Christopher Ward Launches 38mm Twelve With Ice Cream Colors; Waltham Brings Back A-17 Pilot's Watch; Astor+Banks' Sea Ranger M2; H. Moser & Cie.'s Incredible Purple Pioneer Perpetual Calendar

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I have a feeling that the 38mm The Twelve might be a significant hit for Christopher Ward. Also, a reminder that you can get early access to reviews if you’re subscribed to the Patreon. This week, we have the Baltic Prismic.

In this issue:

• Christopher Ward Launches New 38mm Size For The Twelve With Summery Ice Cream Collection

• Waltham Brings Back The Absolutely Iconic Korean War-Era Pilot’s Watch, The A-17 Pilot’s

• Astor+Banks Introduces The Super Compressor Style Sea Ranger M2

• H.Moser & Cie. Celebrates 70th Anniversary of Sincere Watches With Stunning Purple Pioneer Perpetual Calendar

Today’s reading time: 8 minutes and 4 seconds

👂What’s new

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Christopher Ward Launches New 38mm Size For The Twelve With Summery Ice Cream Collection

Last year, we saw a bunch of new releases in the week leading up to Wind-Up Chicago. A bunch of brands were introducing new colorways to some pretty cool watches. Well, Wind-Up Chicago ended two days ago and we didn’t exactly get a lot of announcements last week. However, there were several new watches introduced and we’re finding out about them a bit late. But you know what they say about being late… Perhaps the most appropriate release for this weather is the new Ice Cream Collection from Christopher Ward which is four new versions of their integrated bracelet steel watch called The Twelve, with very summer-themed colored dials.

At first glance, it might seem that nothing has changed on the outside, but you would be wrong. Christopher Ward offers the Twelve in two materials — titanium and steel — and two sizes — 36mm and 40mm. And it seemed weird that there wasn’t a size in between the two. Well, the Ice Cream Collection takes care of that. The watches come in a brand new case that measures 38mm wide. I don’t have the thickness and lug-to-lug measurement just yet as the official launch is on Thursday, but I’m sure they will be just as thin as the rest of the collection. You still get a flat sapphire crystals on both sides, and the case still has the same signature 12-sided bezel with brushed, sandblasted, and high-polished surfaces.

And while the case will surely be welcomed among CW fans, the rest of us will enjoy these pretty amazing dials that the brand has sorted under the Ice Cream Collection. You still get the Christopher Ward flag textured patter on the dial and the colors are named Mint 38, Made in Mangohead, Peach Sellita and Biel-Berry. I think you can work out which is which. They all look incredibly bright in pictures, in direct sunglight and great lightning but as I learned from the Baltic Prismic (you can read about it in the new review if you are a Patreon subscriber and get early access or wait until next week when I publish it for everyone), the colors are likely more muted in day-to-day life.

The brand still hasn’t said what movement is inside, but based on the price I’ll assume it’s the Sellita SW 200-1 that’s used in both the steel 36 and 40mm. You know the movement — it’s robust and easily servicable, beats at 28,800vph and has a 38 hour power reserve. The watches can be had on integrated stainless steel bracelets which now get the same clasp as the Twelve X (Ti), meaning you get 3mm of on-the-fly adjustment. You also get additional rubber straps that match the dial and that bright green rubber strap that comes with the Mint 38 colorway is calling my name.

The new The Twelve 38mm Ice Cream Collection is limited to 200 pieces for each color and some pre-orders were made at Windup. The rest of them go on sale on Thursday, July 18th and the watches are supposed to ship by the end of July. Price is set at $1,275. I would usually tell you to check out the CW website for more, but they won’t put anything up before Thursday. Keep an eye out on it anyway.

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Waltham Brings Back The Absolutely Iconic Korean War-Era Pilot’s Watch, The A-17 Pilot’s

After World War II, the United States was in need of new military equipment. What wasn’t destroyed in the war or left in Europe and Asia was due for an upgrade. And on the last day of 1948, the USAF Equipment Laboratory Engineering Division, sent out a letter to several U.S. based watch brands asking them to comment on Specification n° 21277 which would turn into MIL-W-6433, the main standard for military watches and needed to include luminous numerals, indices, H/M/S hands, hacking seconds and 24 hour military time track. A tendered was issued to the Elgin National Watch Company, the Hamilton Watch Company, the Bulova Watch Company, the Gruen Watch Company and, the Longines-Wittnauer Watch Company. In the end the United States Air Force chose to exclusively use the Waltham Watch Company and the watch that was produced was the Type A17 Pilot’s watch.

