Omega Releases Paris Olympics LE Seamaster 300M In Steel And Gold, Nivada Grenchen Has A Funky And Affordable Paul Newman Variant And New Watches From Sequent, Massena Lab And Sarpaneva

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I told you this might happen. You might have noticed there was no newsletter yesterday. The summer months really got to the brands and there aren’t that many releases. So, for the coming weeks you might see an issue missing here and there, just when there’s not enough to talk about. I hope you don’t mind

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In this issue:

• Omega Introduces 2024 Paris Olympics Limited Edition Seamaster 300M In Steel And Gold

• Nivada Grenchen Chronoking “Paul Newman” Orange Is Extremely Funky And Very Affordable At Under $500

• Seconde/Seconde Vandalizes The Sequent Smartwatch With The Most Ungrateful Solar Charging Dial Ever Made

• Revolution And Massena Lab Dig Deep Into Archives To Take Inspiration From A Stunning Vintage Pièce Unique Patek Dial

• The Latest Sarpaneva Pays Homage To Skandinavian Folklore With A Dial You Just Can’t Believe Is Real

Today’s reading time: 7 minutes and 37 second

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👂What’s new

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Omega Introduces 2024 Paris Olympics Limited Edition Seamaster 300M In Steel And Gold

Since they are held every four years, one tends to forget the hype that the Summer Olympics bring with them. And next year promises to bring unprecedented amounts of hype - the Olympics are returning to Paris after 100 years. And the countdown seems to have just started, with Omega’s Olympics-themed watch. Omega has been the official timekeeper of the Olympics for over 90 years and for decades now has been releasing special edition watches to commemorate the Games. The new Special Edition is a standard Seamaster 300M, but with a Moonshine Gold bezel and a few other details that pay tribute to the coming 2024 Games.

In essence, this is a modern Seamaster 300M. That means that it’s 42mm wide and 13.7mm thick. It obviously has 300 meters of water resistance and inside the watch is Omega's METAS-certified Master Chronometer caliber 8800 with 55 hours of power reserve. The watch comes on the Seamaster steel bracelet and also features

The rest of the specs are what'd you'd expect for the modern Seamaster 300M. That means inside ticks Omega's METAS-certified Master Chronometer caliber 8800 with 55 hours of power reserve. The case is 42mm wide, 13.7mm thick, and comes on a stainless steel bracelet with Omega's new Quick Change System. This will come in handy, as Omega will make a range of five Paris 2024 NATO strap.

The biggest visible change for the Paris Special Edition is the 18-karat gold bezel made out of Omega’s Moonshine Gold which is a bit lighter than regular 18-karat gold. The laser-structured diving scale is printed in positive relief and it has a single pip of lume at 12 o'clock. The caseback features the Paris 2024 medallion, inlaid in Moonshine Gold and complemented with the stamped "Paris 2024" and Olympic rings below. Another nod to the Games is Omega’s use of the official Paris 2024 font on the date wheel which sits at 6 o’clock. Finally, the center seconds hand carries a small Paris 2024 emblem in place of the usual luminous marker.

Omega says this is a special edition for the Paris 2024 Games, but not a numbered or limited edition. Omega mentions that "for now," it'll be only available in Paris. It retails for $8,700. This is currently the only Seamaster 300 that offers a gold bezel, but this is also quite a large premium over the $5,900 for the standard stainless steel Seamaster 300. Do with this information what you will.

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Nivada Grenchen Chronoking “Paul Newman” Orange Is Extremely Funky And Very Affordable At Under $500

It seems that the Nivada Grenchen archives have no end. They could put out a new version of one of their old watches every week of the year, and it seems like they could still crank them out for years. But their latesr version has my heart pounding a bit. It’s called the Chronoking “Paul Newman” Orange watch that pays homage to a Chronoking from the ’70s. And boy, does it have an awesome story behind it.

This Chronomaster model is inspired by a vintage Chronoking dial which was special for a few reasons. One was the fact that it used the same numeral font as the ‘Paul Newman’ Rolex Daytona. The other special thing about it is who made it - Jean Singer, a leading Swiss dial maker based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the famous watchmaking town that was recently hit by a destructive storm. He is responsible for some of the most iconic and collectible exotic dials the watchmaking world ever had and has to offer like the Speedmaster Racing, the Heuer Skipper and Universal’s intensely blue Nina.

