Best Super NEWS Watches
Best Omega Speedmasters Of The 1990s
Welcome to?'90s Week, where we're revisiting the raddest (and most underrated) watches of the decade, plus the trends and innovations that defined the end of the 20th century. Plug in your dial-up modem and grab a Crystal Pepsi.?We'll be here all week. The Speedmaster Reduced gets a bad rap for its ever-so-slightly-off proportions and finicky automatic movement. For a long time, it's been ignored by collectors (myself included) and?therefore relatively inexpensive to pick up. I figured if I'm going for a Speedmaster, it might as well be the professional model. But there is one specific series of Speedmaster Reduced watches that ...
All You Need To Know About The Grand Seiko SBGA211 Snowflake
We're reaching that pre-fall portion of the summer where maybe, just maybe, we can put the phrase "heat wave" behind us. It's in that spirit that we're thinking cooler thoughts and even cooler watches. Right on theme is this icon from the house of Grand Seiko: The SBGA211, aka, "The Snowflake."? A couple of years ago, we ranked our favorite watch nicknames, and then we opened things up to the H community. Turns out we all ranked the Snowflake in our top three, which really says something about this piece. With it, you get everything you expect, and more, from a GS: unrivaled finishing, a great wearing experience, and a mesmerizin...
A Primer On The Omega Speedmaster
We are officially in icon territory. The Omega Speedmaster is one of those watches where you can remove the brand name and still know the watch C just Speedmaster. Today, we're looking at the most modern iteration of the famed Moonwatch with the METAS-certified caliber 3861.? Released in 2021, this watch represented the first major shift in the history of the NASA darling in decades. This is the watch collectors were asking for. The movement change was one thing, but so were the dial tweaks (the stepped design, where the inner dial is separated from the minute track), and the vintage-leaning five-link bracelet. All of it comes to...
From a brand perspective, IWC is C more often than not C associated with its Pilot's Watch range. Its most iconic watch, in a modern context, is the Big Pilot, which brings with it a case size of 46mm. But there's a sleeper hit in the mix by way of the Mark XVIII: A stainless steel, black dial model sized at the 40mm sweet spot, that proves that size doesn't make a pilot's watch a pilot's watch. Released in 2016, the Mark XVIII represented a shift towards a more conservative design over the preceding model, with a straightforward Arabic dial layout and simplified date window. This re-design was a return to the norm and a return t...
HODINKEE Hires Five New Editors
As the guy who runs HODINKEE's editorial operation, I pretty much spend every day bursting with pride. Because every day, we open the world of watches to someone new. We have more readers in 2022 than we've ever had before. And to satisfy all those readers, we employ a deep roster of storytellers C a talented, tenacious hit squad of writers, editors, producers, photographers, videographers, podcasters, and social-media mavens.? So I almost can't believe I'm saying this, but it's true: We're adding five more ringers to this all-star team. Many of you already know Anthony Traina as the Chicago-based fou...
Everything You Should Know About A. Lange & Sohne's Early Years
Welcome to '90s Week, where we're revisiting the raddest (and most underrated) watches of the decade, plus the trends and innovations that defined the end of the 20th century. Plug in your dial-up modem and grab a Crystal Pepsi. We'll be here all week. It wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to call Glashtte, Germany, the world's most watchmaking-focused city, a bonafide horological hamlet that makes Switzerland's Valle de Joux look cosmopolitan. But you wouldn't realize that if you had visited Glashtte in the early 1990s. As German reunification slowly became a reality after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the small Saxon city of Glashtte was depressed and econo...
What Watch Does Will Smith Wear In 'Men In Black'
Welcome to?'90s Week, where we're revisiting the raddest (and most underrated) watches of the decade, plus the trends and innovations that defined the end of the 20th century. Plug in your dial-up modem and grab a Crystal Pepsi.?We'll be here all week. Occasionally, I like to trade in my pedantic watch-guy hat for my annoying film-guy scarf and bemoan Marvel: The death of true originality in cinema. I think I did it just last week. As I was preparing to go back to the 1990s for this edition of Watching Movies, I was fully prepared to use Men in Black (1997) to bolster my argument. And then I realized that Men In Black is based on a Marvel comic book! Oh well, the...
