Mido Fully Embraces The TV Format With A Watch Unlike Any Other; Bravur Continues With Bike Themed Watches; SpaceOne Has An Affordable Astro Complication; And New From Singer And ArtyA

In this issue:

• Mido Fully Embraces The TV Format For A Watch Unlike Any You Have Seen Before

• Bravur Continues Making Great Bike-Theme Watches With The New Team Heritage Collection

• SpaceOne Reveals Their Second Ever Watch And It’s Even Better Than The First One

• Singer Reimagined Introduces The Divetrack, A Very Serious Diving Chronograph

• ArtyA Simplifies Things Even More With The Purity Stairway to Heaven

Today’s reading time: 11 minutes and 41 seconds

👂What’s new

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Mido Fully Embraces The TV Format For A Watch Unlike Any You Have Seen Before

While there are many criticisms one can levy against the Swatch Group, a clear definition of their brands is not one of them. Look at their lineup - Swatch, Omega, Tissot, Longines, Blancpain, Certina or Breguet - and you will see that each of these brands has a very recognisable look. But not just a look, but also a purpose and position in the watch world, with as little overlap in the brands as possible. The one brand where you could, perhaps, say that they haven’t completely sharpened their line could be Mido. There are a few watches that are just a bit plain and boring. But, if Mido were to choose a direction it’s going in, it will have to be unconventional watches. Be it the funky Commander 1959 or the spectacularly complicated Ocean Star Decompression World Timer. One of their best outings into quirky watches is the Multifort TV Big Date, a retro-inspired TV-watch. And, when you’re making quirky watches and have a TV shaped watch, doesn’t it only make sense to go all in with the TV theme? Of course it does. So, here is the Mido Multifort TV Big Date S01E01, a limited edition named after the “season 01, episode 01” naming convention of TV shows and with a truly why-didn’t-anybody-else-think-of-this dial that features the ever recognisable test screen we used to see on TVs before everything went to streaming.

The Multifort TV Big Date S01E01 is the continuation of the TV big date series which was introduced to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Mido making TV-shaped watches and it comes in a stainless steel three part case that measures 40mm wide, 11.5mm thick and has a lug-to-lug of 46.85mm. It’s unlike most watches out there in terms of proportions, but it’s easy to get used to. The finishing is a combination of brushed and polished surfaces that make it look less like a gimmick and more like a true watch. On top is a flat sapphire crystal, on the right a prominent crown guards and water resistance is rated at 100 meters.

That’s pretty much what you can get from any Multifort TV Big Date, but where the S01E01 gets special is on the dial. When I first saw a picture of it, I thought - oh, awesome! Then I saw a closeup of the dial and thought - oh, that’s really awesome! The dial doesn’t have just a print of the TV test image, but rather a series of tiny pyramids - there has to be a hundred of them - over which the image is printed, giving the dial incredible depth and, due to their variance in size, dynamics. Being the Big Date it has a huge date aperture at 12 o’clock, which looks very well integrated. Despite the super-busy dial, there are still black and white bar indices at 3, 6, and 9 o’clock and dot indices at the other hours, all filled with Super-LumiNova. Helping, somewhat, with legibility.

Inside is the Mido automatic Caliber 80, also known as the ETA C07.651, also known as the Powermatic 80. It’s the Swatch Group workhorse, beating at 21,600 vph and with the 80 hour power reserve and a big date complication. The movement has a Nivachron balance spring and a rotor that’s decorated with the Mido logo and Côtes de Genève. The watch comes on a 22mm-wide H-link bracelet which has polished central links and a push-button butterfly clasp, and you also get two additional rubber straps in yellow and turquoise. All of them have quick releases to make them super easy to switch around.

The Mido Multifort TV Big Date S01E01 is limited to 999 pieces and priced at €1,550. Think of it what you will, but this watch just instantly shot up to my top 10, maybe even top 5, releases of the year so far. See more on the Mido website.

