IWC Brings Back Platinum Turbine-Inspired Big Pilot, Baltic Introduces Colorful Take On The Field Watch, Unimatic Now Makes Serious Divers, New Watches From Victorinox and ArtyA

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. While the IWC is nice, what Baltic has done is just beyond fantastic. To be able to get such a nice watch at such a low price is ace!

Just a quick reminder that I recently started a Patreon where you can get a couple of more pieces of content, including a sixth edition and a digital PDF magazine version of the newsletter.

Want to win a Longines Spirit Zulu Time? Invite your friends to enter right now.

In this issue:

• IWC Brings Back The Turbine-Inspired Big Pilot Markus Bühler, This Time With A Tourbillon

• Baltic Introduces Their Colorful Take On The Field Watch And It Looks Amazing

• Victorinox Pays Subtle Homage To Their Swiss Army Knife With Latest INOX Chrono

• Unimatic Now Makes Serious Divers With The New Modello Uno U1S-PD3 And U1S-PD5 ProDivers

• ArtyA Proves Sapphire Cased Watches Can Be Super Minimalist With The Curvy Purity Tourbillon

Today’s reading time: 8 minutes and 25 seconds

👂What’s new

1/

IWC Brings Back The Turbine-Inspired Big Pilot Markus Bühler, This Time With A Tourbillon

It may be just my nostalgia, but it seems that watch brands were much more adventurous and open to experimentation. And I don’t just mean independent brands that were already known for their crazy pieces. Even the big players did weird stuff. One such watch was a prototype presented to IWC by Markus Bühler created for a competition in the final year of his watchmaker apprenticeship at IWC Schaffhausen. It featured a turbine small seconds on the front, a nod to its pilot sensibilities and IWC loved it so much they ran with it and actually built a tiny 12-piece limited edition in 2008.

Incredibly rare and cool, this watch was built around a workhorse Unitas movement and never saw mass production. That almost changed with IWCs new announcement - they are bringing back the turbine watch in the form of the Big Pilot’s Watch 43 Tourbillon Markus Bühler. While still not a full production watch, there will be more than 12 built. In fact, there will be 51 of them.

Interestingly, this new turbine watch highlights something that many might not have thought of before - the Big Pilot from IWC hasn’t substantially changed in years. Yes, it’s based on the latest Big Pilot, but not much has changed from the 12-piece series in 2008. At least it looks like it hasn’t changed much. On closer inspection, there’s quite a few differences - the new Big Pilot Markus Bühler isn’t a classic Big Pilot anymore. It isn’t 46mm in diameter, and it’s not made from steel. Instead, it is built around the more recent, more reasonable, less purist-oriented Big Pilot’s Watch 43. It measures 43mm wide, 52mm lug-to-lug and a thickness of 14.6mm. And even more importantly, this turbine edition is made of platinum, and its case is entirely polished

While Bühler insisted that the original watch be made with hand-wound Unitas movement modified with turbine-shaped wheels over the barrel and another turbine disc on the front to replace the traditional small seconds, this is no longer the case. IWC gives the watch it’s in-house 82905 calibre, still using the turbine small seconds but this time built on top of a flying 60-second tourbillon. The blades of the turbine are made of titanium to keep the whole assembly super light and the movement gets 80 hours of power reserve.

The IWC Big Pilot’s Watch 43 Tourbillon Markus Bühler reference IW329901 is released at a limited edition of 51 pieces (50 available to the public, one reserved for Bühler), and it will be priced at CHF 125,000. You can see more on the IWC website.

2/

Baltic Introduces Their Colorful Take On The Field Watch And It Looks Amazing

The other day, in a Facebook micro-brand group I stumbled on a discussion about micro-brands and how there’s more and more suspect companies pawning off cheap Chinese watches as some kind of indie success story and the conclusion was that there was only a handful of micros that you could trust to be genuine. Among those listed was the French brand Baltic started just six years ago by Etienne Malec. And the simple question posed - can Baltic even be considered a micro-brand?

Yeah, in principle, it is a micro-brand. But Baltic now makes 9 separate lines with more than 30 individual models, making it a powerhouse among the micros. Known for their neo-vintage watches inspired by the 40s and 50s with classic setups like a bicompax and a panda dial, Baltic is now introducing a completely new collection of watches, the Hermétique Tourer, their take on a field watch.

The Hermétique Tourer comes in a smallish vintage-inspired stainless steel case that measures 37mm wide and 10.8mm thick. To keep with the vintage style, there’s a double-domed sapphire crystal on top, with the case being brushed with a polished bezel. Just like vintage field watches, the crown is recessed into the case, but unlike vintage field watches, you get 150 meters of water resistance.

Also unlike old vintage field watches, the Baltic Hermétique Tourer comes in four incredible dials. While old field watches came mostly with black dials which occasionally aged into a deep brown, the Baltic comes in a green, blue, beige and brown dial. They all have a matte finish, with a railroad-style minute track on the black chapter ring. The numerals at 3, 6, 9 and 12 are prominent and stand out from the dial. You get syringe-style hour and minute hands, while the seconds hand is a lollipop style.