Bell & Ross Co-Founder Carlos Rosillo Speaks About Bell & Ross' Path To Success
Welcome to '90s Week, where we're revisiting the raddest (and most underrated) watches of the decade, plus the trends and innovations that defined the end of the 20th century. Plug in your dial-up modem and grab a Crystal Pepsi.?We'll be here all week. Bell & Ross is surprisingly young.?The Paris-based watchmaker turns 30 this year, a clear contrast to the centuries of history other Swiss-based watchmakers are able to cite. In 1992, designer Bruno Belamich (Bell) and entrepreneur Carlos Rosillo (Ross) set out to create their own line of watches that bridged the gap between a traditional tool watch and a rugged military device. The...
Introducing The New H. Moser & Cie Streamliner Tourbillon Vantablack
Vantablack. So fun to say. So fun to look at.?Initially developed at the National Physical Laboratory and frequently found in scientific tools like telescopes and infrared cameras, the carbon nanotube coating, aka the darkest of darks, has made its way into art, cars, and wouldn't you know it, watches.? The cheeky innovators over at Moser have used Vantablack in a few watches before, from 2018's Perpetual Moon Concept to this year's Watches & Wonders, with the very goth Streamliner Chronograph Blacker Than Black. Now they are back (in black, sorry) with the Streamliner Tourbillon Vantablack, which blends the onyx hue with an absolutely captivating red gold. ...
Spotting All The Watches At The Concours d'Elegance
The Concours d'Elegance is a phrase of French origin that translates to Competition of Elegance. This past weekend, that very concours, as well as the Tour d'Elegance, presented by Rolex, took place in beautiful California at Pebble Beach. It's become something of a tradition for HODINKEE to have boots on the ground for this one. And boots we had. Boots admiring (read, drooling over) the killer cars, and boots wearing and spotting the myriad timepieces at the scene. Each year, it becomes abundantly clear that there are two concours taking place at once: One for the cars C the event's intended focus C and one of our own delight, w...
This Orange And Yellow Baltic Chrono Is A '70s Dream
The partnership between horology and auto racing is steeped in tradition. It used to be that a racecar driver would be awarded some form of luxury watch after winning a race. That still happens actually, but today the car/watch crossovers extend far beyond the track. Chalk it up to the proliferation of limited edition watch culture, but I think the output from brands like Porsche Design, or TAG Heuer (between its own Porsche, and the F1 watches) speaks to the elevation of a watch subgenre. In many ways, such a partnership elevates the participating watch brand. Baltic, the once-scrappy, upstart C nay, Kickstart(er) C brand based in France has a partnership with H...
What Are Double-Signed Watches?
To me, the most appealing aspect of vintage watches is their story. That's not what everyone is drawn to C for some it's the charming aesthetics, or perhaps a certain caliber that was only in production for a limited amount of time C but I'm interested in the history. That's what makes an otherwise ordinary timepiece magical.? Sometimes a line of text on the dial of a watch can tell a part of that story, and that's what makes double-signed watches so appealing. A double-signed watch usually bears the name of the retailer on the dial, and that sheds light on where the watch was sold and tells us about a larger relationship between a manufacturer and its reta...
Pre-Owned Picks of Quartz Watches Worth Your Time.
Watches are, at the core, about creating a consistent oscillation that can then be transferred by gearing ratios into the units of time we measure our life by. The enemy of this consistency is friction, shock, creating uniform power delivery, temperature, gravity, magnetism, and really any external force. The slow march of time has given us at least partial solutions to these problems, but the past 50 years have seen several newer high-tech solutions to these problems. Here are some pre-owned picks that bring modern solutions to timeless problems. Breitling Aerospace Evo E79363 Quartz wa...
New Vintage Watches In The HODINKEE Shop
To view the entire current selection of vintage watches available in the HODINKEE Shop, click here. This Week's Vintage Watches With '90s week in the rear view, the Vintage team looks to the not-so-distant future by giving a sneak peak of the HODINKEE Weekend ahead. After all, as summer winds down, when we will get the next opportunity to start the weekend on a Wednesday? Consider this your invitation to start mailing it in, thinking about the BBQ, and relax. Cole Pennington will host the next HODINKEE Weekend which will revolve around double-signed watches, so why not lead off with one of the best you will find for sale today C?a Rol...