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Bravur Continues Making Great Bike-Theme Watches With The New Team Heritage Collection

Sometime last year I confirmed that watches really can bring everybody together and make you look at things that never interested you before. While I can spark up an interest in pretty much anything, the one thing that always eluded me was cycling. I could never understand the appeal. And yet… when the Swedish brand Bravur released several bike race-themed watches last year, I thought I could, maybe, start looking at cycling. That, of course, never happened, but I still liked their watches. Very much. Now, they’re releasing a new collection, called the Team Heritage collection, inspired by iconic cycling teams from 1950-1980.

The watch shape is equally as simple and complex. There’s an interesting retro-shaped case that has a blocky look with curved edges and very short integrated lugs that have a width of 18mm. The case measures 37mm wide and 11.4mm thick, and can be had in either steel of with a black PVD coating, both of which have a satin finish. On top is a simple round and brushed bezel. Water resistance is 100 meters, meaning you can get it sweaty while riding without much fear.

While it has an interesting case, things get even more interesting on the dials. The Team Heritage collection gets three distinct dial style, named REN, PEU and MER, after three iconic cycling teams and taking inspiration from their legendary jerseys. The PEU, which stands for the Peugeot team, has a monochromatic look with an either silver or black case, with a white dial that has a white checkerboard pattern in the center. The indexes are black squares here. The REN stands for Renault gets a sandwich dial that has a white top dial, while the indices are in fact cutouts that reveal the yellow and black striped dial underneath which matches the Renault jerseys. And finally, there’s the MER, named after the Mercier team, which is purple with an asphalt texture in the center of the dial and a sunray-brushed yellow chapter ring on the outside. This one has arabic numerals, rendered in Super-LumiNova. All three models are outfitted with rhodium-plated hour and minute hands filled with Super-LumiNova.

Inside is nothing special. It’s the familiar, robust and easily servicable automatic Sellita SW200-1. It beats at 28,800 vph and has a 38 hour power reserve. The watches come on either a FKM rubber strap in a number of colors or a perforated leather strap, with an option of a Milanese mesh bracelet.

The Team Heritage watches are priced at €1,395 and according to their website, the price is same whether you get it on rubber, leather or the strap. See more on the Bravur website.

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SpaceOne Reveals Their Second Ever Watch And It’s Even Better Than The First One

Last year in May, Guillaume Laidet, the entrepreneur who’s behind the return of Nivada Grenchen, Excelsior Park and Vulcain, teamed up with Théo Auffret, a then 27 year old Paris-based independent watchmaker who won the Journe watchmaking award, to form a new brand called Argon. Their first watch, the SpaceOne, was a wild looking contraption, one that looked like a six figure watch but was in fact priced at €1,500. They launched on Kickstarter and met their goal of $108,594 within a minute, getting up to a million in total funds raised. A lot of things happened since then, forcing them to drop the Argon name and successfully putting the SpaceOne on thousands of wrists. But now the company, renamed just SpaceOne is ready for their second watch and it’s even more impressive than the first offering. This is the SpaceOne Tellurium.

For the Tellurium, Laidet and Auffret teamed up with French designer Olivier Gamiette for something completely different. Made out of Grade 5 titanium, the Tellurium is equally as weirdly shaped and huge as the original SpaceOne. The neo-futuristic shape looks almost like an alien space ship and measures 42mm wide, 16mm thick and has a 50mm lug-to-lug. Sure, it’s not a small watch, but that was never the point of a waych like this. And it needs a lot of space to pull of what’s inside. But more on the outside - there’s a heavily domed crystal on top, sorrounded by mostly polished geometric surfaces with a touch of vertical brushing. The sides and back have a sandblasted finish with polished details.

The dial is just as crazy as the case. The base of the dial is a slightly concave aventurine glass surface, with several cutouts in it. At the bottom is a cut out strip that houses two discs that indicate the date and month, while at the center is a cutout for a track that houses a planetary wheel featuring a model of the Sun, Earth and the Moon. Within that circle is a very distinct handset that points to three numerals outside the cutout.

