Best Super NEWS Watches
Watch Spotting At Art Basel Miami 2022
Miami Basel, the renowned counterpart to Art Basel, has become synonymous with celebrity-laden parties, loud music, and scandalous outfits. Most of the Miami Beach activity, which is spread out over the week, seems to go down after dark, and even if it's a daytime event the bass is definitely still bumping. There is?a whole spectrum of brand activations, lavish events, and parties, so it's easy to see how anybody could get lost in the Miami sauce. The art, however, remains the primary focus for most people attending C let's not forget that this is an outpost of the world's premier contemporary art fair! For the Hodinkee crew,?it was watches, first and foremost. W...
The new Chopard Alpine Eagle in Yellow Gold.
I have spent a good deal of time, actually more like a borderline unhealthy amount of time, complaining about the prominent use of rose gold in today's watch market. Frankly speaking, I just don't like the stuff. But I'm a sensible, empathic human, when I need to be C I understand that rose gold, despite being an inferior precious metal in my eyes, must somehow be attractive to a wide pool of people. Those people certainly don't run in my social circles, but I'm guessing that every Swiss watch executive out there can't be entirely wrong. The use of rose gold wouldn't bother me so much if it weren't for the fact that yellow gold seemed to suffer complete ??annihil...
Pre-Owned Picks: The GMT: A Watch Built For Travel
The holidays are here again, and it's time to pack that ugly Christmas sweater sweet Aunt Mary gave you and start the annual pilgrimage to meet up with the family. As you travel across time zones, keeping track of what the local clock says can be easy if you have a Multi-Band6 G-Shock. A feature that automatically updates the time via radio waves. For the mechanical watch crowd, however, we're going to have to go a little more old-school with a GMT watch. A GMT watch has two different hour hands that can each keep track of a different hour, a simple solution to knowing both home and away times.?This complication rose to popularity in tandem with commercial aviation in the 1950s, when flying ...
Hodinkee's 2022 Budget Watch Of The Year
As we've seen over the past several days, 2022 was undoubtedly an exciting year for all kinds of watches, but I'm here to talk about my bread and butter, budget watches. Seeing as a big part of a budget category is, well, the budget, we assigned a somewhat arbitrary limit of $1,000. And though you'll see that such a limit allows for a solid group of great options, you don't need to spend $1,000 to get a great watch as our budget watch of the year doesn't even spend half of the maximum budget. When we asked the Hodinkee Editorial Team to vote for their Budget Watch Of The Year, the winner didn't exactly run away with the prize. That only speaks to how many great o...
Talking Watches: With The New England Patriots' Special Teams Unit
Today's Talking Watches is more than just our first episode of the new year. It's also the first time we've featured three collectors in a single video. What can we say, they work as a team. The team in question is the New England Patriots. And the players in this episode are punter Jake Bailey, long snapper Joe Cardona, and placekicker Nick Folk. (L to R): Joe Cardona, Jake Bailey, and Nick Folk. Photo: Cooper Neill/Getty Images Their work on the field has made them close friends, and has led them together down the rabbit hole of watch collecting. While a lot of athletes play a perpetual game of o...
The Hamilton Murph 38 Review: A Great Watch For Under $1,000
You might've noticed that I love movies C a lot. And so it should come as no surprise that when I heard Hamilton was planning to release the now famous "Murph" watch in a new size C a better and more wearable size C I was excited. I wrote to the brand right away to see just how soon I could get the watch in for review. One arrived shortly after I wrote my introductory post, some three weeks ago. This is an important watch to me. I, like many others, saw it on the big screen in Interstellar in 2014 and was taken by the integration of a watch into the story. The Murph is so key that the plot simply can't conclude ...
Why I Love My Casio A100WE-1AVT
In Watch of the Week, we invite Hodinkee staffers and friends to explain why they love a certain watch. This week's columnist is Keitravis Squire, an Atlanta-based filmmaker who works at Hodinkee as an e-commerce photographer. He's telling us about his Casio A100WE-1AVT. I love creating. I always have my camera with me. I love going to museums. I'm a big film guy; I'm always at screenings or going to the movies. It's what I went to school for at Georgia State. I love things that are going to spark something within me and make me think. I became interested in watches in earnest after I joined Hod...
