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- Grand Seiko Goes Green In GMT Form And Updates The Heritage Collection, AP brings back Arnie’s “End of Days” Royal Oak Offshore, Baume & Mercier Introduces A Pair Of Divers
Grand Seiko Goes Green In GMT Form And Updates The Heritage Collection, AP brings back Arnie’s “End of Days” Royal Oak Offshore, Baume & Mercier Introduces A Pair Of Divers
Green dials are all the rage, but of course, Grand Seiko does it best
Vuk Radic
April 04, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes
Hey friends, welcome It’s About Time, your go-to newsletter on watches. No time for shenanigans, let’s get to it.
In this issue:
Grand Seiko goes green and does some small updates
AP brings back Arnie’s “End of Days” Royal Oak Offshore
Baume & Mercier Introduces A Pair Of Divers
Some final Watches and Wonders wrap ups
And… invite your friends to win a Tiffany PRX
Today’s reading time: 5 minutes and 19 seconds
We’re starting off with a bang! We’re giving away TWO of this year’s hottest watches, The Tiffany Tissot PRX Powermatic 80
All you have to do is click the button below and have five of your friends subscribe. Both you and one of your friends will be eligible to win one of the watches
👂What’s new
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Green dials are all the rage, even though peak green was a couple of years ago. From Certina all the way to Patek Phillipe, everybody is coming out with a green dial - form light to deep forrest. Here comes Grand Seiko with their version, inspired by nature, of course.
The Grand Seiko SBGE295 styles its green dial after the peaks of Mt. Hotaka after its brief summer bloom of vegetation, as Grand Seiko is known to poetically claim. What you actually get is an incredibly intricate dial that looks like it was slathered with actual deep-green moss and then scratched to perfection to look like an actual forrest.
It’s a big watch - 44mm in diameter, with a 50.8mm lug-to-lug length and a 14.7mm thickness. The bi-directional bezel with an asymmetrical colour split is entirely luminous in the white portion, while water resistance is 200m. The movement is the calibre 9R66, which uses Spring Drive technology to deliver a continuous sweep of the seconds hand, +1/-1 second per day accuracy, and a 72-hour power reserve with automatic winding. The power reserve display can be seen on the dial, which also features a date display and the traveller’s GMT functionality.
The watch will be available from July at a price of $6,200.
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At Watches & Wonders 2023, Grand Seiko had a whole slew of major releases. Bu they also introduced a couple of updates that kinda went under the radar, so let’s mention them here. It’s the Grand Seiko Heritage Collection in Ever-Brilliant Steel, an everyday sporty Grands Seiko which now comes in five new references.
All the watches get the “Mt. Iwate” dial pattern, a strong sunray effect that recalls the mountain near the Shizukuishi Watch Studio, where mechanical GS watches are made. Talking time-and-date watches, the SBGH299 features a silvery-white dial (the previous version had a sunray-brushed silver dial), while the SBGH301 now has a dark grey dial (the previous version had a vertically brushed grey dial). As for the GMT models, changes are minimal. The GMT hand is picked up in a contrasting colour – blued or gold-coloured – with the SBGJ263 having a silver dial, the SBGJ265 a dark grey dial and the SBGJ267, still a boutique-only edition, having a dark blue dial.
Everything else remains pretty much the same - 40mm in diameter and 46.2mm from lug-to-lug, 13.3mm thick, while the GMT version goes up to 14mm. Both categories utilise Hi-Beat movements as well, with the in-house calibers 9S85 and 9S86.
Prices are EUR 7,400 for the time-and-date watches, and EUR 7,800 for the GMT models. With only EUR 400 difference, why would you get the three-hand one at all?
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Audemars Piguet is announcing their latest limited edition model and with it they mark the 30th birthday of the Royal Oak Offshore chronograph. And just like the AP Royal Oak was huge and over the top in the 90s, so is the cameo connection of this edition - 90s action movies.
The black-and-yellow colorway of the limited edition is a direct reference to the early Royal Oak Offshore that Arnold Schwarzenegger wore in End of Days back in 1999, which has since become a cult model. Which is a bit ironic, as the Royal Oak Offshore was not an instant hit in 1993 when it was introduced and Arnold's interest in wearing it in the film played a role in establishing the model with the correct audience. Even the AP CEO Francois-Henry Bennahmais said when introducing the new model, "In 1999, the collaboration with Arnold Schwarzenegger for the Royal Oak Offshore End of Days started putting the collection on the map of a wider public for the first time”.
The remake is based on the current-gen Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph and uses a 43mm black ceramic case that is 14.4mm thick and uses titanium for the caseback, pusher frames, and studs. It’s powered by Audemars Piguet's 4401 automatic chronograph caliber.
Limited to 500 units worldwide at a price of $60,300.
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Baume & Mercier is really going all out with the summer sports models right before summer starts, all to mark the 50th anniversary of their sporty-chic Riviera. A month ago they introduced a new Riviera GMT, and now they’re coming out with the Riviera Azur 300m.
This is a diver with a 300m water-resistant dodecagonal stainless steel case which measures 42mm and a unidirectional rotating bezel with a lacquered segment that is graduated to mark the first 15 minutes of the hour. There are two versions - one with a smoked-blue sapphire dial with waves décor and a blue rubber strap and the other with a blue dial, beige lume with blue emission and the central seconds hand is painted blue.
The new Baume & Mercier Riviera Azur 300m models are powered by the Baumatic BM13-1975A movement, with a 5-day power reserve.
The Blue and Rubber model is priced at EUR 4,150, and the Black and Steel edition is priced at EUR 4,350.
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Looking Back At Watches and Wonders 2023
Hundreds of watches were released this year at Watches and Wonders. We covered it in depth, but I understand many just didn’t care for all the news. That’s why a bunch of watch news websites did recaps of W&W and we’re going to link to them here, for your convenience:
🫳On hand
Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon
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⚙️Watch Worthy
A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like
While some brands do make actual super-compressor divers using spring-loaded casebacks, most brands do super-compressor style watches. This means having an inner rotating dive-time bezel and a second crown at the 2 o’clock. But that is as close to the original EPSA super-compressor as they would ever get. Sherpa went two steps beyond to re-create the EPSA case and Monoflex crown, two patented technologies that made this style of watches popular when they first came out in the 1950s. Sherpa, by the way, is a nod to a collection of Enicar watches that debuted these ultra-capable watches.
⏲️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
I link to a few things about Wes Anderson below, but here’s more links to him today - check out this quirky secret society that looks like it just fell out of one of his movies. So cute.
The cold war was one of the greatest times for American cinema. It was a time of fantastic films and horrible paranoia that everyone in Hollywood was a Soviet spy. Turns out, some people really were Soviet spies - like producer Boris Morros.
Let’s round up today’s reading recommendation with something a bit different - this is Skinwalker Ranch, THE hotbed for UFO activity
👀Watch this
One video you have to watch today
Last week, Wes Anderson released the trailer for his new movie, Asteroid City. And what everyone immediately though was - this is the most Wes Anderson movie of all time. But what makes a movie a Wes Anderson movie? It’s the look. Just check out this video essay and you’ll find out why every Anderson movie looks the same.
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