Oris Gives Divers Sixty-Five A Nifty Green Gradient Dial; Nivada Shrinks Super Antarctic And Antarctic Spider; Vero Has An Amazing Diver; Laventure's GMT Is Interesting; Garrick Updates The S3

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. You know I like to pick favorites on a particular day and today it has to be the Vero diver. Those are some pretty amazing colors we haven’t seen before. More watches need cerakote treatments on their bezels, especially in the sub €1,000 range.

In this issue:

• The Oris Divers Sixty-Five Date 40mm Gets A Pretty Nifty Gradient Green Dial

• Nivada Grenchen Shrinks The Super Antarctic And Antarctic Spider To A Very Original 35mm Size

• Vero Has A Very Colorful Take On A Nicely Proportioned Diver, The Open Water 38

• Laventure Shrinks Down The Transatlantique II GMT And Adds A Two-Tone Option

• Garrick Unveils the S3 MK2 With An Openworked Dial And Updated Movement

Today’s reading time: 9 minutes and 48 seconds

👂What’s new

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The Oris Divers Sixty-Five Date 40mm Gets A Pretty Nifty Gradient Green Dial

Last week was a big one for Oris, as they introduced a 38mm version of the Divers Sixty-Five with the Calibre 400 movement and no date, which is exactly what a bunch of fans have been asking for. It was also one of the most read issues of this newsletter, that’s how much everybody liked it. But Oris is not done with new releases. Only now, they’re back to their 40mm size, but now with a pretty spectacular new green color.

You know this case already. Taking inspiration from skindivers of the 1960s, the watch is made out of stainless steel and measures 40mm wide, 12.8mm thick and has a lug-to-lug of 48mm. Not small, but also not huge and likely in the sweet spot for the majority of wrists. On top is a double-domed sapphire crystal, surrounded by a unidirectional bezel that has an anodized aluminium insert with a 60-minute scale. I know most modern watch buyers prefer ceramic inserts, but I’m a total sucker for a nice aluminium one, especially when it comes in such a great shade of green. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The green theme continues onto the dial, where it has a pretty amazing gradient effect from a very light, almost pistachio green to a much darker one on the very edges. You still get the somewhat generic circle and bar markers and simple hands, all of which are generously lumed. There’s also a date aperture at the 6 o’clock position.

Inside, you won’t get the in-house caliber 400 that Oris is moving to all sorts of watches within their collection. Instead, it’s the calibre 733, which is essentially a slightly modified Sellita SW200 that beats at 28,800vph and has a 40 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a stainless steel bracelet with a folding clasp with those fake rivets that are just a little bit too annoying.

The new Gradient Green Oris Divers Sixty-Five Date 40mm is available now, not limited and priced at €2,450. See more on the Oris website.

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Nivada Grenchen Shrinks The Super Antarctic And Antarctic Spider To A Very Original 35mm Size

These two new models from Nivada Grenchen come as no surprise to people who have even casually follower the recently relaunched brand. The new Nivada has had quite a lot of success with their recreation of the original Antarctic model, a simple and elegant 38mm watch that came with a number of super interesting dials. While most welcomed the updated cases and larger side, some wished that Nivada would stay completely true to the original and release a 35mm version. And that’s exactly what they did, they introduced the Antarctic 35mm. Well, it was only a matter of time before this happened to the other two main watches in the Antarctic line - the Super Antarctic and the incredible Antarctic Spider. Here we are!

The Antarctic is based on an old watch from the 1950s which was developed for Operation Deep Freeze, an expedition to the Antarctic conducted by US scientists. They were in need of a waterproof, anti-magnetic, and automatic watch and the Antarctic was the perfect solution. While this tiny and simple watch might seem not robust enough for a watch meant for exploration, it was almost the G-Shock of its time.

All four versions of the new smaller Antarctic watches come in the same case, just like the existing Antarctic 35mm. The case is polished and brushed stainless steel, 35mm wide, 10.1mm thick and with a 41.9mm lug-to-lug. On top is a very pronounced double-domed sapphire crystal, surrounded by a very thin, fixed and unmarked bezel. The lugs have a slight twist to them, and perhaps a slight scallop, to give them a very interesting flat look where they connect to the strap. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The two models differ in their dials. The Super Antarctic gets a very faithful recreation of the original, with a matte black base and lume in either cream or white, combined with triangular and bar hour markers and mercedes-style hands. The Antarctic Spider, on the other hand, is incredibly exciting. The spider name refers to the 8 lines on the dial that connect the center of the dial to eight applied vertical indexes. It looks like very little else on the market, making it truly special. The new 35mm version gets a base color of black or a very cool brushed silver. Unfortunately, the initial release doesn’t include the very nice salmon dial the larger model has, but I assume it’s also just a matter of time before it shows up.

