Hamilton Brings Back The Murph 38 With White Dial; Doxa's Caribbean-Inspired SUB 200; Roue's New TPS Colors; Minase And Fratello Team Up Again; Czapek's Two-Tone Antarctique; GP Celebrates Japan

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I’m catching up with watch news in between dips in a surprisingly warm sea and frigid beers as I listen to the waves crash, so do excuse me if I missed anything today!

In this issue:

• Hamilton Brings Back The Murph, In its Smaller Form, With A White Dial And Steel Bracelet

• Doxa Releases Caribbean-Inspired SUB 200 Azure That You Can Buy Only On A Tiny Dutch Island

• Roue Adds Two New Colorful Watches To Their Very Affordable TPS Collection

• Minase Teams Up With Fratello For Third Time With The Almost Braided Looking M-3 Shiro Edition

• Czapek Joins Sincere Fine Watches 70th Anniversary Celebration With Mirrored Silicon Dial Antarctique

• Girard-Perregaux Celebrates 160 Years Of Working With Japan With Two Indigo Blue Dialed Laureatos

Today’s reading time: 10 minutes and 47 seconds

👂What’s new

1/

Hamilton Brings Back The Murph, In its Smaller Form, With A White Dial And Steel Bracelet

There is no other watchmaker in the world that is as prolific as Hamilton is when it comes to placing their watches in movies. And very often their watches can become important plot points. When that happens, it’s practically guaranteed that this watch will become iconic. As has happened with the movie Interstellar. Being a featured watch in the plot point, the Khaki Field Murph entered legendary Hamilton territory. And as such, one would expect Hamilton to do more with it. But they didn’t. For years, the Hamilton was made only in a 42mm diameter, alienating a lot of smaller-wristed people. It was’t until 2022 that Hamilton made a 38mm Murph. They were uncharacteristically slow with updates to this model. And today, as Interstellar is turning 10 years old, Hamilton is releasing two new Khaki Field Murph 38mm models. One is just a bracelet addition to the regular Murph, but the other one features a grained white dial.

The case remains the same, and it’s shared between the two models. It’s obviously 38mm wide, 11.1mm thick and has a 44.7mm lug-to-lug. You still get the same brushed case with a polished unmarked and fixed bezel on top. The sapphire crystal is slightly domed, while out back you’ll find a mineral glass crystal. The oversized crown doesn’t screw down, but you still get 100 meters of water resistance.

So, what’s new with the dial? It’s the white dial with a fine grain, contrasted with heavily fauxtinaed hardware. It’s almost going beyond yellow/tan and veering into orange territory. It’s certainly an acquired taste, but one that’s well known to Murph fans. You still get the same Arabic numerals, outlined in black, as well as silver cathedral-style hands filled with the fauxtina lume. The black dial remains unchanged. It should be noted that Hamilton doesn’t include the Morse code printing on the seconds hand on the smaller Murph, which is just weird.

Inside, the same old, but great, movement. It’s the Hamilton H-10, which is just a derivation of the Powermatic 80. A continuation of the ETA 2824, it beats at 3Hz and has an 80 hour power reserve. The white dial can be had on the black leather strap, but the black dial gets an option of a bracelet now. It’s a three-linked brushed steel bracelet with polished bevels on the mid-links, closed with a folding push-button clasp that has micro-adjust holes, meaning you need a tool to make the adjustments. A good thing is that the bracelet has quick-release spring bars.

The Hamilton Khaki Field Murph 38mm is available now and priced at €995 for the white on leather and €1,075 for the black on steel. See more on the Hamilton website.

2/

Doxa Releases Caribbean-Inspired SUB 200 Azure That You Can Buy Only On A Tiny Dutch Island

A Doxa watch, any Doxa, is made to be worn underwater. Or at least near the water. Preferably on a pristine sandy beach while sipping on a tasty cocktail. A Doxa, should, ideally be worn in the Caribbean. The watch made famous by Jacques Cousteau has become one of the quintessential leisurely summer watches you can buy. And now Doxa has partnered with perhaps the most logical partner — Art of Time, a retailer based in the Dutch Caribbean Island of St Maarten, to create a very limited run of SUB 200 models inspired by the waters of the Caribbean. A limited edition that you can only buy where it is meant to be worn, on St Maarten.

