Citizen Releases Their Most Advanced Satellite Wave GPS Watches; Casio's Pretty Wild Ring Watch; Circula Has A New Collection, The Facet; Ressence Type 8 Indigo Is Amazing; As Is A New Breguet

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. You know that a day in which we get a new Ressence is always a good day. So today is a very good day. Also, I’m joining the pack with the Black Friday sales and you can get a deal on the paid subscriptions to the newsletter which gets you hundreds of new articles every year.

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In this issue:

• Citizen Releases Their Most Advanced Attesa F950 Eco-Drive Satellite Wave GPS Watches

• Casio Announces Pretty Wild Ring Watch As Part Of 50th Anniversary Celebration

• Circula Introduces A Brand New Collection, The Very Grown Up And Serious Facet

• This New Ressence Type 8 Indigo Gets An Incredible Handmade Silk Thread Dial Dyed Indigo

• Breguet Gives A More Modern Take On The Blue Tradition Chronograph 7077

👂What’s new

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Citizen Releases Their Most Advanced Attesa F950 Eco-Drive Satellite Wave GPS Watches

While they make some very interesting and affordable mechanical watches, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Citizen makes some of the most advanced watches on the planet. And their latest two versions of the new Citizen Attesa Satellite Wave GPS F950, made out of Super Titanium and powered by its advanced Caliber F950 Eco-Drive movement with satellite-controlled GPS timekeeping, are their most advanced GPS watches to date.

On the outside, the Citizen Attesa Satellite Wave GPS F950 watches keep a very well known silhouette. The case, made out of the brand’s proprietary Super Titanium alloy with a black Duratect DLC finish, measures 44.6mm wide and 16mm thick. On top is a curved sapphire crystal, surrounded by world time bezels with sapphire inserts. On version gets a silver bezel with a blue insert that has white city name, while the other has a rose gold colored one with black insert and rose gold city names. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dials have the exact same layout with three sub-dials, three centrally-mounted hands, and a date window at the 4:30 position. The hands don’t just show the time, but rather they perform different functions depending on the specific mode of the watch, and the registers feature multiple scales to correspond with their various uses. One model gets a blue dial base with silver-colored hands and hour markers, while the other has a black dial with rose gold details.

Inside is the brand’s Caliber F950 Eco-Drive movement, which offers the world’s fastest GPS satellite timekeeping signal reception speed of just three seconds. It is powered by a natural or artificial light source and in power saving mode it will last five years. If you get cut off from satellites and can’t get a signal to adjust the time, the movement will be accurate to +/-5 seconds per month. There’s a bunch of functionalities, including a a dual timezone display, a world timer, and a 1/20-second chronograph that can measure times up to 24 hours, an alarm, day and date displays, a perpetual calendar, and indicators for power reserve, light level, and daylight savings time. You can also show time in two simultaneous cities. The watches come on a Super Titanium bracelet with the same black DLC, closed with a folding clasp.

High-tech advanced premium quartz watches don’t necessarily come cheap, and this is no exception. The new Citizen Attesa Satellite Wave GPS F950 are priced at $2,195 and are available now. See more on the Citizen website.

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Casio Announces Pretty Wild Ring Watch As Part Of 50th Anniversary Celebration

A couple of months ago, a friend showed me the most hilarious watch you could imagine — a ring watch. It was, of course, a novelty item that could be ordered for a couple dozen dollars. Well, it seems that Casio liked the humor of the ring watch because they are introducing pretty much their version of the ring watch, as part of the 50th-anniversary. This is the CRW-001-1JR Ring Watch.

The Casio Ring Watch is shaped to look like a miniature version of the legendary G-Shock full-metal B2100 and B5000 series. The case is made using Metal Injection Molding tech, where powdered metal is injected to create the complex shape of Casio watches in a ring size. The case, back cover and ring are molded as one piece using glass bonding technology to ensure a waterproof build. The ring watch measures 20mm wide and the ring has a circumference of 62.8 mm. It’s made to fit a size 22 finger (US 10.5, EU U) and includes two size-adjusting spacers, in size 19 (19-mm inner diameter) and 16 (18-mm inner diameter).

It’s not just a ring, of course, but also a watch. It features LCD displays hours, minutes, seconds, dates, dual time and stopwatch functions. It also has a flashing light function that illuminates your hand at a set time. It’s battery powered, of course, but I couldn’t find how long it will run.

The new CRW-001-1JR Ring Watch goes on sale in December and will be priced at €128. It’s a weird release, but I see them seeing a bunch of them easily. See more on the Casio website.

