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Best Super NEWS Watches
HODINKEE's Jack Forster Looks At The Basics Of Watch Movement Design
My old partner in horological crime, the watchmaker John Davis, used to write technical watch reviews for ThePuristS.com in the early 2000s, and in a review of the Seiko Black Monster, he opened with this memorable observation: "Watches are machines." He is right, of course C the watch, and the movement, are first and foremost mechanisms with a job to do. And lots of movements are utilitarian in appearance C in terms of numbers, probably most of them. That doesn't mean they're not fun to look at C I am firmly of the belief that a watch movement of any kind is interesting enough as a machine, that someone ought to be able to marvel at them at will, especially if they're that person's first fo...
Where To Shop For Watches In Houston
HODINKEE writers are always on the move. In "Neighborhood Watch," we'll show you the world through our eyes. This is how we (and watch-loving locals) experience some of our favorite cities around the world. Set your GMT bezel and join us on the trip. Houston natives have a lot of pride in where they live. I should know.?I spent my formative years living in Texas' largest city and I'm still quick to shout it out as my hometown when asked. That Texas-sized pride isn't unmerited. The Bayou City is America's fourth largest, and many metrics consider it the most diverse big city in the United States. And while you might already know it as ...
Jack Forster Goes Hands On With The Grald Genta Arena Retro Mickey Mouse
What happens when an icon takes on an icon? There isn't a cartoon character better known than Mickey Mouse, and in the watch world, there isn't a better-known designer than Grald Genta, designer of the Royal Oak (and hundreds of other watches). Under his own name, Genta produced a bewildering variety of watches, which included extravagantly jeweled high complications, ultra-thin repeaters, and perhaps most famously, his cartoon character watches which included everything from the Pink Panther, to the mouse that made Disney a household name. An original Retro Fantasy Mickey, 1990s I said "famous" but Genta's character watches ...
Happenings: Theodor Prenzel To Lecture At The Horological Society Of New York
The NOMOS caliber DUW 3001 could be hidden from view behind a stack of nine postage stamps. At 3.2 millimeters in height, NOMOS caliber DUW 3001 is thinner than almost everything else in the world of watchmaking that self-winds and is produced in large-scale series C and yet it is still highly precise. The successive caliber DUW 6101 with patented date mechanism measures only 0.4 millimeters more. How was this even made possible? At the March 2022 meeting of the Horological Society of New York, on Thursday, March 10, Theodor Prenzel, Head of Design Engineering at NOMOS Glashtte, will explain the new construction principle in co...
Vintage Watches: Our Experts Debate Over A Pair Of Rolex Submariner Ref. 5513s
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? Email us at [email protected] with some photos. Want to sell your pre-owned watch? Click here. This Week's Vintage Watches And now for something completely different ... Ok, maybe it isn't completely different. After all, the Vintage Team is still bringing a drop of nearly 20 fresh vintage watches to the HODINKEE Shop. Nothing will change about our selection, of course; click through to find Heuers, Datejusts, Vulcai...
The New Breitling Top Time Triumph
Those feeling jaded by yet another motorsport-watch collab may want to give the new Breitling x Triumph pairing a look. The partnership may have the usual trappings C a focus on performance and innovation, marketed with a special edition watch to match a special edition vehicle C but because this is Breitling and Triumph, in comes a dose of rebellious, retro-cool. Plus bucketloads of history. The new Top Time Triumph specifically harks back to the caf racers of the 1960s, a subculture that sprung up in post-austerity, post-war UK and America, when stylish motorcycles became the must-have wheels, their riders shuttling from hip caf to hip caf. Think James Dea...
Meet Marin Instruments, A Young Brand That's Modernizing The Classic '60s Skin Diver
During the day, Justin Walters works on satellites for the Department of Energy at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He couldn't tell me more than that. What he could tell me about, however, is Marin Instruments, the brand he founded in 2019 to fulfill his vision of bringing back the skin diver. It all started in Kansas City, where Walters learned to repair watches at a small shop when he was in his 20s. That job put him through school, where he studied visual arts and graphic design.?Now 32, he's applying both his watchmaking know-how and design skill set to create a brand that conceptualizes the skin diver in a way that's in line...