The Sun, Earth and Moon on the dial actually rotate as they do in real life, with the Earth rotating around the Sun in 365 days and the Moon rotating around the Earth every 29.5 days. This complication is not the result of some hyper-complicated movement but, in fact, a module designed by Auffret, manufactured in Switzerland, and assembled in Paris. The entire complication is built on an additional plate, which is connected to the Soprod P024 movement. The planets are fixed on a sapphire, which is connected to a ring with 365 teeth, corresponding to the number of days for Earth to complete one orbit around the sun. The moon is fixed on a pinion, which is connected to the fixed wheel. This is visible from outside the dial. Adjusting the watch, particularly the real-time position of the moon, is achievable through the quick date function. It’s not a perpetual movement, so you will have to adjust it depending on the number of days of the month. As for the Soprod P024 H4 automatic movement that’s the base, it has a 40 hour power reserve.

Now, the best part. The Tellurium can easily stand right next to watches from MB&F in terms of looks, but it’s way off when it comes to the price. Starting April 9, 2024, the timepiece will be offered for subscription in a 4-week window at a price of €2,990. That’s pretty awesome. See more on the SpaceOne website.

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Singer Reimagined Introduces The Divetrack, A Very Serious Diving Chronograph

Fifteen years ago, Rob Dickinson was best known as the singer-songwriter of the band Catherine Wheel and as the cousin of Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson. Now, Rob Dickinson is known as the person who revolutionised the term of restomodding - the practice of complete restoration of a classic car with modern components that were never available when the vehicle was made. He was universally hated for what he was doing with Porsches. He took the legendary 964 series of the 911, cut it up radically, mixed and matched some of the most legendary parts in Porsche history, combined it with meticulous hand craftsmanship and slapped on a very high six figure price tag. Everybody called his Singer Porsches heretical and an insult to purists. Now, Porsche restomodding companies are a dime a dozen, with everybody trying to come close to Singer, but can’t even stand in his shadow as he has become the gold standard, despite all the criticism.

Well, it seems that Dickinson is a glutton for punishment. A couple of years ago he started Singer Reimagined a company that would put out high quality watches. Everybody wrote it off as Singer lending their name to a low quality product. Well, of course it isn’t. Starting with the Track 1 racing inspired chronograph, the Singer Reimagined watches were just awesome. Now, they’re introducing a new type of watch to their lineup - a diving chrono they call the Divetrack Chronograph.

Unlike the elegant cars they make, the watch is anything but. The Divetrack measures in at 49mm wide and an incredible 19.67mm thick. There are actual dive computers that are more slender than this. But every now and again, we need something completely out there. And it looks like a dive instrument, made out of titanium with open worked lugs and with a peripheral time display that adds a lot to the thickness - a ring with the hour numerals and minute marking is visible through a sapphire window below the bezel. Through it, the time is read against a luminous triangle on the case. Speaking of the bezel, it’s heavily knurled and made out of stainless steel, the same material they used for the crown and crown guard. The crown guard is coated in red ceramics and swivels out to reveal the pusher to start, stop, and reset the chronograph.

As the time telling functions have been delegated to the side display, the dial is used for all the chronograph functions, all of which are are on the central axis - there’s a slim seconds hand, a wide orange hand for the minutes, and a small triangular pointer for the hours. The seconds hand is sweeping, while the hour and minute hands are jumping. You use the orange minute hand in conjunction with the unidirectional rotating bezel, but there are also the three segments on the dial that read “Chill”, “Dive”, and “Fly”, for which you use the elapsed hour hand which tells you when you can dive or fly. For example, the chronograph is reset and started after a dive. After six hours of “Chill” time on the surface have passed, diving can resume. Similarly, the chronograph can be started after surfacing and getting on an airplane can only be done after 18 hours have passed.

Running this complicated watch is a new take on the AgenGraphe movement found in the Track 1, made by Agenhor and found in the Moser Streamliner Chronograph. The modification means that the Divetrack can measure 60 seconds, 60 minutes, and 24 hours and has a power reserve of 72 hours.

This is a very unusual watch, both in shape, size and complications. Is it worth the CHF 85,000 asking price? Proabaly not. But… maybe it is. Just like the Singer cars. You don’t know until you see one in real life. See more on the Singer Reimagined website.