The A17 had the initial purpose to equip long range bomber crews based in Europe. Then it became the F-86 Sabre pilots watch during the Korean war. It was the first watch to be flown at more than three times the speed of sound, on the wrist of a US Airforce captain piloting an experimental rocket-powered Starbuster plane in the 1950s. But it was perhaps best known for being the U2 pilot's ordnance watch in the 1950's. The 24h military time scale was especially important to the observation missions of this ultimate spy plane known as the “Dragon Lady”. Now, more than 70 years later, Waltham is bringing the A17 back.

The new A17 keeps many of the details of the original, including the incredibly cool knurled bezel that has a perfectly symmetrical counterpart on the backside of the case. Made out of stainless steel, the case measures 40mm wide, 11.72mm thick (including the double domed sapphire crystal) and a lug-to-lug measurement of 48mm. There are five version of the watch, four of which have an untreated silver case and one, an edition dedicated to the Dragon Lady gets a black DLC coating. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dials are purely iconic. All five have a matte finish and a lot of information on them. All the way on the edge you’ll find double digit minute markers, followed by a minute hashes, then the double digit 12-hour scale and finally the 24-hour scale. All of the markings are painted on in thick X1 grade Superluminova. The hour and minute hands have a syringe shape and the seconds hand gets a lollipop counterweight. There are three black dials, two (one on the silver case and one on the black case) get white painted numerals, one gets cream painted numerals, and there are also options for a blue or green dial, both of which get a slight gradient to a darker color along the edges.

Inside is the Swiss made Soprod M100 automatic movement. It beats at 4Hz, has a 38 hour power reserve and Waltham says it’s accurate to +4s/-4s per day with a maximum divergence in all positions of 15s/day. The watches come on military-style cordura straps in green.

The new Waltham A17 Pilot is available now and priced at €1,350 for the untreated cases and €1,450 for the black case. See more on the Waltham website.

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Astor+Banks Launches The Super Compressor Style Sea Ranger M2

Like I said, we didn’t get any major announcements before Windup Chicago. But new releases did appear there. One of the more interesting ones was a major update to the Sea Ranger from micro-brand-enthusiast darling Astor+Bank. The original was released in 2019 and was a chunky and well designed diver. Now, with the Sea Ranger M2, Astor+Banks redesigns the entire case, marries it with familiar dials, and creates a slicker diver than before, while using the well known super compressor style.

The new Sea Ranger M2 comes in an asymmetrical stainless steel case that’s brushed all over. It measures 40mm wide, 12.5mm thick and has a great lug-to-lug of 45.5mm. The thickness is also very interesting as the number of sub 13mm watches that have a water resistance of 300 meters. To get this depth rating both the time setting crown and the 2 o’clock crown that operates the internal bezel are screw down.

There are four dial colors: black, blue, army green, and tobacco brown and I assume each will have their own fans. Like I said, they all have an internal 12-hour bezel that’s always a creamy color. The dial has a matte finish with an etched ring immediately inside the applied markers. There’s also a date aperture at the 6 o’clock position that is perfectly colormatched. The hands, markers, and entire bezel are coated with X1 grade Super-LumiNova.

Inside is the La Joux-Perret G100 movement that’s executed on a Soignée level, meaning that it has additional decorations. An interesting choice, as the watch has a solid caseback. While the G100 can be seen as a competitor to the Sellita SW200 it has a much better power reserve of 68 hours and Astor+Banks has adjusted each movement in-house to -/+ 8 seconds per day. On top of that, the case features inserted soft iron plating to achieve anti-magnetic resistance up to 20,000A/m. The watches come on a matching metal bracelet that has the amazing Nodus-developed NodeX clasp with their proprietary micro-adjustment mechanism. You also get a color-matched FKM rubber strap.

The Astor+Banks Sea Ranger M2 is ready to ship now and priced at $1,395. See more on the Astor+Banks website.