Hodinkee's Tool Watch of the Year - The Tudor Pelagos 39
Once a watch meant for a specific role, the modern context of a tool watch has become somewhat more nebulous, expanding and evolving to include a wide range of watches that have traded specificity for the hopes of raw capability and hard-wearing charm. A great tool watch should be tough enough to keep up with you while also providing some sort of data or value for a given task, even if you have no plans for such a task. These days, the idea of a tool watch has become a reference to times in which divers needed a dive watch, pilots needed a GMT, and we strapped watches to submarines and set a course for the bottom of the ocean. ...
The History Of The Times Square Ball Drop
Time balls don't come up in discussion much on Hodinkee. In our 14-year history, I could only find two articles (here and here) that detail this peculiar quirk in timekeeping history. But unlike other archaic devices used to measure or signal time (I'm looking at you, clepsydra), there are still time balls among us, hidden in plain sight. In fact, there's a current-day example that's celebrated all around the world, even if 99 percent of people aren't aware of its origin. That's right, the tens of thousands of revelers that gather in Times Square every year on New Year's Eve to make merry, toast to a better year ahead, and freeze their butts off while watching th...
Hero image: Courtesy of Oak & Oscar I met Chase Fancher, founder of the Chicago-based small-scale independent watch company Oak & Oscar, for the first time in the fall of 2017. He had recently launched (and sold out of) Oak & Oscar's third watch, the Jackson Chronograph, a 40mm flyback chrono with a unique manual-wind column wheel movement from Eterna. That release was a big step forward. After Oak & Oscar debuted in 2015 with the time-and-date Burnham and following it up in 2016 with the Sandford GMT, the Jackson was a bold, complicated move for what seemed like a small Midwestern outfit. I wanted to learn more, and F...
Lionel Messi And The Best Watches of the 2022 World Cup
On Sunday, the 2022 FIFA World Cup comes to a close as Argentina and France take the pitch in the finals. While the rest of the world has spent the past several weeks glued to the players' feet, we've been focused on their wrists.? When the athletes take to the press podium or use the pre-game stroll from the team bus to the locker room as their own personal fashion show, what watch did they pair with the fit? When a coach screams and points at the field, what's that watch that just peeked out from under his cuff? We may not know much about soccer or football C?or frankly, which word to use (feel free to spend all day debating this in...
What Watch Does Ryan Gosling Wear In "La La Land"?
What makes something a holiday movie has always been a touchy subject. Last year, I wrote about Die Hard (1988). It takes place during a Christmas party and has a Santa-related tagline (you know the one). I said it then and I'll say it now C it's a Christmas movie. And so I got to thinking about this year's final pick before we draw the curtain on Watching Movies for the year (still can't believe this is the end of year two for WM). There were some obvious choices out there for the taking. In the end, I landed on a film that's not overtly a holiday movie, but one in which the holidays play an important role in setting the plot in motion. It just so happens to sta...
Best Watch Secret Santa Gifts Under $50
Ah yes, 'tis the season for strained holiday party chatter and forced office cheer. Lucky for us, we more or less like each other around these parts C?so when it came time for ye olde office secret Santa, everyone was pretty kind of excited. The rules were simple: Spend up to $50, and send it to your person anonymously in the appropriate window of time. The gifts didn't have to be watch-related, but as you will soon see, most of them were. And this story is the big reveal where the editors learn the identity of their Santa! We hope you'll read this and walk away with a little affordable gift-giving inspo C plus a better sense of just ...