The case is a standard SUB 200 case, meaning that it’s made out of stainless steel and while it might sound large at 42mm wide and 13.8mm thick, Doxas — this one included — are notorious for wearing much smaller. Likely due to the short lyre lugs. On top is a coin-edge unidirectional bezel with a stark white sapphire crystal insert with a lumed 60 minute scale. The bezel surrounds a domed sapphire crystal and out back is a closed caseback with a laser-engraved map of the Caribbean made for this special Caribbean edition.

The clearest connection with the Caribbean comes on the dial, which is rendered in a very light shade of azure, mimicking the color of the ocean on the island of St Marteen. Other than the color, everything else you would expect is here — baton indices outlined in black and lumed, a black minutes track and a black outlined date window at 3 o’clock. The hands are also black and filled with lume.

Inside is old reliable, the ETA 2824-2 automatic. It’s not a particularly advanced or beautiful movement, but it does the job reliably. It beats at 4Hz and has 38 hour power reserce. The watch comes on a beads-of-rice bracelet with a folding clasp and dive extension, as well as a white textured rubber strap.

The Doxa SUB 200 Azure is a limited edition of 50 pieces and there’s only one way to buy it. Go get it where it’s supposed to be worn. All 50 pieces will only be sold at the Art Of Time boutique on St Marteen. The price is set at $1,590. See more on the Art Of Time website.

3/

Roue Adds Two New Colorful Watches To Their Very Affordable TPS Collection

I love to keep an eye out for watch brands that come from countries that are not necessarily considered traditional watchmaking countries — Switzerland, Japan, Germany and China. Something like Bangalore Watch Company from India. Or Marnaut from my home country of Croatia. One such brand is the relatively young — started in 2017 — Roue watches which are originally from Brazil. But while they might be a Brazilian brand, their influences come from all over. The design drips with 50s, 60s, and 70s cool, and influences like Italian sports cars, Braun appliances and Scandinavian furniture. All that, while keeping a pretty good price point. Now, Roue is adding two new colorways to the TPS line with the TPS Eight and TPS Nine.

Interestingly, the TPS line, which is up to nine watches now, is inspired by the Porsche 910 that won the Nürburgring 1000-kilometer race in 1967, with a super cool combination of Tachymeter and Pulsometer scales surrounding the dial. How, you might ask, do you put two scales on one dial without making it look cluttered? You do one after the other. The initial 15 seconds of the chronograph is used to time a pulse, while the rest is used for the tachymeter. Very cool.

The watches come in a 40mm wide stainless steel case that’s 13.4mm thick and has a domed crystal on top. Eight comes with a gray dial with orange and yellow accents, as well as a sandblasted case, while Nine has a blue dial with red and white accents. Both watches have a tri-compax setup with the 24-hour indicator (hey, you know what movement is behind that dial already…), a 60 minute totalizer and a running seconds sub-dial.

Inside the watch is the Seiko Mecha-Quartz caliber SII VK63, meaning that it combines a quartz movement for the regular timekeeping and a mechanical chronograph. The watches come with a driver perforated leather strap and a sport silicone strap.

The new Roue TPS Eight and Nine are limited to 1,000 pieces each and priced at $310. See more on the Roue website.

4/

Minase Teams Up With Fratello For Third Time With The Almost Braided Looking M-3 Shiro Edition

You will most likely know the Japanese brand Minase for their incredible cases, unlike any other in the watch industry, that have cutouts in the sides that let you see their beautiful dials made with traditional Japanese lacquering technique in a whole new light. Chances that you have seen a Minase in the flesh, on the other hand, are extremely low as they keep production to just 500 pieces per year and most of them are sold in Japan. This is where the Dutch watch publication Fratello has played a major role. Not only has Minase’s less extravagant cushion shaped case appeared outside of Japane with their first collaboration with Fratello, the two are up to the third collaboration that brings the cool Japanese brand to hands of people all over the world. This is the new Minase M-3 Shiro Silver Dial made with Fratello.

The case of the new collaboration remains the same M-3 case that we have seen before. That means that it is tonneau shaped, 39mm wide and 10.6mm thick, made out of stainless steel and with an overall Zaratsu polish with a couple of satin-finished accents. It’s very retro and very cool. It even has decent water resistance of 100 meters.