Inside the watch is the automatic Miyota 9039 which the brand has used before in the Aquascaphe, as well as a couple of other watches. It beats at 28,800vph and gets a power reserve of 42 hours. While the watches look great, they’re made even better by the straps they come on - tropic-style rubber strap that match the dial. That brown strap/brown dial combination is incredible. You can also get the watches on a beads-of-rice or flat link stainless steel bracelet.

The new Hermétique Tourer collection goes on sale October 10th at 4 pm CET and deliveries are expected to start in November. If you opt for the version on the tropic strap you will have to pay €550, while the steel bracelet will cost €630, both without tax. See more on the Baltic website.

3/

Victorinox Pays Subtle Homage To Their Swiss Army Knife With Latest INOX Chrono

Back in 2014, Victorinox was celebrating 140 years of the company and as part of the festivities, they introduced a new line of tough sports watches called the INOX. It was so popular that it quickly became the brand’s flagship and has since been rendered in a ton of configurations, colors and complications, including quartz and mechanical movements and materials that range from stainless steel to titanium. Now, Victorinox is introducing the first chronograph of the collection called the INOX Chrono.

The new collection uses the same angular 43mm case and it’s powered by a Swiss quartz movement. From launch, there will be seven different variants - four in stainless steel, one is constructed from carbon composite, and two feature titanium cases fitted with carbon composite bezels that give a high-tech two-tone look.

All INOX Chronos feature a solid screw-in case back (steel or titanium), a screw-down crown (with crown guards), and a flat scratch-resistant anti-reflective sapphire crystal and meet ISO 1413-certified shock resistance, ISO 764-certified antimagnetic protection, and ISO 22810-certified 200-meter water resistance standards. For the stainless steel bezel, an anti-scratch coating has been applied, whereas the carbon and carbon titanium models have forged carbon composite bezels which are inherently scratch-resistant.

Additional features include a multi-layer dial with the Victorinox Swiss logo at 12, an engraved tachymeter scale on the inner bezel, luminous hands/indices/12 o’clock pip, a two-digit weekday indication at 12, a date calendar at 6, and a chronograph (second, 1/10th of a second, and 30-minute counters).

Inside the watch is the expectedly accurate Ronda caliber 5040.E Swiss-made quartz movements. It comes on a variety of rubber, leather and even paracord and wood straps, or a stainless steel bracelet.

The new Victorinox INOX Chrono starts out at $800 for any of the three stainless steel models on a rubber strap, or $950 USD should you opt for the blue dial version on a matching stainless steel bracelet. Next up in price are the carbon composite model and the titanium version that features a carbon bezel and a black rubber strap which sells for $1,100. And last here’s the other titanium and carbon Victorinox INOX Chrono that comes as a set with both wood and rubber straps which is priced at $1,250. See more on the Victorinox website.

4/

Unimatic Now Makes Serious Divers With The New Modello Uno U1S-PD3 And U1S-PD5 ProDivers

Founded back in 2015, the Italian watchmaker Unimatic’s first watch was the Modello Uno, their take on the popular dive watch aesthetic. They stripped it of all unnecessary details and made what looked like a fashion-forward approach to traditional rugged sports watches. Now, almost ten years later, Unimatic has made a full circle and is releasing two new versions of the Modello Uno, this time turning their stylised interpretation of a diver into an actual diver. The collection is called the ProDivers and includes the Uno U1S-PD3 which has a water resistance of 300 meters and the U1S-PD5 which can go down to 500 meters.

Both the Modello Uno U1S-PD3 and U1S-PD5 feature the same 40mm stainless steel case with a bezel that is 41.5mm in diameter. The cases are 11.6mm and 12mm thick, respectively, and both have a 49mm lug-to-lug and a 22mm lug spacing.

A standout feature in both models is the lume-infused ceramic bezel insert, a first for the brand, offering enhanced durability, scratch resistance and an anti-reflective shine, lightening the overall look of the watch. The new dual lume feature further distinguishes these professional diver watches, with the wonderfully orange glow of the hour markers, turquoise glow-in-the-dark markers on the bezel and a matching lume minute hand to provide underwater readability. Seriously, click through to the Unimatic website to see what the lume looks like. It’s incredible.

While the U1S-PD3 keeps the same size and same water resistance, Unimatic has made some significant changes to the U1S-PD5 to make it work 500 meters below surface. The first is a thicker crystal. The new sapphire crystal of the U1S-PD5 is 3mm thick instead of 2.5mm thick like the U1S-PD3’s crystal. As a pleasant side effect, it also gets a lovely and more exaggerated raised look. Secondly, for the U1S-PD5, Unimatic revisited the construction of the crown tube. The new crown tube features a double rubber O-ring mechanism to effectively prevent water from entering the case.

