Baume & Mercier Release A (Potentially) Affordable Perpetual Calendar, Bell & Ross Relaunch BR03 Collection, Batavi Atelier Is A Spectacular Watch With A Great Price, New Watches From Ollech & Wajs And Minase

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Some very interesting releases today. My money goes to Batavi and Ollech & Wajs.

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In this issue:

• The Baume & Mercier balefwefewf Is The Super Limited Perpetual Calendar Integrated Bracelet Sports Watch You Could (Maybe) Afford

• Bell & Ross Relaunches BR03 Collection With New 41mm Case And 8 New Watches

• The Batavi Atelier Is A Watch With A Spectacular Dial And A Puzzling Low Price

• New Ollech & Wajs Brings Military Surplus Materials To Their OW M-110 AS Watch

• Minase Introduces The New Uruga Collection, A Shift From The Japanese Brand’s Angular Designs

Today’s reading time: 8 minutes and 17 seconds

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👂What’s new

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The Baume & Mercier balefwefewf Is The Super Limited Perpetual Calendar Integrated Bracelet Sports Watch You Could (Maybe) Afford

Cult integrated bracelet steel sports watches designed by Gerald Genta like the AP Royal Oak are slowly creeping out of the price range of regular people. luckily, there are other brands that fill the space quite successfully. For less than $5,000, you can get a great looking Baume & Mercier Riviera 50th Anniversary Automatic. Yeah, It’s not an AP, but it gets you 80% of the way for 10% of the price. However, B&M can also up their horological game, which hey demonstrate now with a new limited edition, the Riviera Baumatic 10742 Perpetual Calendar which offers a great complication at a high, but still relatively acceptable, price.

This is still almost a regular Riva watch, meaning that you get 40mm wide stainless steel sports watch with a polished and satin brushed finishing and a broad dodecagonal bezel. Being inspired by Genta’s designs, it has a very seventies look and does strongly resemble a Royal Oak. What’s completely different, however, its the dial with the perpetual calendar display. You get four subdials, along with central hours, minutes and seconds hands. Those subdials are month and leap year indicators at 12 o’clock, date at 3, moonphase at 6 and days of the week at 9. The dial also comes in a gilded yellow gold tone with vertically brushed finishing.

Inside the watch is the Baumatic calibre named BM13-1975AC2, an automatic movement with a 5-day power reserve and equipped in this instance with a Dubois-Dépraz perpetual calendar module. The exhibition caseback reveals its golden rotor and perlage finishing. The watch comes on an integrated three-row interchangeable stainless steel bracelet reworked with decorative bevels on the central link.

The Baume et Mercier Riviera Baumatic 10742 Perpetual Calendar Limited Edition is limited to just 50 pieces and costs $19,550. This is radically more expensive than a base Riviera, but the limited nature of just 50 pieces and the perpetual calendar make it almost a bargain. See more on the Baume & Mercier website.

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Bell & Ross Relaunches BR03 Collection With New 41mm Case And 8 New Watches

It’s really interesting that Bell & Ross has been making square aircraft instrument-inspired watches since 2005 and nobody has attempted, in any significant way, to join them in this quest. B&R doesn’t have a patent on this type of watch, and it’s an obvious smash success, so it’s quite strange that there aren’t more watches attempting to do the same thing - mimic airplane instruments. The fact that there are no other watches that do it only solidify Bell & Ross as a cult, instantly recognisable, watchmaker. Now Bell & Ross is updating one of it’s original square collections, the BR 03, originally launched in 2006 and updated in 2014. The BR03 41mm collection brings along very slight changes - like shrinking down from 42mm - but it all adds up to a great series of watches.

There are three main areas in which the BR 03 41mm has been updated. The size, the colours and the movement. The change from 42mm to 41mm might sound tiny, but according to people who have tried it on, it makes a difference. Apparently it’s still big due to it’s square shape, but not as huge as the 42mm version. Also, Bell & Ross, shrunk down the width of the lugs from 4.5mm to 4mm,

There are eight versions of the Bell & Ross BR 03 41mm available, four with steel cases and four in microblasted black ceramic. In steel you have the standard black and white edition, a blue version, a copper one and lastly a rich brown one called Golden Heritage. Within the ceramic case is another black and white reference, a heritage black and beige one, a military edition in olive green and then the full black Phantom. All of them feature the same display with oversize Arabic numerals, large hands and a tiny round date window at 4:30.

Inside the watch is the new generation of BR-CAL.302, based on the Sellita SW300-1a. Sellita has been quietly upgrading a number of their movements and this has tickled down to brands like Bell & Ross who modify these widely available movements. This means that you now get a 54 hour power reserve instead of the 38 hour one in the previous version.