But while in other Minase models that case can be the showstopper, here it’s subdued to let the dial shine. The name of the model is Shiro, which means white in Japanese, so you know what to expect here. It’s a white dial, but with an incredible embossed pattern of alternating lines that make it look like it was braided out of linen. The pure white is topped with silver applied hour markers and faceted hands. The only color comes from the tip of the seconds hand that has been painted the same red as the red on the Japanese flag.

Minase watches are incredibly well made and beautiful. This is hinting at the possibility of them being exceedingly expensive. But Minase pulls the old trick of using a mass produced off-the-shelf movement to keep costs low. So, inside is the faithful ETA 2824 clone, the Sellita SW200-1. Reliable, robust and easily servicable, it beats at 4Hz and has a 42 hour power reserve. Minase and Fratello point out that the watch comes on a blue leather strap, which pays homage to legendary Japanese denim. That’s a nice sentiment, but wouldn’t it have been infinitely more cool if the strap was actually denim.

The new Fratello x Minase M-3 Shiro Edition will be limited, but not in number but rather in its preorder window. Preorders started on Tuesday, September 17th and will be open until September 24th at 4PM CEST. The price is set at €2,470, without taxes. See more on the Fratello website.

5/

Czapek Joins Sincere Fine Watches 70th Anniversary Celebration With Mirrored Silicon Dial Antarctique

This will be a huge year for watch collectors in Southeast Asia. One of the most prominent retailers in the region, Sincere Watches, is celebrating their 70th anniversary. And they’re doing so with a bunch of very special watches. They already showed off their collaborations with H. Moser & Cie and Laurent Ferrier, and now it’s time for a very special Czapek, the Antarctique S Mirrored Platinum Jubilee Edition which introduces two new things for the model line — a two-tone case and bracelet and an incredible mirrored dial.

While the shape and size of the case remains largely the same for this Antarctique S — barrel shaped, 38.5mm wide and 10.6mm thick — the materials have changed. For the first time for the model, it gets a stainless steel and gold case. Yellow gold shows up on the bezel and crown guards, as well as the signature central links of the integrated bracelet. Despite the introduction of gold, you still get 120 meters of water resistance.

But way more impressive than the semi-gold case is the dial. Developed in collaboration with MD’Art, the dial is made from a single wafer of silicon and polished to create a perfectly smooth surface. Then, the dial gets a PVD coat of platinum to emphasise the reflectiveness. The dial has the already-known rhodium-plated hour markers filled with lume that glows blue, and you get the same distinctive sword-shaped hands. A slight touch of color comes on the red tip of the seconds hand.

Inside, no surprises. It’s the in-house micro-rotor automatic calibre SXH5 that beats at 4Hz and has a 60 hour power reserve. It’s a nice movement to look at, with black sandblasted and skeletonised bridges, hand chamfering, black polishing and bevelling.

The Antarctique S Mirrored Sincere Platinum Jubilee Edition is a limited edition of 38 pieces, available only in Sincere Fine Watch Boutiques. Price is set at SGD 48,800 or €33,880. See more on the Sincere Fine Watch website.

6/

Girard-Perregaux Celebrates 160 Years Of Working With Japan With Two Indigo Blue Dialed Laureatos

Here’s something I didn’t know. In 1860, Girard-Perregaux became the first Swiss watch company to open an office in Japan. That in itself would have been an interesting fact, had it not been for the fact that in 1860 Japan told time completely differently than Europe. They had a super intricate, highly complex division of days into six daytime and six nighttime periods that changed in length with the seasons and change in daytime and nightime length. This not only made Japanese clocks much more complicated than European ones, it also meant that GP was selling watches in the country not to tell time, but more as a curiosity or as a decoration. This all changed the advent of Japan’s railway network in 1873 when Japan adopted western timekeeping standards. But now, GP is celebrating 160 years of their presence in Japan with two special editions of their luxury sports watch with a fully integrated bracelet, the Laureato. Both get special indigo colored dials, an important and special color for Japan.

