b0r1s wrote:

You mean like this lovely thing the missus got me for my 50th?

Exactly that one. For the price, which is very reasonable given you can spend well over a grand and change on something that looks anywhere near as good.

Lovely well built reliable piece. Stunning dial work

Also those hands. Very Grand Seiko like. Your average Grand Seiko with those hands kicks off at 3k

New 2022 Seiko divers! The Seiko Prospex Save the Ocean special editions. Light blue and 1 silver dial on the Willard variety. Lovely textured dial work again by Seiko, meant to emulate ice.




My fave is this 62MAS recreation. Phwoar. $1250 whatever that is in pounds (prob £1250 ffs) available July. This ones going to fly out!




Not sure about this last one. The dial might be a bit too pale?

Arise Sir Minky, for services to the Watchmaking industry

The new Tissot PRX Chrono automatic range.

More than a hint of AP about the PRX range, case shape and the bracelet, however contrary to popular opinion AP were not the only 70's manufacturers using this style so its fair game.

about £1400 based on dollar price. Lots of colour options.

80 hr power reserve

7.2 mm high automatic is really something. Beautiful movement as well. I'd be terrified of dinging it off a wall though.

Ok this is big news.

Omega speed master fans get your wallets ready. For 2 days only,24 and 25 March at select Swatch and Omega stores this bad boy is available..





The Swatch/Omega ltd edition collab. Made from Swatch bio ceremic this is gonna fly out. Why? Its £270

They will going for a bag on ebay less than a week later mark my words, especially the red and white one

Only available in London or Edinburgh apparently, so everyone else can get fucked.

Those Moonswatches look great in the pictures apart from the strap, really nice idea. Bioceramic(?) case and a printed dial though, I'm not sure how nice it will feel after a year. It seems like it's almost double the price of a normal Swatch chrono.

The whole thing is a bit too aimed at the e-bay flippers for me, cool if they actually add them to their standard line.

Who Watches The Swatchmen?

Yup, so these are lovely...




But they do raise questions. There's a big question mark over who benefits from these and how?

Now it's no secret that the big premium watch manufactures of the world have taken an absolute battering for the last few years, and are desperately scrabbling to reassert their positions in the market.
Ain't nobody buying an Omega or a Rolex during the pandemic, so profits must be catastrophically down for the big boys.

Then you have Swatch. The biggest manufacturer of watch movements on the planet, oh, and they make plastic watches that you might have heard of too?

Trouble is, the times they are a changing, and we're rapidly transitioning into a new era where the youth of today just don't wear traditional watches anymore. No need for them. No interest in them. At best they'll maybe have a smart-watch, at worst, they're just using their phones.

This is a huge problem for the watch manufacturers of the world, and they are panicking.

Enter The MoonSwatch! Yours for only £207!
Now this is a brilliant piece of marketing, and everybody wins!
...or do they?

So it's a Bioceramic Swatch that looks like the iconic Omega Speedmaster. Genius. An affordable version of one of the most famous timepieces on the planet. What's not to like? Everybody wins!



Now I've looked into these this morning, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but nothing I can see anywhere points to these being only available for a couple of days. The official Swatch website touts them as being available from selected stores from the 26th March. What they are doing is creating scarcity the way the Nikes of the world do by making them hard to get. So you can only buy them in selected stores worldwide, and you can only buy a maximum of two at a time. If however you are an influencer, we'll already have sent you one for you to plaster all over your Instagram.
This is going to create a stampede among watchlovers and resellers to get the bloody things, and they will sell out, but are they reinvigorating the market for Swatch and Omega or are they just preaching to the converted? Will Johnny Teenager get on board the hype train, or will they just shrug, swipe right and move on?

Bioceramic is Swatch's new case material. It's a combination of bio-plastic sourced from the seeds of Castor plants (apparently), and ceramic beads. When combined, the resulting compound can then be injection moulded in Swatch's existing plants to create a silky smooth faux-ceramic case which Swatch is heavily invested in.
They've been touting this stuff for the last year or so, and I'm guessing the world just couldn't care less.



Enter The MoonSwatch! Everybody wins! Swatch get the free advertising for Bioceramic, Omega are back on the map, and the consumer gets a nice watch that looks like one they couldn't previously afford.
Omega will also be hoping that these customers will stay with their brand, and invest in one of their more serious propositions as they get older. I think they are wrong on that, and it's drowning brand clutching at straws...maybe.

There's going to be a big commotion about getting these artificially scarce, but mass produced watches, and I'll be really surprised if there isn't a full global release in the summer. The smart brand would keep them limited, but I suspect the greed of the watch companies involved will dictate the opposite.



In the meantime, for some lucky watchlovers, there are funky new watches out there to collect (gotta catch 'em all!), and if Swatch and Omega play their cards right, they could make a lot of money out of this, but I do strongly suspect that it's not going to have the desired effect on the market that they are both hoping for. The youth of today just don't give a fuck about watches anymore, and this isn't going to change that.

Breitling have made their own bed

I used to lust for an emergency

But they're charging something like 7k for a smart watch last I saw, fucking idiots

davyK wrote:

. Maybe a pedometer too.

The kids will love that

davyK wrote:

Building some subtle digital tech into a watch is the way forward for the big boys. Doesn't need to be overly smart - bluetooth with some basic info like current time (hold a button down to synch with the phone clock - though that requires energy to move the arms). Maybe a find my watch feature and a pedometer too.

Ressence have integrated smart features pretty well, just have an app on the phone, and change time zone, update accuracy etc, in what is still quite clearly a mechanical watch

True, it's that sort of unobtrusive, low power stuff that could be invisible and fed by either solar or the existing rotor on automatic models

I want the red and white mission to mars and the misson to the moon which is the black and grey one. Then its a tie for 3rd between neptune and mercury

Turn between moon and Mercury here, am in Milton Keynes for work today so might detour via London on way home