Inside the watch is the reliable Sellita SW200-1 that we have seen in several other Modello Uno releases. It operates at 28,800vph and gets 38 hours of power reserve. Unimatic says that they guarantee a tolerance of ±7–20 sec/day. The watches come with two different straps. The first is a charcoal-gray rubber two-piece strap, and the second is a charcoal-gray NATO strap or you can pay €100 more to get Unimatic’s new stainless steel bracelet.

The Unimatic Modello Uno U1S-PD3 and U1S-PD5 are limited to 500 pieces each. The Modello Uno U1S-PD3 sells for €1,100, while the Modello Uno U1S-PD5 is priced at €1,200, both without tax. See more on the Unimatic website.

5/

ArtyA Proves Sapphire Cased Watches Can Be Super Minimalist With The Curvy Purity Tourbillon

Founded by Yvan Arpa in 2010, ArtyA is synonymous with avant-garde, wildly creative watches, often incorporating unconventional raw materials like butterfly wings and real bullets. However, in the past few years Arpa seems to have brought his mastery of sapphire, a super tough material usually reserved just for watch crystals, and it’s use as a case material. Just the other day I wrote about the Tiny Purity Tourbillon Chameleon which boggles the mind with it’s color shifting properties. Now, ArtyA is releasing a new, simple, Curvy Purity Tourbillon in a tonneau-shaped sapphire case.

The tonneau shape may sound trivial, but think about it for a second. Sapphire is the third hardest known natural material and the folks at ArtyA have managed to carve it out in such a way that it appeared curved to achieve the tonneau. Interestingly, the case has been designed by Jérémie Arpa, Yvan Arpa’s son. It measures 38mm wide and 43mm long and a crown set at 12 o’clock.

The fantastic thing about having a watch made completely out of carved sapphire is that it’s totally transparent so you can see the movement inside. And here you get the symmetrical skeletonised movement with an oversized floating 17mm tourbillon that takes up a huge portion of the watch, a redesign of the Purity Tourbillon movement that’s designed and developed by ArtyA with movement maker Telos SA.

In this version of the Purity line, it has been rotated and modified to fit the tonneau case with perfect symmetry along the 12 – 6 o’clock line. Double barrels arranged in parallel not only add power reserve but provide a more even and higher torque of power delivery between the extremes of when the main springs are at their most tightly wound state or their most unwound states. Also, this torque is useful for driving a complication like a large relatively high-beat floating tourbillon.

The black strap of is made from recycled leather and has a pin buckle. The ArtyA Curvy Purity Tourbillon is a limited edition of 13 pieces and the watch retails for CHF 135,000. See more on the ArtyA website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

1/

Hands-on with the TAG Heuer Monaco Chronograph Night Driver

2/

A review of the new Cartier Santos-Dumont Micro-Rotor Skeleton

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

The Casio Vintage A1100 Series In Gold, Black, And Steel is a very faithful re-edition of the illustrious 1978 Casio Chronograph 52QS-14B

Compared to the original module 52, some things changed for the worse and some for the better. We already know Casio’s 3503 module from the F-100-derived A100WE series, among which is the sought-after Pac-Man collaboration model. There is no news here. The module still has no optional 24-hour format to show the time; it does have a “P” indicating AM/PM, though. Without a 24-hour time format, I guess a DD/MM calendar option would have been useless, so you won’t find that as a feature in module 3502 either. This one can show MM/DD only. Last but not least, module 3502 features a warm orange backlight function that looks very vintage. The 3502’s battery (CR1616) is expected to last three years when the alarm and illumination are used once a day. Read the whole review on Fratello.

⏲️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

• Michael Lewis, the author of The Big Short and Moneyball and perhaps the most celebrated journalist of this generation, got a backstage pass for the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, the owner of the FTX crypto exchange that ended up being one of the largest scams in history.

• Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino became famous for their research into why we bend the truth and lie. This wouldn’t be particularly noteworthy if the two haven’t now been accused of fabricating data and lying about their work. You can’t make stuff like this up.

• Vox goes deep into a sophisticated scheme that includes hackers from Vietnam and thousands of stolen Facebook accounts. It’s much more interesting than it sounds 😄 

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

We haven’t had any good mountain videos in quite some time, right? Mountains can have a certain energy to them and mountain called Split, located in the High Sierra Mountain Range in eastern California, has an energy with a dark side. Split Mountain is a 14,000 foot peak with a perfect couloir dividing two prominent summits. Visually, it’s a line that begs to be skied yet is guarded by a series of icefalls, rock steps and blue ice patches that make it extremely challenging. Over the last 4 years, Cody Townsend, Nick Russell and cinematographer Bjarne Salén have been waiting, trying, scoping and learning about the history of this line, its moods, its conditions and its energy to successfully, and safely, ski it.

💵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: 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

• FOR SALE: Longines Heritage Skin Diver, box and papers. €1400. 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.