New Titanium TAG Monaco In Stunnin Racing Blue, The NOMOS Ahoi In Sky And Sand Are Subdued Great Summer Watches, Swatch Has A Brilliant Alternate History Square Watch And More New Watches

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. In an edition where there is a fantastic looking TAG and an even better looking NOMOS, a brand has to pull of something major to outdo them. Well, hello Swatch! Just look at that fantastic square watch!

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In this issue:

• New Titanium TAG Heuer Monaco Chronograph Racing Blue Limited Edition Pays Tribute To French Racing Blue

• The NOMOS Ahoi Neomatik 38 Date In Sky And Sand Are A More Subdued Takes On Great Summer Watches

• Swatch Imagines An Alternate 1980s With Bioceramic What If? Collection And A Square Reinterpretation Of Their First Watch

• Swiss Microbrand Maurice de Mauriac Launches Eight New Super Bright Watches inspired by the colours of Zurich tram lines

• Upstart Benjamin James Wants To Give You A Classic British Watch With A Sporty Slant Of An Integrated Bracelet

Today’s reading time: 8 minutes and 45 second

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👂What’s new

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New Titanium TAG Heuer Monaco Chronograph Racing Blue Limited Edition Pays Tribute To French Racing Blue

It seemed for years that TAG Heuer was stuck in a rut. Their watches were variations on unimaginative pieces they had in production for years. Which was a shame for a brand that was once one of the greatest watch brands in production. But looks like TAG is slowly but surely digging themselves out of the rut. Be it with super modern and great looking watches like the Glassbox Carrera, or with stunning reimaginings of their cult watches, like the Skipper. Now it’s giving a very cool and very French color update to the Monaco with a 1000 piece limited edition they call the TAG Heuer Monaco Chronograph Racing Blue Limited Edition.

It’s still a regular Monaco, meaning that it measures 39mm wide, 14.35mm thick, and 47.4mm lug-to-lug. It keeps more faithful to the Monaco’s original roots with the crown located at 9 o’clock, opposite that two pushers at 3. Things start to get a bit different when you look at the case, which is not steel, but rather grade 2 titanium. And it’s an almost a monochromatic watch - the sandblasted finish of the case almost blends into the silver sunray-brushed dial and pairs with the mirror-polished surfaces. Contrasting that lack of color are bright pops - lime green central chronograph seconds hand, and the French racing blue found on the hour pips, chronograph registers, and the perforated calfskin strap with a case-matching grade 2 titanium folding clasp

Inside the watch is TAG’s calibre 11 automatic movement which is a well known movement. It also remains faithful to the origins of the TAG Heuer Monaco. The calibre 11 movement was born alongside the Monaco in 1969, originally comprised of a Buren base calibre and Dubois Dépraz chronograph module. Today, the base is provided by Sellita, but the Dépraz module persists inside.

The TAG Heuer Monaco Chronograph Racing Blue Limited Edition will be available in July 2023 for purchase as an unnumbered limited edition of 1000 pieces priced at EUR 9,300. You can see more on the TAG Heuer website.

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The NOMOS Ahoi Neomatik 38 Date In Sky And Sand Are More Subdued Takes On Great Summer Watches

It is SO hard for Nomos Glashütte to make a bad looking watch. I’m not sure they’re even capable of doing so. In their wide and fantastic range of Bauhaus-inspired, impeccably made watches powered by in-house movements, a more subdued collection is the Ahoi, which doesn’t experiment too much with design - it just offers a great everyday watch. Now, Nomos introduces the Ahoi Neomatik 38 Date Sky and Sand models, two fantastic new colors that would look amazing on a beach somewhere.

Being a Nomos, it’s supremely elegant. 38.5mm wide and 9.9mm thick, it has a highly polished steel case. It has a screw-down crown, shielded by lateral guards, which gives it a surprising 200 meters of water resistance. Surprising since you don’t expect that much sports functionalities from such an elegant watch. Speaking of the screw-down crown, it has an amazing feature. The stem of the crown is colored bright red, which is a simple but effective safety feature that lets the wearer know the crown is not properly secured

The dial of the new Ahoi NeomatiK 38 Date – protected with the sapphire crystal with a colourless anti-reflective coating – adheres to Nomos’ signature minimalist and highly legible style. Combining black Arabic numerals and stick markers, adding a date window at 3 o’clock to reveal a date disc matching the dial’s colour. At 6 o’clock, a recessed subdial with a vibrant orange-coloured hand brings in a fresh accent. Tiny luminescent rectangles mark the hours on the dial’s periphery, and the hands are coated with Super-LumiNova for easy reading in low-light conditions. The Ahoi Neomatik 38 Date’s sky and sand dial colours come with woven straps in blue-black or dark grey, secured with a Nomos wing buckle.

