Fully Gold (Colored) Rado DiaStar Is A Flamboyant Ode To The 1970s, Vulcain Continues Retro Revival With Monopusher, Mona Introduces New Watch With No Lugs, New From Armin Strom And Franck Muller

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. It’s Monday and let’s all pretend we’re back in the ‘70 with completely wild design all around us. The Rado is the perfect watch for the setting.

If you like this newsletter, you might consider supporting it directly through Patreon. If you were subscribed, you could have already read my lengthy piece on Only Watch and it potentially being the biggest scam of the watch world. Other subscriber-only articles include the Completely Sterile Secret Watches Of MACV-SOG and my choice of 11 vintage Heuer watches that would make the perfect basis for new TAG Heuer recreations, including a possible MoonSwatch type watch that could actually break the internet.

In this issue:

• The New Fully Gold (Colored) Skeletonized Rado DiaStar Is A Flamboyant Ode To The 1970s

• Vulcain Continues It’s Retro Revival Winning Streak With A New Monopusher 39mm

• Mona Introduces Their First Mechanical Watch To The Delight Of People Who Dislike Lugs

• Armin Strom Introcues Four New Variants Of The Tribute 1 With Gorgeous Fumé Dials

• Franck Muller Gives The Crazy Hours The Peanuts Treatment With Help From Bamford Watch Department

Today’s reading time: 7 minutes and 27 seconds

👂What’s new

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The New Fully Gold (Colored) Skeletonized Rado DiaStar Is A Flamboyant Ode To The 1970s

I will forever be adamant in my stance that peak watch designed happened between 1965 and 1975. Sure, great and iconic watches were made outside of this window, but these years hold a special place in my heart. And in that very time period, one brand stood out - Rado. Known for their wild and different designs, they became famous for their use of materials, especially ceramic. But in the 60s, they were all about weirdly shaped watches and one of their legends was the DiaStar, a helmet shaped watch that in 1972 (see, the best years), got a yellow gold-coloured scratchproof case, becoming an instant legend. Now, Rado is remaking this watch with a fantastic gold-coloured DiaStar with a mirror-like golden Ceramos bezel and an openworked dial.

The new yellow DiaStar looks huge, but it’s not as bad as you might imagine. It’s 38mm wide and surprisingly only 11.9mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 45mm. What does make it seem huge is the truly impressive helmet-like bezel made from Ceramos, a high-tech composite material that contains 90% carbide and has the hardness of ceramic and the shine and resistance of a metal. That makes it look very much like the 70s original with a very shiny finish and just as much (if not more) resistance to scratches. The bezel gets a yellow-gold PVD coating which makes it shine like the sun. The middle case, caseback, bracelet and crown are made of stainless steel, and all of them get the same PVD coating.

Keeping things modern, Rado doesn’t use a dial on this version of the DiaStar, showing off an openworked dark grey train bridge and a skeletonized anthracite-coated automatic movement below it. In the center are simple gold colored hour and minute hands, while the perpiphery of the dial opening has a black ring with white minute markings and gold hour markers. Interestingly, at 9 o’clock Rado adds a tiny shelf that carries the brand’s signature gold anchor set against a red background.

The movement you see inside is the R808 calibre which needs to be nicely decorated as it’s the only thing you see, so you get an anchor-shaped rotor and Geneva stripes. The movement has a Nivachron hairspring to protect the movement from magnetic fields and temperature fluctuations, it’s regulated in five positions and delivers a robust power reserve of 80 hours. The watch comes on the already mentioned PVD coated stainless steel bracelet with a triple-folding clasp.

The Rado DiaStar Original Skeleton joins the regular collection and retails for €2,600. See more on the Rado website.

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Vulcain Continues It’s Retro Revival Winning Streak With A New Monopusher 39mm

The watch of presidents is such an incredibly cool moniker. And the 150 year-old brand Vulcain has certainly earned it. It seems that the Vulcain has been on the wrists of every significant president since Harry Truman. While most will know Vulcain for this association with presidents and their incredible Cricket Nautical, a dive watch with an alarm function, they have had an incredibly diverse lineup of watches through the years. And the brand is living through a new renaissance, reissuing some of their best vintage pieces. Next to be brought back is a monopusher, more specifically the Vulcain Monopusher 39mm.

While it looks like a faithful recreation of a vintage model, Vulcain modernises the dimensions of the watch. This means that the stainless steel case measures 39mm wide and has a 13mm thickness. The finishing on the case is polished, but the lugs get a brushing. There’s a crown at 3 o’clock and a single pusher that operates the chronograph at 2 o’clock. Despite having a screw-in solid caseback and double-domed sapphire glass, the crown pushes in meaning that water resistance is limited to 50 meters. Good enough for a vintage-inspired watch.

