo Perpetual Calendar For Only Watch Tantalum
Tantalum is one of the rarer materials used for watch cases, and with good reason. The finished product can be really beautiful C tantalum has a lovely blue-grey luster, and it's twice as heavy as stainless steel, which means that watches made of the metal have a certain physical authority, as well. That heft and visual appeal come at a price, though C tantalum is one of the most difficult metals in the world to machine. It's difficult enough to work with that in its entire history, HODINKEE has covered tantalum watches on only a handful of occasions. The most recent was the limited edition Urwerk UR-105 in tantalum, and in that story, Danny Milton pointed out so...
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 The range within the world of vintage watches is continuously surprising. Be it a Rolex purse watch that doubles as a table clock or a Juvenia Architect with sextant-stylized hands, there is always something new and radically different to discover. This week's HODINKEE vintage drop encapsulates that range ...