 4/

H.Moser & Cie. Celebrates 70th Anniversary of Sincere Watches With Stunning Purple Pioneer Perpetual Calendar

I guess when you are one of the most prominent retailers in Southeast Asia and are celebrating your 70th anniversary you can reach out to any of the prestigious brands you sell and ask them to create a limited edition to mark the occasion. This is exactly what Sincere Watches did when they asked H. Moser & Cie. to do something for them and the result is the Pioneer Perpetual Calendar Concept MD Purple Enamel Sincere Platinum Jubilee Edition. What a looker.

The watch comes in a very special 18k red gold case that measures 42.8mm wide and 15.2mm thick. While the case middle and bezel are 18k gold, Moser made the case back, inner lugs, and lug inserts out of DLC-coated titanium for a truly unique two-tone look. This is not a true sports watch, but you still get 120 meters of water resistance which is just great.

But while the case is special, the dial is unbelievable. A pattern resembling hammered texturing is engraved onto a solid gold base. Then a mix of enamel pigments are applied, one layer at a time followed by a firing in an oven. A total of ten to twelve firings are required to create the graduated finish that is a translucent, rich purple in the centre, darkening to black on the edges. There are hardly any markings on the dial, except for a small plus and minus at the 9 o’clock power reserve indicator. At 6 o’clock is a small seconds and at 2 o’clock is the month and date indicator that is all you see of the perpetual calendar.

This is possible thanks to the manual-wind in-house HMC 808 movement. Originally developed with the help of independent watchmaker Andreas Strehler, the in-house movement is a clever approach to the perpetual calendar that condenses the display into large, legible indicators, while also boasting a long, seven-day power reserve. While the dial shows the date and month, the leap-year cycle indicator sits on the back on the larger barrel bridge. And it is a “Flash Calendar”, so the calendar indications change instantaneously at midnight. The watch comes on a black rubber strap.

The H. Moser & Cie. Pioneer Perpetual Calendar Concept MD Purple Enamel Sincere Platinum Jubilee Edition is limited to 20 pieces, available only from Sincere Watches and priced at US$97,000. See more on the Sincere Watches website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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A review of the Grand Seiko SBGC275 Shinshu Sunrise

2/

Hands on with the entirely new Bremont Supermarine 300m

3/

A review of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Grand Complication

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

The Haim Watches Viajero is the perfect watch if you’ve been worldtimer-curious but afraid to drop serious cash on the complication

There’s a lot going on when it comes to the dial. We’re going to start in the middle and work our way out. At the center of the dial is a 3D relief of the globe. There are Roman numerals at the cardinal numbers with small gold dots making up the space in between. A set of protractor-inspired hands are present for the hour and minute and are rendered in a shade of gold to match the indices on the dial. The branding on the watch is extremely subtle, with the brand and “Chicago, IL” spelled out in a subtle script at the very bottom of the dial. Moving further out, there’s a bi-color 24-hour wheel, and finally a rotating bezel that features 24 different cities. There’s a lot going on, but the elements are balanced out.

Read the whole review on Worn and Wound

⏲️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

• Ironically, this article is titled “The Russian Spies Next Door”. I say ironic because it’s pretty much happening next door to me. I could throw a stone to Ljubljana, where a quiet married couple, posing as Argentine immigrants in Slovenia, were in fact part of Putin’s aggressive effort to seed the West with ‘illegal’ intelligence operatives, say authorities.

• On December 5th, 1956, Herbert Stempel stood in the small isolation booth in front of a studio audience on the set of the CBS quiz show Twenty-One, just five points short of the twenty-one he needed to win. What was about to unfold is one of the biggest scandals in entertainment history and it changed television forever.

• Accidental champion Deontay Wilder was the American dream misunderstood. The Alabaman who started boxing at 21 to pay for his daughter’s medical care went further than anyone could have imagined. Too few people appreciated what he brought to the table.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

You can really learn a lot from YouTube. For example, very intricate details on how CIA bases operate in countries outside the US, where are they concealed and what happens inside them.

💵Pre-loved precision

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• SOLD: Well, not really new. It’s a great looking mid-90s Tudor Submariner 75090, offered for sale by a member of the It’s About Time reader crew. I love the way it looks and seems to be in great condition. Check it out over on Chrono24.

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