Inside all four is the Landeron 21 manual winding movement, which has the date function on the Spider and is without one on the Super Antarctic. It beats at 28,800vph (4 Hz) with a power reserve of approximately 36 hours. While the original Antarctics had automatic movements, Nivada Grenchen chose a manually wound movement to keep the thickness low. And like all other Nivada watches, there’s a bunch of strap options - a number of leathers, a tropic rubber, a flat link bracelet or a beads of rice one.

The two new Antarctic watches are supposed to be available for order starting today and with a price that starts at $850 and going up depending on the strap option. See more on the Nivada Grenchen website.

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Vero Has A Very Colorful Take On A Nicely Proportioned Diver, The Open Water 38

The folks over at Vero have a pretty interesting mission statement in front of them. Not an official one, of course, but it sure seems they are following it. And that would be - take a traditional watch genre and turn it upside down. Just look at their Forrest Service model. It’s as if somebody asked them to design a modern take on a field watch without them knowing what field watches traditionally looked like. It would very plausibly come out as the Workhorse/Forrest Service. They also make a diver called the Open Water which is a funky sports watch that comes in a 41mm case. Now, Vero gives the Open Water a very attractive 38mm case and with slight color tweaks gets a completely new look.

The new Open Water comes in a stainless steel case that looks very much like it’s titanium thanks to the media blasted finish which gives it a dark matte surface. The watch measures 38mm wide, 10.75mm thick (I’m assuming this is without the crystal and perhaps even without the bezel, as Vero states this is the case thickness) and has a lug to lug of 46.5mm. The lug width is also of note as it’s 18mm. This narrower lug width and long lugs give a sense of a long watch, despite it being relatively short. On top is a 60 click unidiretional bezel that’s cerakoted in two colors - a neon yellow and sand. These are pretty amazing colors and even more interestingly - the bezel doesn’t have a diving 60-minute timer. Instead, it gets a 12 hour bezel, which allows you to track a second time zone. Some will love this. Some will hate it. Water resistance is 200 meters.

Moving on to the dial, things are very minimalist here. Two color options match the cerakoted bezels, but there’s not much else to talk about. The hands are simple black batons with lumed tips, there’s a Vero logo at 12 o’clock and the hour markers are simple applied squares framed in black and filled with lume. With such minimalism, every single detail matters, which is why I love the shortened marker at 6 o’clock to accommodate the “20 ATM” mark.

Inside, some good news. The watch is powered by the extremely familiar, easily servicable and robust Sellita SW-200-1 movement. It beats at 4Hz and has a 38 hour power reserve (boy, I really can’t wait for Sellita to update this movement). The watches come on a stainless steel three link bracelet that’s closed by the already legendary Nodex clasp. Developed by Nodus and offered to the market, the clasp has a push button for super simple micro-adjustments.

You can get the Vero Open Water 38 now and it will ship right way. Probably. Vero staggers their releases and sells in batches, so while the first batch is available for shipping right now, you might have to wait for the next window (which is July 2) if it sells out. And it could, seeing how it’s a great looking watch with a great size and even better clasp. See more on the Vero website.

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Laventure Shrinks Down The Transatlantique II GMT And Adds A Two-Tone Option

I look at watches all day every day. Follow thousands of accounts on Instagram. Get hundreds of press releases. And yet… Even I manage to miss a brand. Laventure has been around since 2017 and has made some pretty good looking watches, all inspired, as the name suggests, by adventure on land, sea and in the air. And I should know the brand, as they made quite an impact in the watch world with a very successful Kickstarter campaign. The owner, Clement Gaud, is very proud of the fact that all parts of the watch are actually Swiss made, which is very refreshing, and they recently introduced the new Laventure Transatlantique II GMT, a slightly shrunken down version of a watch that they already made and with a couple of new colors.

The 200 meter water resistant case of the new Transatlantique II GMT, made out of stainless steel - with a two metal option that include a gold bezel surround and gold central links - measures 38.9mm wide and 12mm thick, and that thickness includes the 3mm crystal on top. Notice the lack of sapphire in that description. On top is a Superdome Plexiglas crystal, which I assume will send a lot of people into a tailspin, asking how such an expensive watch does not have a sapphire crystal. Remember, the use of plexiglas is not always a budget choice, it can also be a stylistic one. I, for one, love plexi crystals and the look they give a dial. The lug-to-lug is also nice, measuring 46.2mm. The plexi is a perfect match one of my other favorite things - an acrylic bezel insert that comes in either a dark/light green combo, and a dark/light brown combo.