The dial has one of my favorite scales, the pulsometer, which allows you to quickly measure a heartbeat. That track sits just outside of the hour track which features simple, almost art-deco, numerals. The hands are very nice and leaf shaped, painted silver or rose-gold, depending on the dial colors. There are two subdials at 3 and 9 o’clock, with one serving as the 30-minute chronograph register and a seconds display, respectively. Three dial colors are produced - black with black counters and Khaki print that give off fauxtina vibes, black with white subdials and white print and a salmon dial with black print. The latter two are limited editions of 50 pieces each and the salmon is already sold out.

Inside the watch is the very well known Sellita SW510 M MP b movement. The movement beats at 28,800vph and has a power reserve of 58 hours, which is decent for a chronograph. Like all other Vulcain watches, this one can be had on a range of leather straps. My favourite would be the black and white version with a grey suade strap.

The Vulcain Monopusher 39mm is available now, except for the salmon version of course, and all versions are priced at €2,950 and vary slightly depending on the strap you get. See more on the Vulcain website.

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Mona Introduces Their First Mechanical Watch To The Delight Of People Who Dislike Lugs

The wristwatch can be as complicated or as simple as its creator wants. Some like their cases to be heavily decorated and movement highly complicated, while others crave essential round shapes with no lugs. Well, thankfully, there’s a brand for everyone. More towards the simple design languge is the French microbrand Mona, which has been making quartz watches with interesting design since 2012. Now, they’ve just concluded a successful Kickstarter campaign for their first mechanical watch, a super simple lugless design called the Originale.

The Mona Originale is a simple circular watch with virtually no bezel, meaning that you get a significant dial on your wrist that, thanks to the lack of lugs, looks to be attached on top of a bacelet. The heavily brushed stainless steel case measures 39mm wide and 10.3mm thick, so should fit most wrists, especially thanks to it being a perfect circle. The case also has heavy knurling on the outside of the case, which just looks amazing.

The dials in the watch are pad-printed and painted in the brand’s workshop and feature a very modern and minimalist aesthetic. There’s the brand’s twin-flag logo at 12 and three lines of text at 6 o’clock. The text reads “France,” “Marque Déposée, and the Latin “vulnerant omnes, ultima necat” (“they all wound, the last one kills”). Four dial colors will be available - an eggshell dial with a subtle texture, blue printing, and matching hands with yellow accents; a black with a white outline; a fully blue and a dark green version.

Inside the watch is the automatic Sellita SW-100. While we have seen Sellita taking over the microbrand market, we rarely see the SW-100 in a watch. This is because the SW-100 is a tiny movement that measures just 17.20mm wide. Why the tiny movement? While the watch is 39mm wide, the space for the movement is limited to just 27mm because the case has to house integrated lugs. However, the SW-100 has the same specs as the bigger Sellita offerings, meaning you get a movement that beats at 28,800vph and has a 42 hour power reserve.

The Kickstarter for the Mona Originale ended successfully a few days ago and you can now order the watch from their website. All four are currently priced at €699 and deliveries are expected in April of 2024. See more on the Mona website.

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Armin Strom Introcues Four New Variants Of The Tribute 1 With Gorgeous Fumé Dials

If you could expect one thing from Armin Strom, then it would be for them to make fantastically complicated and wild looking watches. And yet, one of their more popular models, introduced in 2021, is the Tribute 1, a surprisingly simple, much smaller, watch that still carried on the Armin Strom design language but now in a more serious package. These days, the brand expanded the Tribute 1 line to 13 models by introducing new Fumé variants — Sky, Ocean, Burgundy, and Slate.

While most Armin Strom watches are really imposing on the wrist and call out for attention, the Tribute 1 measures just 38mm wide and 9.38mm thick, with a 44.35mm lug-to-lug. While much more subdued, dare one say almost dressy, version of an Armin Strom, it still keeps the recognisable details of the brand - an offset dial, barrel, and larger dial plate.

The four new dial colors are a light blue sky, a dark blue Ocean, a deep red Burgundy and the very grey and very modern Slate. While the fumé dials are the main attraction of the new Tribute 1 models, look a little further and see what Kari Voutilainen has done with the anthracite dial plates. The famed indie watchmaker gives the plates an incredible classic guilloché finishing.