At 38mm in diameter, the 100m water-resistant case is wrist-friendly and robust enough for summer adventures. The pop of orange certainly brings ’70s flair befitting of summertime vibes. While the original Chronoking was powered by a Valjoux 72 chronograph movement, the new version opts for a more controversial but much, much, cheaper meca-quartz movement - the Seiko VK64 meca-quartz.

Considering it can actually be swam with, has a timing bezel, double-domed sapphire crystal for vintage effect, and a Jean Singer-style dial that is very striking and handsome, this, at least for now, is one of the budget-friendly daily wearers to beat. That’s because it costs only $479. This will be a limited edition watch, but not limited in numbers, but rather in selling time - all orders placed within a five-week order window will be honoured and delivered by the end of this year. The pre-ored window opens today. See more on the Nivada Grenchen website.

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Seconde/Seconde Vandalizes The Sequent Smartwatch With The Most Ungrateful Solar Charging Dial Ever Made

For a while I double wristed an Apple Watch and a regular watch. I liked the life tracking aspect of the Apple Watch, and it helped me lose a bunch of weight, but I couldn’t go without a regular watch. But soon, the Apple Watch became a burden. Instead of a useful tool to track my health, it became a constant focus point for the overabundant notifications that kept streaming in. So I got rid of it, wishing that there was a normal looking watch that could just track my health stats.

Well, guess what. Of course there is. Adrian Bachmann, CEO and co-founder of Sequent, must have had the same problem I did. The Sequent is a great reinterpretation of the smartwatch. While it looks like a standard analog watch, its functionality has all the high-tech gadgetry expected for those looking for a smartwatch that’s designed for health monitoring. This includes activity tracking, distance monitoring, blood oxygen and heart rate monitoring. But no annoying notifications.

Oh, and it gets better. Sequent is the first mechanical smart watch. Of course, it doesn’t use levers and gears to track you blood oxygen levels, but it does use a 8 mechanical part movement and a tungsten rotor to power the watches, providing almost infinite running time. Brilliant.

Sequent has also had some successes with colaboration with other brands to create limited edition, but this latest one with Romaric André, the mind behind Seconde/Seconde and the infamous dial modifier, might be their best one yet. He took on their SolarCharge model, almost making fun of Sequent’s search for sunlight to run the watch with a melting ice cream cone.

The watch itself comes in five colorways: Tangerine Orange, Azure Blue, Black Sand, Sea-Salt White, and Transparent Jellyfish. The watch is 40mm in diameter with a water resistance of up to 50 meters. Most impressive of all is that the Sequent SolarCharger boasts the largest solar dial ever made. It works to convert ambient light into electrical power, giving the watch an almost endless power reserve.

It’s a whimsical take on a great smartwatch concept and you can have yours for $495. Each colorway is limited to 99 pieces, but from what I can tell, they are still available. Deliveries are scheduled for September. Check out more on the Sequent website.

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Revolution And Massena Lab Dig Deep Into Archives To Take Inspiration From A Stunning Vintage Pièce Unique Patek Dial 

There is no doubt that William Massena, owner of Massena LAB, has one of the deepest sources of knowledge when it comes to watches. His Instagram is full of quirky, interesting and rare modern and vintage pieces, so it’s no surprise that the watches he creates are imbued with this familiarty of the history of watchmaking. Now Massena LAB is collaboration with Wei Koh’s Revolution Magazine to create a stunning watch inspired by one of the best chronographs ever made.

Based on the same platform as Massena LAB's other Uni-Racer models, the watch is a 39mm wide and 13mm thick manually-wound chronograph powered by a Sellita Caliber SW510 Elaboré movement. That movement, with nine o'clock running seconds and a 30-minute totalizer at three o'clock, runs at 4Hz with 58 hours of power reserve and is cased in stainless steel with 50m of water resistance.

No surprises there. The stunning part comes from the dial, an unusual black sector dial with a base-1000 tachymeter. But that's not what makes it so special. The sector dial is a luminous pumpkin hue, which Massena LAB says is a brand-new color mix of Super-LumiNova, with Roman numerals at 12 and six. The chronograph and subdial hands are white, while the hour and minute hands are blued and filled with the same pumpkin lume.

The basis for the design is a rare, unobtainable, pièce unique Patek Philippe ref. 130 chronograph from 1949. It is currently part of the most historically important vintage watch collections in the world and is one of the most outside-the-box Pateks ever made. That’s, perhaps, THE best watch to base your recreation of. Of course, not a 1:1, since the original is 33mm wide and the new version gets a more angular case with pump pushers instead of rectangular pushers.