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ArtyA Simplifies Things Even More With The Purity Stairway to Heaven

You know Yvan Arpa’s work in the form of ArtyA is known from some pretty incredible watches, including full sapphire watches as well as a sapphire watch that changes color depending on the surrounding temperature. These pieces of art are usually highly complex and extremely expensive. For the rest of us - if a $25,000 budget for a watch can even be the rest of us - ArtyA makes slightly simpler watches, even in the Purity line which has been dedicated to these transparent sapphire watches he has made his name with. Now, he is launching the Purity Stairway to Heaven, the simplest form of the transparent watch, one with just a time display and no complications.

The ArtyA Purity Stairway to Heaven comes in a 40mm wide case that comes in a number of materials and finishes. There’s the stainless steel, either untreated or with a black PVD treatment, and the ceramic in either white, black, green, or blue. Along the side of the case are woven carbon inserts and on the right side is a huge crown guard. On both the top and bottom are sapphire crystals, lending to a very airy look, and water resistance is rated at 50 meters.

There is no dial to speak of on this watch, and the only thing you see when looking at it on your wrist are segments of the movement. On the left is the escapement, while the right side gets a time dial with off-centred, sandblasted, and mirror-polished hour and minute hands sitting on top of two parallel-working barrels. The tiny dial ring comes color matched to the case.

The movement you see has been designed, developed, and manufactured in partnership with Télôs. It beats at 28,800 vph and has a 72-hour power reserve. The watch comes on a integrated rubber strap, but a hand-finished calfskin leather strap is available.

The ArtyA Purity Stairway to Heaven will be made in only 10 pieces per color for Watches & Wonders, with an additional 99 per color available after the event. Prices for the steel version start at €25,900 and for the ceramic at €31,000. See more on the ArtyA website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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A review of the Tudor Black Bay GMT Opaline

2/

Hands-On With The Rose Gold Zenith Chronomaster Sport Boutique Edition

3/

A review of the Awake Summetria collection

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

The Buci Garde-temps is a watch that anyone can enjoy 

Buci describes this dial as a green paper effect. It is a curious color that shifts between grey and a rich, mossy hue depending on the light. It is also available in brick. The more conventional beige color is now sold out. The texture appears dense and fibrous, like the high-quality papers often used for calligraphy. Its surface looks similar to that of the Havaan Tuvali Duodecima, and I offer that as great praise because Havaan Tuvali makes theirs from actual, hand-dyed, Japanese cotton paper. Without the aid of a loupe, I’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference.

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 Barkley Marathons is a legendarily weird race, perhaps the most gruelling experience one can go through. If you don’t believe me, just consider the fact that since 1989, more than 1,000 elite ultramarathoners have entered the annual race, but only 20 have finished. The race is put together by a guy called Lazarus Lake, described by Trail Runner magazine as an "evil genius," "the Leonardo da Vinci of pain," and "a master of sadomasochistic craft." The race was inspired by the 1977 escape of James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., from nearby Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. Ray covered only 12 miles in just under 60 hours, prompting Lake to say to himself that he could cover at least 100 miles. So, runners have to cover 100 miles, including 16,500 metres of elevation – the equivalent of climbing Everest twice - within 60 hours. And this year, for the first time in its history, one of the runners who has completed the race is a woman. Jasmin Paris tells the Guardian what it feels like to finish the toughest race in the world. And once you’re done reading, here’s a documentary on the race in general, and one on a runner who was competing this year.

• Jerry and Rita Alter were New York City retirees who traveled the world. After they died, an owner of an antique store found a peculiar painting hanging behind their bedroom door. Turns out, it was an original by the artist Willem de Kooning, who named it “Woman-Ochre.” It had been stolen in 1985 from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson and valued at more than $100 million. What the hell happened here?

• Who would have said that I would ever feature an article from a magazine called Garden & Gun? Not to say that it isn’t a fine publication. In fact, it doesn’t get much better than gardening with your gun. Well, this story is about the nuanced history of Augusta National’s Black golf caddies. Latria Graham honors the men who survived the racism and class snobbery of Southern golf culture by becoming experts on the landscape.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

For the past week or so, every single issue of It’s About Time has been written with the new (and last) Sum 41 album blasting right against my eardrums. What a record! It makes me feel like I’m 16 again, despite the fact that it hurts to get up off the couch. Here’s a song from the album, but I urge you to go to listen to the whole thing.

💵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 Ōtsuka 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