Inside the watches is the brand’s in-house movement called the AMW21, with 21 standing for 21-jewels. The regulating system contains a flat hairspring with a variable-inertia balance wheel and brass barrel bridge. The 100-hour power reserve results from the large barrel, and the movement ticks away at a 3.5Hz (25,200vph) frequency. Just like in every other Armin Strom timepiece, this movement has hand finishing throughout. All four watches come on a gray Alcantara calf leather strap.

The new Tribute 1 Fumé is limited to 50 peices in each color and priced at €23,100. See more on the Armin Strom website.

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Franck Muller Gives The Crazy Hours The Peanuts Treatment With Help From Bamford Watch Department

The Franck Muller Crazy Hours is one of the crazier watches you can buy on the market today. At first glance, it’s just a tonneau-shaped dress watch with the occasional crazy color combination thrown in. That’s at first glance, until you take a look at the dial and notice that the hour markers are not in their regular order. That’s because the Crazy Hours has a crazy and completely unnecessary complication that has the hour hand leaping across the dial each hour in a seemingly random way. It’s a cool piece made only cooler now with the intervention from Bamford Watch Department, the well known watch customizer. BWD brings to the Crazy Hours the Peanuts characters Snoopy and Woodstock.

This is the second time that BWD is working with Peanuts and Franck Muller. In 2021 they customized a Crazy Hours with a fully black treatment. This new one goes all white. So you get the FM Crazy Hours which comes in the Cintrée Curvex case style measuring 39.6mm wide and 11.8mm thick, made out of white PVD-treated titanium and it has a fully luminescent white dial with a stamped guilloche pattern and 25 layers of lacquer.

Inside the watch is the automatic MVD FM 2800-CHR movement with 42 hours of power reserve. It’s decorated with Geneva striping, circular graining, bevelling, and blued screws and then promptly hidden behind the solid caseback. The watch comes on a hand-sewn white nylon strap.

The Franck Muller x BWD Crazy Hours Arctic Snoopy Limited Edition is limited to 45 pieces and comes with an elaborate and on-brand packaging with a Swiss-made Igloo doghouse box in white with black trim and yellow accents of a perched Woodstock. The watches go on sale today at a price of £28,800. See more on the Bamford website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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Hands on with the Tissot PRX Powermatic 80 in 35mm

2/

Hands on with the Baltic Hermétique Tourer

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

The Tsao Baltimore Balt-Pilot Worldtimer is a rugged tool with a great price and fantastic looks

The Balt-Pilot is named for the Martin 187 Baltimore, or the A-30 bomber, known to the men who flew it in WW2 as “The Balt.” With that namesake, the watch had to be, first and foremost, a rugged tool. As such, it has a titanium case, 200m water resistance rating, large crowns, sapphire crystals front and rear, and abundant lume. To keep that brushed metal looking good, Tsao treats it with a 1200Hv hardening coating.

This is not a small watch. The specs list it as 40mm wide, and while that is true, it is also 15mm thick. Blunt, squared lugs, Tsao’s signature grooves in the case sides, and a tall box crystal add to its imposing profile. A bit of polish on the outer edges of the fixed bezel and case breaks it up a bit, but the overall impression is that of a large, not mid-sized, watch. Read the whole review on The Time Bum.

⏲️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

• ‘The good guys don’t always win’: Salman Rushdie on peace, Barbie and what freedom cost him.

• The mind-bending politics of RFK Jr.’s spoiler campaign: he’s a conservative. He’s a liberal. And he could turn the presidential race upside down.

• In the early 1900s, almost no Jewish person could be hired in publishing. By the 1960s, there was talk of a Jewish literary mafia. What happened?

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Without a doubt, Gordon Murray is the most important car designer of our time. Perhaps of all time. And yet, up until a year ago, he had technically designed only one road-going car. But what a car it was. The McLaren F1 was THE benchmark for sports cars that took other manufacturers years, or even decades, to catch up with. It held the record for the fastest car in the world and I think it’s still the fastest naturally aspirated production car ever made. But it’s not about records. Everybody who drove the car said it was unlike anything else on the planet and all credit went to Murray.

Well, Murray is back, now with his own company called Gordon Murray Automotive, GMA for short, with two new models out. The video above is an incredible 900 mile roadtrip in the T.50, a car that is the only worthy successor of the F1. In a world of hybrid hypercars, 2 ton porkers with thousands of horsepower, Murray went the other way. The T.50 is powered by a naturally aspirated V12 with “only” 630 hp. The engine screams up to 11.500 RPM (seriously, just listen to the first few seconds of the video) and the car weighs under a ton. It’s just incredible.

💵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 

• NEW WATCH FOR SALE: 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

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