This will be a limited edition of 120 pieces that you will be able to get on the Revolution website tomorrow, Friday, July 28 at 10 AM EDT. Price is set at $3,750. This is a bit steep if you look at this watch as a Sellita SW510 powered chronograph. But take into account that this is a recreation of a watch that is unobtanium and looks absolutely stunning, it just might be worth it.

Yes, that's right, this is a limited edition of 120 pieces set to release from Revolution on its website on Friday, July 28 at 10 AM EDT for $3,750.

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The Latest Sarpaneva Pays Homage To Skandinavian Folklore With A Dial You Just Can’t Believe Is Real

Stepan Sarpaneva, probably the second most famous watchmaker to come out of Finland next to Kari Voutilainen, has recently celebrated 20 years of watchmaking and there seem to no indications he is slowing down. In fact, he is creating some of the best watches to date, with a defined style and cool backstory.

Sarpaneva ties all of his creations back to Scandinavia in one way or another. For his latest watch, Sarpaneva has taken inspiration from a legendary beast of Scandinavian and Germanic culture, a ferocious and elusive creature known as Näkki. “Under the cloak of moonless nights, it would emerge from the shadows, ensnaring the lamenting village women and drawing them into its watery domain.” Näkki or Nixie creatures are humanoid, and often shapeshifting water spirits.

Housed in a classic Sarpaneva case with its scalloped sides and crown at 4 o’clock, this new watch measures 42mm x 11.4mm x 46mm and is made, classically for the brand, in high-grade Outokumpu stainless steel from Finland. Nothing new here… What matters is the dial, a multi-layer succession of fully opened steel plates with no fewer than 650 cutouts. The lower plate has been hand-painted with about 15 different colours, revealed by the dial’s cutouts. At night, as often with Sarpaneva, the real show begins and Näkki reveals its true nature. The whole dial, the White Moon or Harvest Moon, the beast and the nature surrounding murky marsh waters becomes bright and colourful.

The back of the watch reveals a modified Soprod A10 calibre, a classic automatic movement now fitted with a moon phase complication and decorated by hand with perlage, rhodium-plated parts and a partially lumed stainless steel winding mass with Sarpaneva Moonface.

Available in two editions – White Moon with Steel Rhodium hands or Harvest Moon with Red Gold hands – the Sarpaneva Näkki is limited to 30 pieces per colourway and priced at EUR 21,000 before taxes. For more details and orders, please visit their website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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Hands on with the Tudor Black Bay 54

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A review of the intriguing Casio Oceanus Manta with the 24-sided faceted sapphire bezel

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Hands on with the Yema Urban Traveller

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

Archimede Does Classic German Design at a Fair Price

Each of the references is a 40mm stainless steel ICKLER case with a classic Arabic numeral dial layout and a subsidiary seconds scale at the 6 o’clock mark. A railroad track pattern circumvents the dial, adding just enough detail to be visually appealing without detracting from the overall clean visuals. Most interesting, perhaps, are the lumed hands, numerals, and indices which were inspired by the use of radium in vintage watches, and light up in a charming nod to the past (but don’t worry – it’s not radioactive).

⏲️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

• In 2001, Benjamin Hale’s young cousin went missing in the Ozarks. The search for her led his family down unexpected paths—to a cult, a murder, and possibly a ghost.

• In this beautiful essay for Joyland, Matthew Medendorp peels back the layers of the lowly onion, an organism with DNA more complex than that of a human. He reflects on its earthly origins and heavenly taste once transformed by fat in the pan, after it meets the knife. I love these pieces that follow an object through its life cycle.

• As soon as people saw what software like ChatGPT can do, they called the end of writing, promising that AI will become our writing overlord. And ChatGPT surely made writing easier for some people. But it didn’t make it better. However, this shift prompted a discussion: what makes writing good?

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Standing at 7041 Metres, Link Sar is said to be the last great unclimbed mountain of the Karakoram range in Pakistan. The Mountain has seen 9 failed attempts since 1970, including a 2017 attempt by the team of Graham Zimmerman, Steve Swenson and Mark Richey. In 2019 the team returned bolsered by the addition of Mark Richey for one more attempt on the unscaled peak. This is their story.

💵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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