The eight new references in the Bell & Ross BR 03 collection are all part of the permanent range and will soon be available from the brand and retailers. Prices range from EUR 3,700 (Black Steel, Blue Steel) to EUR 4,500 (Military Ceramic, Phantom). With the improvements to the movement and great aesthetic changes, this might be a contended for the best (albeit, different) pilot’s watch. See more on the Bell & Ross website.

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The Batavi Atelier Is A Watch With A Spectacular Dial And A Puzzling Low Price

If you haven’t heard of Batavi, I’ll wait a second: go check out their watches. Now that you’re back, I think we can all agree that they make fantastic looking and greatly priced pieces. They all seem to be under the €1,000 mark and they all have very interesting design choices - be it the colors of the Geograaf or the dials of the Architect. They also seem to be extremely popular - just look at how many of their watches are sold out. Just the other day they started presales for an entirely new collection - the Atelier - and boy is it awesome.

A lot about this watch seems just right, including the measurements - it’s a 39mm wide and 11mm thick stainless steel case with a lug-to-lug of 46mm. It has a concave polished bezel and a scalloped baseband. It has a sapphire crystal on the front and a solid caseback on the back. Water resistance is 100 meters.

For this piece, it’s obviously all about the dial. It comes in Dune beige, Aquamarine Blue or Rock Purple with a super intricate pattern engraved into the dial that looks like a circular fish scale pattern. Batavi uses one of my favorite tricks in watchmaking to create depth - they print the numerals on the underside of the crystal, moving it away from the dial and creating a shadow on it. The watch lacks a seconds hand and the hour and minutes hands are openworked with Super-LumiNova filled tips.

Inside the watch is the automatic Miyota 9039 movement. It’s a well known entity, often used in sub-€1,000 watches and easily servicable. It runs at a rate of 28,800vph and has 42 hours of power reserve. The Atelier collection comes on a a five-link stainless steel bracelet with a folding clasp or a really nice grained leather strap with a pin buckle.

The Atelier collection is still available for pre-order. The orders started last week at a completely incredible price of €399 during the first hour. However, since then the price has been steadily increasing as time passes and now sits at €459. This is still a crazy low price for such a piece. Once the pre-order campaign ends the full retail retail price will be €579, still very affordable. See more on the Batavi website.

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New Ollech & Wajs Brings Military Surplus Materials To Their OW M-110 AS Watch

Just the other week I wrote about the Ollech & Wajs OW 56 M which was inspired by military pilot watches from the late 1940s that used almost all vintage and new-old-stock pieces to create a super-limited edition of great looking watches. It’s clear that Ollech & Wajs has deep heritage, and much of it is linked to military and professional services. Their watches were worn by scientist Wernher Von Braun and NASA Group 6 astronaut Dr Anthony Llewellyn and In 1965, they became the most widely used ‘unissued’ watch brand by military personnel in the Vietnam conflict, delivering up to 10,000 pieces a year. So, the modern iteration of Ollech & Wajs is now releasing a new watch, the Ollech & Wajs OW M-110 AS, that pays tribute to their rich military history.

It comes in a 39.5mm wide and 12.5mm thick stainless steel case, with a 45.7mm lug-to-lug and a completely brushed finishing. You get 300 meters of water resistance, square lugs, a steel compass bezel and a grey matte dial with pops of mint-green colors. The green can be found on the dial, the hands and the bezel, but the most noticeable are the green minute markers at every 15 minutes that indicate periods of radio silence.

If the radio silence indication wasn’t much of a military connection, the 20mm strap it comes on sure will be. It is made from reclaimed, military grade, double twill hemp canvas procured directly from the Swiss Army’s surplus supply. It is a robust material that was originally intended for a variety of military applications, with this procured surplus batch manufactured in the ’50s, around the same time Ollech & Wajs was founded. Ollech & Wajs claims that this material was built to last 100 years in the field, giving you at least another 40 years of wear.

Inside the watch is an automatic Soprod Newton Precision P092 movement that notably includes a full balance bridge for better resistance against shock and 44 hours of power reserve. Not particularly pretty, but it looks as robust as you would want in a watch like this. Ollech & Wajs claim that they have regulated this watch within seven seconds per day.

This is technically a limited edition watch, just limited by the number of straps OW have made for it. Unfortunately, they do not reveal what this number is. You can still get it at a price of €1,521. See more on the Ollech & Wajs website.