First up, we have the time-and-date Laureato. It comes in a tonneau-shaped stainless steel case that measures 42mm wide and 10.68mm thick. The finish on the case is satin brushed with polished and beveled edges and polished central links on the integrated bracelet. On top is an octagonal bezel, sitting on a polished circular plinth, and surrounding a sapphire crystal. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is made out of silver, engraved with a hand-guilloché sunray motif and then covered in an indigo powder and fired, repeating the process 5 to 10 time, to create the perfect Grand Feu enamel look. There’s an aperture at 3 o’clock for the date, and you get rhodium-plated baton hands and rhodium-plated applied indices. Inside the watch is the in-house automatic calibre GP1800 which beats at 4Hz and has a 54 hour power reserve. The watch is limited to 100 pieces and available in Japan for JPY 2,585,000 or about €16,350. See more of the watch here.

The other watch is based on the Laureato Chronograph, and more specifically the titanium version that was introduced earlier in the year. It’s made out of Grade 5 titanium, measuring 42mm wide and a very svelte 12.01mm thick, and finished with a satin brush and polished edges. On top is the same octagonal bezel, a look mirrored on the pushers.

The dial gets the same indigo blue color, but now with a Clous de Paris pattern, with black snailed sub-dials. The minute track that holds the applied indices is slightly raised above the dial as a contrast to the pattern of the dial. There’s a date window at 4:30. Inside is the manufacture calibre GP03300-0141 automatic, a movement known for being extremely thin for a chronograph at just 6.5mm. It beats at 4H and has a 46 hour power reserve. Also limited to 100 pieces and available in Japan, this watch is priced at JPY 2,805,000 or about €17,740. See the watch on the GP website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

1/

A review of the Furlan Marri Disco Volante

2/

Hands-On with the Grand Seiko SLGA025G 'Atera Valley'

3/

A review of the ‘Time is Money’ IFL Citizen Tsuyosa Automatic

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

Lōcī supports local action with the trio of Pacific Coast Highway models

The Pacific Coast Highway collection comes in three dial variants, each designed and named according to the natural ecosystem the profits from their sales support. Regardless of which variant you look at, they all come with the same dial layout: large and lumed applied hour markers, polished sword-style hands, and an unframed date aperture at the six. Moreover, a narrow and circular section of the dial is recessed, therefore separating the minute track from the main section of the dial. Being a capable everyday watch, the PCH comes with a generous application of X1-Grade Super-LumiNova for nighttime legibility.

Read the whole review on Time + Tide

⏲️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

• You know I’m a sucker for a well illustrated story. Like this one from the Washington Post on hurricanes hitting major metropolitan areas, something that no city is prepared for. So what will happen in the near future as these weather events become increasingly more popular?

• In this sprawling Los Angeles Times investigation, Alene Tchekmedyian and Melody Gutierrez expose the dark underbelly of California’s puppy resale trade. Animals are bred and kept in horrific conditions at puppy mills across the Midwest—in Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Iowa in particular. Eventually, they make their way to California locations to be resold, often by people who claim to be small, local home breeders. What’s worse, due to a disorganized system, California ends up destroying animals’ veterinary records and travel certificates, making it impossible for owners to later track their origins, especially when puppies become ill. This is a heartbreaking but important read — I couldn’t get through it, but I have an extreme soft spot for dogs — and also includes a link to a database where you can enter your dog’s microchip number to check if it was listed in documents obtained by the reporters.

• Greed, gluttony and the crackup of Red Lobster. How missed opportunities, a $1.5 billion real estate deal, all-you-can-eat shrimp and the global pandemic sank the country’s largest seafood chain.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

In the late 60's a group of poets, writers and musicians descended upon the southernmost point of the United States to pursue their love of literature and fishing. Initiated by Tom McGuane - the prodigal son of American Literature in the 1970's - his friends Jim Harrison, Richard Brautigan, Russell Chatham and Jimmy Buffett soon joined him. This crew and that era were captured on film by Guy De La Valdene and Christian Odasso in an obscure documentary called "Tarpon" in 1974. They went on to create some of the best art, poetry, novels, and music of their generation - but there will never be anything like Key West in the early 70's. If you were lucky to survive it. It’s absolutely wild that this was put out by Yeti, the cooler manufacturer.

💵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

Want to let us know what you think about the newsletter? Go to our survey and fill it out.

-Vuk