The Skinny The Many Meanings of “In-House” In-house has become a contested phrase, its definition various and vague. We need to clarify how I’ll use in-house in regard to this Zodiac Super Sea Wolf Compression 53 dive watch, because the in-house Calibre STP1-13, which is performing with a precision of +2.5 sec/day, is a big… Read more »
What everyone wants in a rubber strap may not be identical, but if you’re looking for the best dive watch straps, the Isofrane and Tropics are your best bet because the rubber compound and the smart heritage designs are unmatched.
Allen upends our current way of diving up the watch community into collectors, enthusiasts and consumers and suggests that we’d be far better off describing different levels of horological experience. Not to be missed for the die-hards, in this episode Allen’s “phenomenology of watches” finally pays some dividends.
Our Current Paradigm Is Divisive Within the watch community we hear quite a lot about the distinction between watch enthusiasts and collectors. We consider enthusiasts to be on a lower order than collectors. Enthusiasts may own dozens of watches, but they are dilettantes who lack the focus, dedication and connoisseurship that characterize the collector. Collectors… Read more »
The Skinny Planting the Seed There comes a time in a watch-enthusiast parent’s life when the big question looms large… Specifically, what watch can I buy my precious offspring that will allow me to project my love of watches onto him or her in the vane hope they, too, will ‘catch the bug’; leading to… Read more »
The Skinny Get On The Waiting List Watches are going bonanza in 2022, and even small brands like anOrdain are now putting customers on waiting lists. No one likes this, especially when you’re waiting for some plastic thing made by robots in a factory like The MoonSwatch, or some cheapy from a small-batch microbrand that… Read more »
The Skinny Extending Seiko’s Heritage (Not Regurgitating It) I’m done with Seiko’s reissued dive watches. They’re never just like the original, the large Prospex logo announces that fact, and I’ve just grown bored with the whole enterprise. Seiko was always a forward-looking brand, and I think advanced design and technology celebrates Seiko’s heritage more than… Read more »
The Skinny Hard Core, No Riffs It’s 2022, and we are living through an horological renaissance. A proliferation of iterations has flooded the marketplace with monthly, even weekly, releases from nearly every brand, with the result being new watch announcements every day. Largely based on “novel colorways” that “remind us of nature” or “inspire us… Read more »
This guide is a one-stop reference for Vacheron Constantin’s serially-produced, large-format, round, time-only wristwatch movements of the 20th century. As such, this guide should help the collector of vintage Vacheron Constantin dress watches which were, to use the era’s lingo, intended for gentlemen. The Era of Serial Production With Jaeger-LeCoultre Well into the 1920s, Vacheron… Read more »
The Skinny Dive Watches as History Lessons Jacob Hatzidimitriou wants us to know about the history of Greek diving, and he uses his watch brand, Ianos, to teach us. Specifically, Hatzidimitriou takes sponge diving as his subject, a harvesting practice that dates back millennia in Greece. With Ianos’ first dive watch, the Abyssos, we learned… Read more »