Inside the watch is the calibre DUW6101, Nomos’ in-house movement. It’s an automatic watch with 42 hours of power reserve and has a bidirectional quick date correction feature. The DUW6101 uses the Swing System, Nomos’ in-house version of the classic lever escapement, featuring a distinctive tempered blue balance spring and screwed-in balance bridge. The movement’s intricate details, including Glashütte ribbing, perlage, sunburst polish, and heat-blued screws, are visible through the exhibition caseback. However, if you don’t like looking at movements, you can also get the watch with a solid caseback.

These will be available in August 2023 and priced at EUR 3,520 with a closed back, or EUR 3,820 with an open back. For more information, visit nomos-glashuette.com.

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Swatch Imagines An Alternate 1980s With Bioceramic What If? Collection And A Square Reinterpretation Of Their First Watch

Do you like square watches? Did the new TAG Heuer get you riled up, wanting to get an unconventionally shaped watch? Do you also not posses the ability to just drop $10,000 on a new watch? Well, look at this coincidence - Swatch just release a fantastic square watch.

The story, as Swatch tells it, is that in 1980 the designers of the first Swatch watch had a full blank canvas and their first decision was whether to make the case round or square. They chose a circle and Swatch was born. In a very interesting take, Swatch now asks What if…? What if they chose square and the company was sent on a completely different timeline? Swatch is going back to the beginning and creating a re-issue of a watch that never was, a watch that could have been.

This first What If? is a square take on the original early '80s circular design, but crafted from Swatch's bio ceramic material which has been made famous by the MoonSwatch. The cases are quite literally a square 33mm x 33mm design in four colors: Black, green, blue and beige – each with a vastly different dial layout (and dial color). But while these are set up as alternate universe retro releases, there is some newness via the integrated strap system with a biosourced strap.

The actual dials on these watches are '80s-inspired but transposed into the square framing. The black case model takes the most simple approach with its white dial and stick markers. The grey is the most formal of the bunch with Roman numerals while the beige case utilizes a blue dial with Arabic three, six, and nine markings. The green case rounds out the collection with a minimalist dial design.

And Swatch nailed what they do perfectly - the pricing. This new What if watch will const you $110. Sure, it’s powered by a lowly quartz movement, but it also looks stunning and it is a cheap enough purchase to just have it lying somewhere around when you want something more different. Check them all out on the Swatch website.

4/ 

Swiss Microbrand Maurice de Mauriac Launches Eight New Super Bright Watches inspired by the colours of Zurich tram lines

I think Maurice de Mauriac is playing a smart game with their name. Say it out loud. Maurice de Mauriac. Tell me it doesn’t sound like an old and established Swiss watch brand with hundreds of years of heritage? In reality, this well named independent microbrand has been making watches since 1997, and have been doing so quite well. Now they’re launching a new collection, the Maurice de Mauriac Züri Date collection, with eight vibrant and colourful dial configurations take inspiration from Zurich’s tram lines.

The watch comes in two sizes - 39mm wide that is 46.6mm lug-to-lug or 42mm wide that is 49.7mm lug-to-lug. Both cases, however, are 11mm thick and 100 metres water-resistant with a screw-down crown. They are also each largely brushed throughout for more of a tool watch feel. The brushed finishing also allows the colourful dials to be the centre of attention, with no glistening surfaces to the front of the case.

Like I said, the dials come in eight different colors: green, turquoise, red, orange, black, white, yellow, or blue and they all have the same layout. Surrounding the entire perimeter of the outer dial is a hash-printed minutes track, with longer lines serving as the hour indices. At 12 is a rounded day-aperture that displays the current day in Zurich’s Swiss-German dialect. At 3 is the date aperture framed by a cyclops magnification on top of the crystal.

Exhibited inside is the automatic ETA 2834-2 calibre, which offers a robust day, date, and time functionality. The winding rotor can also be custom-engraved by buyers, with a 20 character limit, for an additional CHF 150.

The watch is available now, as part of their permanent collection, and I’m not sure how I feel about the price. The version on the dial-matching leather strap sells for CHF 3,200, while the version on the steel bracelet is CHF 3,500. It’s not cheap, but it’s an interesting watch.

5/

Upstart Benjamin James Wants To Give You A Classic British Watch With A Sporty Slant Of An Integrated Bracelet

When you write about watches, you get a lot of emails from new watch brands who want to get published. It’s dangerous to go down this path, because you transfer some of the credibility you spent a lot of time building with that new brand, so if they mess up or cause any harm to your readers, it’s mostly on you. Instead of just taking money to publish news of these watches, like so many other watch blogs do (you would be shocked how prevalent this is, despite these posts being marked as editorial and not paid content), I just say no to most of these requests. Unless, that is, I see something I like.