Hodinkees 2022 Watch Of The Year: The MoonSwatch
This has been a momentous year in watches. Tudor seemed to release a new classic every other month. Rolex went left-handed. AP celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Royal Oak with a brand-new Jumbo reference. Vacheron brought back the 222. Patek revived the Nautilus. These watches all have one thing in common: They are way more expensive than the one receiving our inaugural Watch of the Year award.?Whereas our watch of the year C the MoonSwatch collaboration between Omega and Swatch C was meant for the masses. In the end it proved to be so popular that, months later, many would-be collectors are still waiting to plunk down their $260. But the global excitement a...
Hodinkee Holiday Gift Guide: Its Now Or Never
Time is quickly running out to get that special gift for family, friends, or yours truly this holiday season. Luckily, we here at Hodinkee have been putting together gift guides over the past month from editors, friends of Hodinkee, and the Hodinkee Shop team. Let's take a look back to find the best stocking stuffers or gifts for kids, to see which Grand Seiko Nora Taylor recommends, or play horological dress-up in Danny Milton's watch-themed shirt pick. Along this great journey, Gary Shteyngart gave us his picks and Maggi Simpkins delighted us with a touch of holiday inspiration.?If you've already looked at all the gift guides, you might want to give them a second take. As others filled the...
Hodinkee Pre-Owned Picks: The Latest Additions
Between holiday shopping, travel planning, and bomb cyclones, keeping track of the watches that are coming into the Hodinkee Shop has probably not been your top priority. The presents are now open and received with grateful smiles. The weary traveler is now home. The worst of the weather is behind us. Pour that final glass of eggnog for the season and see what new arrivals you have missed. You might find the one worth gifting yourself.If you have been keeping up with what has been in the shop, then you might want to also see if the watch you have been eyeing is in our Clearing Out the Vault sale, ending 12/31. Omega Seamaster Bullhead Limited Edition 225.12.43.50...
We Designed Our 2022 Fantasy Watches
If you were ever to spend a few moments as a digital fly on the walls of HODINKEE's many Slack channels, you'd likely not be surprised by how many conversations revolve around watches we wish existed or even simply the small changes we might make to a watch with the hopes of making it subjectively perfect. It's a foundational element of watch nerdery, the idea that your tastes, along with a few strokes of a photoshop brush, could render unto the watch industry the next "it watch." Or, at the very least, a watch that you would love to own.?As such, we thought it would be fun to have the Editorial team dream big C that is, as big as James' JV Photoshop skills will allow?C and offer up a dream ...
How To Buy A Patek Philippe Nautilus Reference 5711
Thierry Stern warned us the end was coming. "I have to be very tough on the quantity of steel watches. I don't want steel taking over the lead in the whole collection." He explained that he'd seen other brands produce too many steel watches C?and once they go down that road, there's no going back. "I am limiting the steel versions, mostly the Nautilus," he added. Stern was insistent that, of the 62,000 watches Patek produced annually, no more than 25 to 30 percent be made in steel. Less than two years after that interview, the Nautilus reference 5711 was officially discontinued in 2021 without announcement...
Pre-Owned Picks: Wrists Come In All Sizes, And Watches Do Too
What size watch is right for my wrist? This is one of the first questions someone asks when buying their first watch. Unfortunately, the answer is not as straightforward as you might think. How big or small of a watch you prefer is really the first question you should ask yourself. I've seen men with larger wrists wearing vintage 34mm pieces that looked great on them and women with small wrists proudly wearing a 55mm Omega Ploprof.? The width of the case also doesn't tell you the whole story. The lug-to-lug measurements are often a better indicator of how much real estate a watch will take up on the wrist. For most, the larger the wrist, the larger the watch they...
A Visit to Holstein, The City That Oris Built
In my work as a National Geographic Explorer, I've focused on the abstract concept of community C people bound not just by geography or history, but by the emotion of shared experiences and responsibility. I recently took this perspective with me to a small Swiss valley in the Jura mountain range. Even the architecture of the place speaks to a complex past and a community whose rise, struggles, and rebirth have gone hand-in-hand with the pastel-pink factory in the town center. Signage on the Oris headquarters in Ho?lstein, Switzerland Welcome to Holstein, home of Oris. ...