3/

Circula Introduces A Brand New Collection, The Very Grown Up And Serious Facet

One of the major benefits of writing this newsletter is definitely getting a peak behind the scenes. And I don’t mean just seeing new watches before they come out, but also get a look at how a brand develops and reinvents themselves. This is exactly what I got with Circula. Over the past several months I became friendly with Cornelius Huber, the current head of the German indie brand Circula which was started by his grandfather (actually, his great-grandfather, but you can read more about that in my review of the Circula ProFlight). I got to work with Huber on their new manual and in return I got to see how Huber is setting up a brand new and more streamlined lineup for Circula. And it’s super cool. One of the moves made is the introduction of a brand new model, one that’s much more higher end, with more attention to detail, with more maturity and with a better movement. Not only that, it is designed by Guy Bove, the former Creative Director of TAG Heuer and overall design legend. This is the new Circula Facet collection.

While the new Facet collection has pretty sensational dials, I would say this is all about the case. The new watch comes in a smaller case than most other Circula watches and measures an extremely pleasant 38mm wide and 10mm thick. But instead of using a curvy case, this is all about sharp angles and facets. On top is a brushed bezel surrounding a sapphire crystal and as you move towards the case you meet the first sets of polished facets. Moving downwards, the case has the same brushed surface on top with facets cuts into the sides that move towards the lugs and on to the bracelet and their highly polished surface seem to narrow down the look of the watch. While incredibly finished, it’s also a capable case with 100 meters of water resistance.

Then, there’s the dial. It’s as intricate as the case. It’s inspired by the brand’s cog logo, with a number of irregularly placed rectangles creating a mesmerizing pattern that, along with the sunray brushing play with the light pretty fantastically. But perhaps even better than the texture are the colors — silver, which is cool, a petrol blue-green that will certainly be very popular and my absolute favorite, brown. The dial is framed with a brushed angled flange with cutouts for the faceted applied indices. The hour and minute hands are also faceted and filled with lume of a different color than those on the applied indices. It’s a looker.

Inside, a new move for Circula. While most of their movements are powered by the Sellita SW200, this new watch comes with the La Joux-Perret G100 automatic, which isn’t a clone of the ETA 2824 like the SW200, but rather an interesting alternative. It has the same beat rate of 4Hz, but also a much better power reserve of 68 hours, compared to the 38 hours of the 2824 clones. It has a palladium-plated tungsten rotor which has a design that mimics the dial pattern. There are three strap options for the watches — a suede leather strap with a pin closure that matches the color of the dial (again, that brown is incredible) or a striking steel bracelet with strongly faceted sides. There are two closure options for this bracelet, either a butterfly clasp or a tool-free micro-adjusting clasp.

The Circula Facet can be preordered right now at a discount until December 7th when the watches go on sale officially. Deliveries start on December 12th. Price is set at €1,960 for the steel bracelet with micro-adjusting clasp, €1,890 on the butterfly clasp and €1,590 on the suede strap, with that discount. After December 7th, price goes up €100. See more on the Circula website.

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This New Ressence Type 8 Indigo Gets An Incredible Handmade Silk Thread Dial Dyed Indigo

Shellman is one of those legendary Japanese watch retailers. It’s not a hole in the wall made famous by Instagramers, but it also has its own quirks. For example, check out their website. How awesome is that? Well, apparently, Shellman started the Indigo Project which brings together watchmakers to pay homage to indigo dyeing, which has been practised for centuries in Japan following the introduction of the indigo plant via the Silk Route in the 6th century. Well, let’s all welcome my favorite brand in the world to the project — Ressence. Their contribution to the Indigo Project is a special edition Type 8, one of their newest models and certainly their simplest one. But the Ressence Type 8 Indigo is anything but simple, with a pretty incredible dial.

The Type 8 has a much sleeker case than most of the other Ressence models, but that doesn’t make it tiny. This Indigo version is still housed in a titanium pod-shaped case that measures 42.9mm wide and 11mm thick. It’s also incredibly light at just 42 grams with the strap. Like most Ressence models, it doesn’t have a crown — instead it’s adjusted and wound with a very cool rotating caseback.

On the dial side, you get a similar setup of the entire dial rotating to point to the minute scale on the periphery. Inside the dial is a sub-dial that also rotates to indicate the hours. But that’s where the similarity stops, because the base of the dial is incredibly done with indigo-dyed silk thread, creating an incredible pattern, unlike anything you’ve seen before. Ressence says the process of creating the dial takes up to two days and the Swiss artisans who do it use 2.5 meters of indigo silk. The dial had to be carved out to accommodate the thread and to ensure a flush fit beneath the domed sapphire crystal.

Inside, you’ll find the incredibly cool combination of a customised automatic ETA 2892/2 base calibre in combination with Ressence’s patented ROCS module which allows the dial and subdials to spin. The movement beats at 4Hz and has a 36 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a grey Saffiano calfskin strap.

The new Ressence Type 8 Indigo is a limited edition and only eight pieces and they go on sale today at the Shellman watch store in Tokyo. Price is set at CHF 25,500 without tax. See more on the Ressence website.

