Category: Insights

Richard Mille and Pro Cyclist Mathieu van der Poel Put a Quarter-Million Dollar Watch In Serious Risk of Destruction

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Richard Mille RM 67-02 Ultra Flat watch

But it struck me as a big deal anyways, because for the longest time the relationship between cycling and watches has been nearly non-existent. Back in the day you didn’t see Bartali or Eddy Merckx sporting a watch or a Swiss endorsement. Hinault or Hincappe, no. Even the endorsement-heavy Lance Armstrong didn’t land anything from a watch company. It shows an incredible lack of imagination, really. Over the years Tissot has flirted with cycling as a timekeeper. The unremarkable Festina brand back in the 1990s had a cycling team that kicked some ass in the mountains. More recently, Tudor sponsors an eponymous team with Swiss cycling champion Fabien Cancellara as director. But on the whole, cycling and watches have not really consummated their relationship.

A Seiko SJE093 62MAS Reissue Kicks Two Vintage Rolex Submariners Out of the Watch Box

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Seiko 62MAS and Vacheron Platinum Dress Watch

While I was away from BTD, I acquired two neo-vintage Rolex Subs. One is a two-tone 16803 from 1984 I got in a bizarre cash deal. It doesn’t glow, as the tritium has burnt through it’s half life a couple times. 1984 was the first year of the two-tone Sub, so eventually this will be a significant watch for collectors. The other Rolex Sub is a perfectly ghosted 16800 from 1981, making it a “transitional Sub,” which has a sapphire crystal and the quick-set date, but the old-school matte dial of the earlier 1680s. As my colleague, friend and well-known Sub-fanatic Greg Bredosian says, “That’s peak Sub right there.”

Podcast – Insights E37 – I Fell Into The Rolex Black Hole

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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.

Why We Built The Watch Space App

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Without the Watchville app, the global watch community no longer had a central hub, an intersection through which much of this community’s endless output would pass all day every day so that the siloing effects of digital life didn’t divide our community the way it has divided nearly every community I can think of over the past decade or so. This is why you’ll find The Watch Space app is so inclusive.

Insight – The Watch Scene – Will The 2020s Be The Decade of Glitz?

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Indeed, there is a bonafide luxury revival going on, a kind of fuck it moment born of what I won’t speculate too broadly, but I haven’t seen anything like it since the 1980s. Whatever down-to-earth aesthetic we had up until the 1980s was tossed aside as the hippies became yuppies, tax reforms favored the rich, and people like the previous president of the USA became (I can’t believe I’m going to say this) tastemakers. Maybe today’s glitz is his fault. Yes, I know he wears a Vacheron, but have you seen his toilet?

Insight – The Argument for Cheap Tool Watches and Expensive Dress Watches

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Vacheron Constantin Tradionelle Triple Calendar Moonphase

Despite believing the subjective experience of watches is ultimately all we have, I am not one of those egalitarian folks who believes that because someone enjoys a watch it thus belongs in this world. Watch critics like that really aren’t critics at all. They practice what a colleague recently called reportage, as if by using the French word sucking up to advertisers for a living was somehow sophisticated.