Breguet's New Take On The Classique 7337 Is The Epitome Of Quiet Elegance
Breguet just announced a new version of one of its most traditional and recognizable dress watches, the Classique Calendrier 7337. Available in 18k white or rose gold and featuring slight aesthetic tweaks from the last time Breguet reworked the reference, in 2020, the overall appearance and technical specifications of the new model remain consistent with the model's long-running history. The new Breguet Classique Calendrier, in 18k white gold. The Classique 7337 has had a long life at Breguet. You can trace a direct lineage of the design all the way back to the early nineteenth century, when Abraham-Louis Breguet first started...
MB&F Releases Two New Versions Of The LM Split Escapement EVO
Geneva Watch Days?takes place in the Swiss cultural capital from Monday, August 29, to Thursday, September 1, 2022, so stay tuned to HODINKEE in the days ahead for detailed coverage of all the top releases, from brands such as Bulgari, MB&F, Oris, Urwerk, and many more. Hello from Geneva! I'm in Switzerland to cover the third annual Geneva Watch Days exhibition, a small Swiss industry trade show that popped up in 2020, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the conventional trade show calendar was in utter disarray. Unfortunately, we weren't able to attend the first two iterations of the show due to pandemic travel restrictions, so I'm excited ...
Urwerk Introduces The New UR-100V 'UltraViolet'
Geneva Watch Days?takes place in the Swiss cultural capital from Monday, August 29, to Thursday, September 1, 2022, so stay tuned to HODINKEE in the days ahead for detailed coverage of all the top releases, from brands such as Bulgari, MB&F, Oris, Urwerk, and many more. A pioneer of modern, independent watchmaking since the late 1990s, Urwerk founders Martin Frei and Felix Baumgartner have long used their unique, creative sensibilities to rebel against traditional conservative Swiss watchmaking norms. The result? Larger-than-life timepieces influenced by science fiction that can be easily recognized across a room and are typically priced over six figures.? ...
The Grand Seiko SBGY009 Quietly Has One Of The Coolest Movements In The World
My evolution from regular watch agnosticism to an okay-calm-down-buddy level of enthusiasm was triggered by a few key events. One of those moments, I can clearly remember, was my initial encounter with Grand Seiko's proprietary Spring Drive movement technology. I mean, how can you not be fascinated by Spring Drive? I first handled a friend's "Snowflake" SBGA211 in the mid-2010s and Spring Drive has?boggled my mind and strained the relationship between my wrist and my wallet ever since. The smooth-as-butter sweep of the seconds hand around the dial captivated me immediately. Spring Drive exists in a bizarre liminal space between traditional mechanical watchmaking ...
Hyla Ames Bauer To Lecture At The Horological Society Of New York
In the early and mid-20th century, the Swiss watchmaking industry was booming until the Quartz Crisis happened in the 1970s and shook it to its core. At the September 2022 lecture of the Horological Society of New York (HSNY), watch and jewelry writer Hyla Ames Bauer will discuss the Quartz Crisis, beginning with what a quartz watch is, and why it's called a quartz watch and not a battery watch (or some other name). The lecture will also include an overview of how successful Swiss watchmaking was prior to the crisis, and how important it was to the Swiss economy. Bauer will describe the rapid development of quartz timepieces in Japan, at a time when the S...
Michael Williams on the A. Lange & Sohne 1815 Up/Down
When it comes to my watches, there are two big questions: What does my watch say to the world and what does it say to me? We all know that watches are highly personal. They can mark an occasion, reflect your personal style, reward an accomplishment. We feel naked if we leave the house without one strapped to our arm. This is the aspect I'm most interested in. The emotional relationship we build with these tiny machines. I wouldn't call myself a collector. Maybe aficionado would work. Or you could say I'm just a fan. When reference numbers start to come up, I fade into the background. Like so many watch people, I love watches for...