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Minase Introduces The New Uruga Collection, A Shift From The Japanese Brand’s Angular Designs

Minase has largely been known for two things - their precision metalworking and watches that have highly complex cases like the Minase 7 Windows, a rectangular watch with seven sapphire glass apertures flooding the dial with light. However, it seems like Minase can go conservative as well. These days they presented their most normal looking watch collection, called the Minase Uruga.

Uruga is an acronym of the Japanese words “Uruwashii” and “Myabi” meaning respectively beauty and elegance. Despite it being a more regular looking round watch, Minase continues to focus on the case rather than the internals. And despite being a more regular round watch, it still retains a complex construction. It takes the shape of a technique used to securely set gemstones into place with 4 claws that are used to secure a stone on a ring.

The “clamps” are brushed to contrast with the multiple mirror-polished areas and facets of this case which, in classic Minase fashion, are made using the Sallaz or Zaratsu distortion-free technique. The watches in the collection come in two sizes - a rather large 42mm and a small 31mm.

The dials offered on the new Minase Uruga follow the same strategy; intricate, still using geometric shapes but once again less striking than before. Available in blue, grey or green, the dial uses a horizontal embossed pattern that is reminiscent of the waves of the Minase River – it consists of an “endless array of interlacing lines symbolizing infinity.” The markers are asymmetrically shaped with a diagonal cut. Polished and faceted, they will surely provide interesting reflections. The hands, also faceted, have a dual finishing (polished and brushed) and the metallic element around the date window is certainly catching the attention.

A lot of work is put into the case and dial, but a lot less into the internals. Inside is the ETA 2892. It’s not a horrible movement, by far. It’s a robust and familiar, used in or as a base for “in-house movements” from Longines, IWC, TAG, Omega and Breitling. Minase did spruce it up a bit, giving it hand-finished surfaces with perlage, bridges with diamond-polished bevels, blued screws and a rotor modified to showcase the brand’s drill-head logo. The specifications of this movement are otherwise classic – 4Hz frequency, 50-hour power reserve, and stop-seconds.

The new Minase Uruga 42mm watch comes on a leather strap or a complex stainless steel bracelet with geometrically-shaped links. It retails for EUR 4,850 on leather strap or EUR 6,150 on steel bracelet. You can see more on the Minase website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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Hands-On with the Lebois & Co Heritage Chronograph

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A review of Grand Seiko's Katana-Inspired Dials 

⚙️Watch Worthy

A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like

The Trematic AC 14 Marine Green 39MM is a diver with an impressive dial, but a basic case and bracelet

That said, Trematic isn’t necessarily trying to emulate any particular Omega watch, but rather to fashionably curate existing design elements into a new composition. This type of design exercise is extremely common among newer, enthusiast-focused watch brands. It succeeds because it presents something familiar enough that fans understand it and how to wear it, but with just enough novelty to be considered a new flavor of timepiece. You can read the whole review on A Blog To Watch here.

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Critics are everywhere; great critics, not so much. But all of them have seen their influence wane over the past 15 years, as the Mitchells and Dargises of the world have been subsumed by Rotten Tomatoes and its nuance-flattening Tomatometer score. Why? It’s gameable. Lane Brown digs into the rottenness.

• Sports gambling is a global phenomenon—but I’m guessing you can’t name the world’s most-manipulated sport. Soccer? Basketball? Try tennis. This sprawling, two-part feature from Kevin Sieff unpacks the story of Grigor Sargsyan, the man behind the biggest match-fixing scandal in the sport’s history. Known as “The Maestro,” Sargsyan went from a poor neighborhood in Brussels to a puppetmaster pulling the strings on thousands of low-level tennis matches across world. You won’t be able to tear yourself away

• Are humans the only animals to have language? It’s proven to be a fraught question. Sperm whales certainly have “coda” (clicks issued in distinctive, often repeated patterns), and the Cetacean Translation Initiative—Project ceti for short, is attempting to record and decipher it. Elizabeth Kolbert tags along with the team for some trips, and has some extraordinary experiences.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Chances are I introduced you to this guy before. If I haven’t, this was a grave mistake. Whether you got into Formula 1 as a kid, or after you watched Drive to Survive, Rocketpoweredmohawk will break down F1 in a way you have surely never seen. But you should.

💵Pre-loved precision

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• LOOKING TO BUY: One of our readers is looking to purchase three very specific watches: an Islander ISL-133 Mother of Pearl, a Sinn 556 Mother of Pearl or a Zelos 300m GMT Mosaic Mother of Pearl. If you’re selling any of these, reach out to us and we’ll put you in touch

• FOR SALE: Longines Heritage Skin Diver, box and papers. €1400. Reach out to us and we’ll put you in touch

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