What Would A Modern Omega Flightmaster Look Like?
I despise the usage of superlatives when it comes to watches. Marketing departments do way too much of it already. And while I don't want to perpetuate this horological malpractice, if you were to ask me what the most interesting pilot's watch of all time is, I'd have trouble answering with anything other than the Omega flightmaster (yes, the f is lowercase on purpose). The flightmaster makes your average pilot's watch look like a bowl of dry iceberg lettuce without any dressing. In fact, it makes most watches look utterly boring in comparison, with its colorful display boasting the functionality of both a chronograph and a GMT c...
HODINKEE asks, are hard to pronounce brand names tough on sales?
I have always wondered what effect the name of a watch brand has on its sales, leaving aside other considerations. Of course you can't, in fact, leave aside other considerations but I don't think the name of a watch brand is necessarily completely inconsequential, either. Any marketing professional worth their Madison Avenue corner office will tell you that the wrong name can get you off on the wrong foot. I very much doubt that Rolex would be as successful as it is if it made mediocre watches, but if you're looking for as big a slice of the international market for luxury watches as possible having a simple, catchy name can't be a bad thing C especially if it rolls off the tongue no matter ...
Want To See The World's Smallest Watch?
Watches are for human wrists, unless you're talking to Robbie Jones. He is the brains and hands behind the cult Instagram account eloquently named Tiny Ass Props. Jones makes, as the name suggests, very tiny watches C watches not meant for the wrists of you or me, but rather for dolls (well, actually action figures). There's a collecting community out there for figurines that rivals even the watch world. Great detail is paid to the sculpting and creation of figures based on characters from pop culture, but Jones noticed a massive void in this community of small things. For all of the craftsmanship in the likenesses and wardrobes at one-sixth scale, nobody was mak...
Six Pre-Owned Watches With Blue Dials
Every Thursday, at 11:00 AM ET, we highlight six different watches that have recently landed in HODINKEE Pre-Owned. This week, our friends in the HODINKEE Shop wanted to highlight all things blue C?so they put together a special selection of blue-dialed watches that you can check out right here. We've highlighted a few of our favorites from their selection, below.? OMEGA Speedmaster Olympic Games Collection Tokyo 2020 Blue Limited Edition The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics just wrapped up, a little over seven months since the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics wrapped up. Time shenanigans aside, this will be C?hopefully C?the only time that such a...
Welcome once again to that center of all things watch-related, that horological Rome to which all roads lead, which is known by the humble yet somehow universally acclaimed name of Hey, HODINKEE! You ask and, as always, we (try) to answer. This week's questions range from the practical to the perverse. One reader wants to know which Cartier Tank Amricaine to buy as a gift. Another asks a deep-cutting question which any chronograph owner has probably asked themselves at one point or another, which is: Is it okay to leave my chronograph running all the time? (Spoiler alert: it depends.) And another reader wants to know if a screw-down crown on a watch meant for de...
Severance, on Apple TV+ Is All About Watches
If we had a dime for every time a friend texted us about a new TV show and said "you HAVE to watch it," we could damn near buy an Aquanaut. So we're not trying to be those guys right now. But we're telling you, we can't stop watching the new Apple TV+ show Severance, which has a surprisingly strong watch component for a dystopian office drama. Directed by Ben Stiller, the show follows a group of corporate employees at a company called Lumon who've undergone an operation called "severance." The invasive procedure involves having a microchip implanted into your brain to bifurcate your memories. When at work, you have no memory of your personal life, and when you le...
I Bought A Bag Of Watches For $50
A bell dinged as I pushed open the door to a sprawling miasma of cabinets, tables, and display cases. Each and every level surface was packed with collectibles, oddities, and forgotten trinkets. If youre imagining souvenir shot glasses, dusty LPs, individually bagged fishing lures, long-forgotten model cars, antique glass bottles, some lovely vintage furniture, and a labyrinth of antique spoons commemorating a variety of Canadian hockey teams C?you're most of the way there. But you can keep all of that. As I pulled into the gravel parking lot of a horseshoe-shaped single-story building not far outside of Hamilton, Ontario, I had...
