This guide will help anyone interested in any era of pre-owned/vintage Rolex begin their investigation.
Collector Guide – Understand Vintage & Pre-Owned Rolex By Getting Familiar with Four-, Five-, & Six-Digit References
Category: Brands
Hands-On – Bremont Supermarine S302 GMT Dive Watch – Gen II with 24-hour Bezel New For 2023
Editor’s Note: Allen here. I’ve worn a 40mm Bremont S301 for many years now, and it is not only my favorite Bremont but one of my favorite watches of all time. A Sub-killer, I’ve called it. When Davide Cerrato took over for Bremont he said that one of his challenges was finding a watch that would jump to mind when one heard the word “Bremont.” Arguably, he was right that by the early 2020s no single watch jumped to mind. I immediately thought “put the 40mm divers at the center of the brand.” I’ve argued that the 40mm models are already early classics of the 21st century. If this release tells us anything about the bigger picture for Bremont, perhaps it is that Davide’s ability to anchor a brand with iconic models is coming into play. I hope so, as I’d love to watch Bremont capitalize on the classic lines of these 40mm divers.
Hands On – The Panerai PAM01347 & 01348 Radiomir 8 Giorni
And lastly – if redundantly – wearing the PAM01347 and 01348 in an entirely elegant experience. I can’t stress enough how fine these watches feel to wear. Which isn’t at all what most people have been saying about these models, which are crafted to appear as if they’ve been through decades of hard use. Panerai simply can’t make a watch that’s not finished exquisitely, and that finishing along with brave treatments and unique historical designs simply adds up to elegance.
Hands-On – Tudor Black Bay 54
In March of 2023, Tudor released the Black Bay 54 at the Watches & Wonders tradeshow. I’ve seen this feeding frenzy before with the Baselworld 2018 release of the Black Bay 58. Another Black Bay. Should I care? Curiosity manifested and I asked my local Rolex/Tudor AD to let me know when they got one in (even if it’s already allocated).
Hands On – The Panerai PAM01467 Luminor BiTempo Titanium DLC New York Limited Edition
The ultimate strength of the 44mm Luminor, however, is its ability to take on vastly different treatments and always look great. It’s a design that Panerai has long steered in many directions, from fully polished steel time-only models with softened retro colorways to carbon Luminors with pops of primary colors across complicated chronographs. With the limited edition model in hand here, the 44mm Luminor has been given a chic grayed-out treatment to celebrate the opening of Panerai’s new flagship store in Manhattan. With a nod to the Big Apple area code, there are 212 examples for sale of the PAM01467.
Swifty-Fathoms, Swatchpain – How The Nicknames of the Swatch x Blancpain Fifty-Fathoms Mock The Swatch Group
Collectively naming a watch has become a way to induce its significance as an object of popular culture. Most watch nicknames are affectionately playful; consider Seiko’s Shogun, Grand Seiko’s Snowflake, Omega’s Speedy, or Rolex’s sugary soda pop GMTs. But when it came to the SWATCH x Blancpain Fifty-Fathoms, the proposed nicknames seemed, if not exactly unaffectionate, certainly devised to cast some measure of disdain onto the thing.
Podcast – Insights E36 – SWATCH’s BIOCERAMIC – THE UNVARNISHED FACTS (& OPINIONS)
Is SWATCH’s BIOCERAMIC anything more than a petrolium-based plastic? Find out in this episode as Allen shares his investigation into this divisive material, its history, its current context, its chemical makeup, and even an email about it from a SWATCH representative.
Hands On – The Panerai PAM914
Panerai releasing the PAM914 is like the Rolling Stones playing “Satisfaction.” It was just an undeniably dead-center kind of watch, the one you might have sent out to space to represent Panerai to aliens. It’s the Panerai that didn’t have some feature you wished was or wasn’t there. Here’s why this watch is the perfect Panera.
Curating the Collection – The Return of the Doxa SUB 300 Searambler -1970s Ugly Is Back
For me, the Searambler is the weirdest Doxa of them all—less sporty than orange or black, and totally ready for bare chested-Dads of the 1970s. The Searambler is the watch for men who smoked cigarettes with their wetsuits tied around their waist as they discussed the next dive plan. The Searambler is the watch stuck in a drawer in a lakeside cabin in northern Michigan ready to be discovered by some yet-unborn great-grandchild who will hold it as a genuine antique, a lost family heirloom this great-grandchild may see on his great-grandfather’s wrist in a faded Kodachrome photograph in a shoe box. In this hypothetical photograph, grandad has a cigarette in one hand and the backside of his bikini-clad wife (that’s great grandma?!) in the other. Their carefree smiles and sun-burnt skin suggest a pre-apocalyptic moment when hope and happiness weren’t so rare—a mid-century moment when technology was still a good and simple, not some self-taught AI unleashed to consume its maker. The SUB 300 Searambler is a watch a man could wear while water-skiing without a life preserver, maybe even with a beer in one hand.
Field Report – The Turtle That Crawled Through Chernobyl – A Destroyed Seiko 6309-7040
I take a look down at the Seiko 6309 Turtle, the lume long since faded. I turn the Seiko towards a window. I am almost in complete darkness, my camera seeing more than I can. The Seiko’s bezel indicates that my hour is almost up. I retrace my steps from empty room to empty room and find our fixer and our driver smoking cigarettes at the entrance to the hospital.