5/

Breguet Gives A More Modern Take On The Blue Tradition Chronograph 7077

As its name would suggest, the Breguet Tradition is all about building on top of the incredible past of the famed brand. These are pretty fantastic pieces with incredible complications. This includes the pretty amazing Tradition Chronographe Indépendant 7077, which now comes in a new color combination — white gold and blue — that gives it a much more modern look than the name of the collection would suggest.

Joining the silver on white gold, and pink gold versions, the new Tradition Chronographe Indépendant 7077 comes in a white gold case that measures 44mm wide, 14.1mm thick and with a 48.65mm lug-to-lug. Made out of gold case, it features the iconic Breguet straight soldered lugs and the fluted band. While the crown sits at 3 o’clock, the screw-down pushers sit at a bit of an unusual 4 and 8 o’clock. Despite the screw locking mechanism on the pushers, water resistance is just 30 meters.

Moving on to the dial, you can see most of the movement through it. And it’s a beautiful movement, with a matte grey frosted finish and stepped finger bridges. You can also see the shock protection system for the balance wheels which highlights one of Breguet’s inventions, the “Parachute”, with its distinctive blade spring to hold the pivots. What’s new is the blue color that shows up on the periphery on the dial — the track for the chronograph — as well as on the solid gold dial which has a clous de Paris guilloché pattern. Time is indicated with rhodium-plated open-tipped Breguet hands and the small dial features two arched tracks for the 20-minute chronograph counter and the power reserve indicator.

Flip the watch over and you’ll see the rest of the Breguet 7007 movement. And what a movement it is. While the majority of chronographs use the same mechanism to drive the time indication and a chronograph mechanism, this movement is built with a chronograph mechanism that is completely independent from the mechanism that drives the hours. On the right side is the going train for the time indication, which is regulated by a 3Hz oscillator and has a power reserve of 55 hours. On the left side is the chronograph part which beats at 5Hz. The chronograph part is not powered by a traditional spring coiled into a barrel, but rather a flexed blade spring that requires less space and gives you about 20 minutes of power reserve. The spring also resets when you reset the chronograph, meaning you don’t have to wind it. The watch comes on a blue alligator leather strap.

This new Breguet Tradition Chronographe Indépendant 7077 is not a limited edition and is part of the permanent collection, priced at CHF 86,500, with taxes included. See more on the Breguet website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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Frederique Constant Classic Worldtimer Manufacture in Forest Green

2/

Hands-On with the Omega Seamaster Diver 300M No-Date

3/

A review of the Parmigiani Fleurier Toric Petite Seconde

⚙️I Review A Watch

Exactly what it says on the label — I get a watch, wear it and then review it

The Gagà Laboratorio Labormatic Instantly Transforms You Into A Dandy

I’ve been wearing watches since I was a little kid, and I can easily tell you that no other watch I’ve ever worn has caused this much interest. My family wanted to see them up close, friends asked where to get one, and even people on the street stopped me while I was walking the dog to ask what on earth that was. It’s just that cool.

Read my whole review 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

• Outdoor photography was strictly prohibited during the German Occupation of France, so who captured an album’s worth of stunning photos documenting life in the haunted streets that mysteriously popped up at a flea market in 2020? It would take another four years of sleuthing to find out. But the answer would be worth the effort. A moving story of two acts of journalistic heroics separated by nearly a century is made even more powerful by the images themselves.

• F​rom Vegas to the black market to the apps in everyone’s pockets, Rolling Stone investigates the sports betting boom that’s taken over America and whether the $11 billion bubble is ready to pop.

• Often found passed out drunk in the streets near the old New York Post sewerfront offices on the East River, tabloid hall-of-fame newsman Steve Dunleavy left school at 14 for a career in journalism that started in his native Sydney, wound from the Far East to the Near East and then London before ensconcing him in New York where Rupert Murdoch sponsored his two-fisted workingman’s style of alcohol-fueled reporting. His life was pretty incredible.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

When I was a kid, my dad and I went to look at a Jaguar XJS that was for sale not far from us. It was an absolute shitbox that wasn’t worth half the money the guy was asking, and dad later got a much, much better car, the incredible Mercedes SL300 R129. But I still kind of fell in love with the Jaguar. I would never buy one, but it was quite the looker. So color me intrigued when I saw a couple of madmen turned the XJS into a 1980s wet dream with a 650 horsepower v12 engine.

💵Pre-loved precision

Buy and sell your watches. Think of this section like old school classifieds - i don’t guarantee anything except that a bunch of people will see your ad and I’ll put the buyer and seller in touch. Want to advertise your watch? Contact us

• LOOKING TO BUY: Here’s a crazy request. One of you is looking to buy the Lotēc No. 7.5. Sure, it’s a big ask, but if any of you have one and want to sell, reach out to and I’ll put you in touch

• 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.

• 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

-Vuk