Everything You Need To Know About The Omega Seamaster
It was late morning, this past Wednesday, when Omega posted a teaser video on its Instagram page that not so subtly alluded to the release of a new dive watch. What's interesting is that it mentions a specific year C 1932. That's a significant year because it's when Omega released the Marine, a rectangular, Cartier-looking piece commonly considered to be the first commercially available dive watch. The Marine is no longer a model or collection in the broader Omega stable. If I had to guess, it's likely that the brand is preparing to unveil some sort of Marine tribute inside its modern dive watch offering: The Seamaster collection. With excitement brewing over wha...
Jonah Hill Wore A Fake $500,000 Watch In 'Don't Look Up"
Way back in 2017, a new music festival was splashed all over social media. It was touted as being the greatest party of all time C the event to end all events. It was called the Fyre Festival. Turns out the brains behind Fyre revealed himself to be a fraud, collecting checks and hyping up a party that would never happen. Ja Rule is also involved. There's a documentary about it on Netflix, and you should watch it if you're interested in that story. But that's not exactly what we're here to talk about today. In 2021, that same Netflix released an Oscar hopeful turned Oscar-nominee from Adam McKay (of The Big Short fame), the one-time Will Ferrell partner turned con...
A Review Of The Timex Giorgio Galli S1 Automatic 38mm.
I will admit it. I've been on a bit of a Timex splurge over the last 12 months. Waterburys, Weekenders, Marlins, and M79s have all found their way into my collection as impulse control has weakened and my burgeoning collection of budget buys has blossomed. As my watch box has filled up with both quartz and mechanical Timex watches, I've both been surprised and have grown accustomed to Timex's general high level of quality control. Of the seven Timex watches that have entered my collection recently, none have suffered from the aesthetic flaws or alignment issues that plague other mass-market producers of mechanical watches in the $500-and-below range. ...
The Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean Ultra Deep in Titanium And 'O-MEGASTEEL''
Remember back in the summer of 2019 when Omega showed off the Planet Ocean Ultra Deep by strapping it to Victor Vescovo's submarine and letting it play Second Mate for a trip down 10,928 meters C that's a hair over 35,853 feet C to the bottom of the ocean? Well, now you can get your hands on the civilian version of the Planet Ocean Ultra Deep. But don't let "civilian" fool you: The new Ultra Deep is a serious performance piece that can handle serious pressure, including that of being Omega's latest flagship dive watch. While the original concept version that toured to the bottom of the ocean on the Limiting Factor (that's the nam...
The Cartier Tank Cintre That Never Was
In Watch of the Week, we invite HODINKEE staffers and friends to explain why they love a certain watch. This week's columnist is our very own Director of Limited Editions. Sometimes an object is designed in a way that is so perfect there is simply no way it can be improved upon. It becomes the archetype of its category, the very image that flashes into our minds when mentioned. For furniture, that might be a Jean Prouv 305 Mtropole chair or an Eames 670 Lounge chair. For a car, a late '60s Porsche 911S. Tailored clothing, a 1980s Armani double-breasted suit. And for mechanical watches, you can argue that honor falls to the Rolex Submariner. These objects are so...
Chatting With The Man Behind @VandelayHouseOfHorology On Instagram
James Stratton, 35, is a pharmacy technician based in Louisville, Kentucky, who C?like many of us C?enjoys collecting Seiko watches and watching Seinfeld. Three months ago, he decided to combine those two pastimes by creating the Vandelay House of Horology (@vandelayhouseofhorology), an Instagram account dedicated to relatable watch memes that have been filtered through the perspective of the classic '90s NBC sitcom.? View this post on Instagram A post shared by Art Vandelay (@vandelayhouseofhorology) The result is comedy gold.?By using recognizable Seinfeld characters and scenes as a background, the memes have an ac...