Ben Adams has been working in the watch industry for the better part of the last decade as a photographer and has helped a couple of watch brands get off the ground. But he says he has always had an original idea for his own brand of watches. From that was born the perhaps a bit boringly name Benjamin James. But the watches are anything but boring. It’s an interesting take on a smaller watch that looks like a love child of a modern accessible sports watch with an integrated bracelet like the Tissot PRX and the Cartier Santos.

Adams claims his journey began with a fixation on the significance of watch sizing and he wanted to keep it small. It measures 31mm in width by 40mm in length, with an elegant 8.3mm thickness. It has an AR coated Quartz crystal and a very nice 100 meters of water resistance. Inspired by the mid-sized watches of the 1970s and 80s, our timepiece is "purposefully small." This approach allows the true beauty of the rectangular case to shine, striking a perfect balance between wrist presence and subtle wearability. The sizing also makes the bracelet an integral part of the design, always visible from above. It's a small detail, but it makes all the difference in elevating the overall aesthetic.

A lot of Adams’ upbringing is also integrated into the watch, as he was born and raised in the British area of the Cotswolds. An example is the chevron motif adorning the dial, paying homage to the coat of arms of Cheltenham, his hometown. Another reference to the British countryside are the five very interesting colorways for the dial. There’s the Classic White, which reflects the white brick cottages of the English countryside, the Blue Hour, inspired by the natural beauty of the blue hour time, shown through the gradient blue dial and the Ice Blue, a dial dedicated to winter, which will be a kickstarter exclusive when the campaign launches later this year.

The more interesting colors, however, are two you don’t get to see on watches that much. One is Lavender Purple, inspired by the iconic Cotswolds Lavender fields and the other is Ivy Green, inspired by the stunning ivy found on many Cotswolds buildings. While there has been a resurgence in purple and especially green watches, these two seem to nail the shades perfectly and differently than other brands have done.

Pricing will be interesting, considering the fact that Ben has chosen to offer two different internals for the watch. You will be able to get it with the Ronda Swiss Quartz if you are looking for a more affordable, yet stylish option. Or, you can opt for the very well known hand wound Sellita SW210, if you want more of the mechanical heritage inside.

Opt for the quartz version and the price should be somewhere in the range of £350 and for the mechanical version, £650. This is still subject to change, as the watch is being finalized. The Kickstarter campaign is expected to start in September, but until then you can learn more from the Benjamin James website and subscribe to their newsletter to keep in the loop. I wish them all the best, I really like this watch.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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Hands-On With The Sternglas Hamburg Automatik Edition Neuwerk

2/

An in-depth look at the Cartier Santos-Dumont Micro-Rotor

3/

A review of the Casio Pro Trek Pendleton Collaboration

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

The Final Act Of The Ferdinand Berthoud Chronomètre FB 2T

As you can see, the layout of the dial is identical to the FB 1 and echoes that of historical marine chronometers with its off-centred hour and minutes sub-dial at noon and its extra-long central seconds hand sweeping majestically – no stuttering – over the dial to alight on the peripheral railway track with numerals at 5-second intervals separated by a line. The recessed power reserve indicator is still at 9 o’clock, and the elongated oblong aperture on the dial, stretching from the base of the hour and minutes sub-dial to the marker at 6 o’clock, reveals the 1-minute, slow-beating tourbillon surmounted by the single co-axial fourth wheel driving the central seconds hand; meaning that the seconds hand is drivedn directly by the tourbillon, not by a gear train. The recessed power reserve indicator is engraved on the mainplate of the movement and graphically indicated by somewhat unnecessary ‘Haut’ and ‘Bas’ labels in the same font as the brand name, manufacture location and chronometry printings on the dial.

⏲️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

• For The Walrus, reporter Rachel Browne writes to Patrice Runner, the Canadian king of mail order grift, a man whose persuasive direct-mail copy writing skills deceived vulnerable believers. He swindled victims out of $200 million by pretending to be a legendary psychic.

• Computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum was there at the dawn of artificial intelligence—but he was also adamant that we must never confuse computers with humans.

• Silk Road once reigned as the Internet’s premier destination for drug deals and even more illicit fare. But as the Web site became a billion-dollar enterprise, its creator, Ross Ulbricht, went from idealistic to dangerous. This is an old article, but I was just googling to see what’s up with Ulbricht now and remembered how great the story was.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

It’s the weekend, so here’s a feature length documentary for you if you have nothing else going on these days. And no, despite what the video thumbnail will have you think, this is not a documentary on Freddy Krueger’s life after Elm Street. It’s on Paul Johnson, who sailed the world all his life. He loved, drank, and lived foolish, never truly living on land. Now he is turning eighty. What is at the end of such a journey? Is there loneliness?

💵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

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