The same colors are present on the dial. Well, at least on the brown bezel which gets a brown sandwich dial. The green bezel gets a matte black dial. The sandwich construction allows the round and pill shaped indices to be sunken in and filled with cream lume. The green version gets a green GMT hand, the brown dial a brown hand and the two-tone version has a gold toned GMT hand. There’s a date aperture at the 3 o’clock position.

There’s more change on the inside, where the previous ETA 2893-2 has been replaced with the Sellita SW330-2 which is a caller GMT, meaning you get an independently adjustable 24-hour hand. The movement beats at 4Hz and has a 56 hour power reserve. The movement is COSC certified, with an accuracy between -4 and +6 seconds a day. The watch comes on a rubber strap (green) or three link stainless steel bracelet (brown) which has 18k gold centre links in the two-tone version.

Laventure won’t make many of these watches. The two-tone version is limited to 50 pieces, the brown steel version is limited to 99, while there are no numbers for the green version. The watch went on pre-order on June 21st and the brown version is already completely sold out. Which is saying a lot, considering the price. The green watch on rubber strap is priced at CHF 4,200, the brown on steel was priced at CHF 4,800, while the two tone brown will set you back CHF 8,200. See more on the Laventure website.

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Garrick Unveils the S3 MK2 With An Openworked Dial And Updated Movement

In a world where even the highest of end of watches are often industrially made, stamped out of metal and put together by machines, it’s great to see a brand that obsesses about making mostly hand built watches. Garrick is one of these brands. The small British indie is no longer that small, but they still handcraft their watches. Today they update their Garrick S3 with the S3 MK2 which gets a new dial and an updated movement

The case seems to remain the same. It measures 42mm wide, has a large fluted crown on the side and a sapphire crystal on top. It’s also still made out of stainless steel and has a polished finish. Interestingly for such an advanced and elegant watch, you get 100 meters of water resistance. Pretty cool

Moving on to the new - the most obvious update is the openworked dial. The dial is made out of a brass base with numerous cutouts, hand frosting and litho-printing, forming a minutes chapter ring with solid subdials. The subdials have a white background on all colroways of the watch. The minute track is graduated to 1/5th of a minute, with black numerals marking 5-minute intervals, and there are red accents all over the watch.

Garrick has always been famous for their incredible level of customization, so it could happen that no two of the S3 Mk2 are the same. But still, Garrick does offer some base setups which include blue maritime-inspired hour and minute hands, a rhodium-plated mainplate that is integral to the watch’s dial-side aesthetics, and gold-coloured wheels.

Inside is the manually wound calibre UT-G04, an update to the old movement in the S3. Garrick says they reviewed each component and improved both aesthetics and performance. The movement is accurate to 3 seconds per day and has a power reserve of 45 hours. The watch comes on a leather straps available in alligator, calf leather, buffalo, or ostrich.

Only five Garrick S3 Mk2 watches will be made per year and only to order with full customization options. With that in mind, along with the hand work that goes into each one, along with the materials, the base price of £28,495 without tax doesn’t sound that ridiculous. See more on the Garrick website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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A review of the new Seiko Presage SPB445 Arita Porcelain 

2/

Hands-On with the Sphaera Epoch Classic Rusty

3/

A review of the Norqain Freedom 60 Chrono 40mm

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

The Calgari Dimora Panda And Pierre Morlet — Two Affordable Meca-Quartz Chronographs

The first thing that you notice when you put the watch on is the case. Its smooth non-reflective finish comes about from the fine bead blasting it receives during production, giving it a super matte look. The case design, although familiar to many dive watches, looks somehow different.

Read the whole review on Watch Gecko

⏲️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

• A dive into the depths of the movie “Jaws.” Olivia Rutigliano has given a lot of thought to the themes and meaning of the film, analyzing it like a literary novel. This piece will make you think about this timeless classic differently.

• Greater Grace World Outreach has thousands of members. Over its 50-year history, the church has been accused of being cult-like and of turning a blind eye to a culture of abuse. Now a group of former members, who call themselves the Millstones, are demanding a reckoning. This is the first instalment in an investigative series.

• If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you might have picked up on the fact that I have a history and close connection with both periodical and book publishing. I still keep an eye on the industry just to know what’s going on. And I don’t really have an explanation for the new literary hit genre that’s hitting the market - monster porn. But New York magazine attempts an explanation.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

This is something that’s tough to write out. Weezer’s The Blue Album is turning 30 years old. Hard because I still vividly remember the summer I discovered the album on a family trip. We just blasted this album over and over. What makes it hard to believe is I was sure I was a young teenager. And this dates me to eight years old. Memories are a tricky thing. Someone in the video says they are the Beach Boys, but filthy. Yea they are. Love this so much.

💵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

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-Vuk