Panerai Releases Wild Radiomir Annual Calendar In Beautiful Green, Nivada Grenchen Makes The Ultimate Vintage Watch, The Medor Pulsograph Is The Perfect Watch For Doctors And New From Circula And Byrne

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. It’s Friday and I hope the weather is nice wherever you are. Because it’s beautiful in Zagreb right now and you won’t be seeing me inside until Monday!

If you like this newsletter, you might consider supporting it directly through Patreon. If you were subscribed, you could have already read my lengthy piece on Only Watch and it potentially being the biggest scam of the watch world. Other subscriber-only articles include the Completely Sterile Secret Watches Of MACV-SOG and my choice of 11 vintage Heuer watches that would make the perfect basis for new TAG Heuer recreations, including a possible MoonSwatch type watch that could actually break the internet.

In this issue:

• Panerai Celebrates New Paris Store With A Wild Boutique Exclusive Radiomir Annual Calendar In Beautiful Green

• Nivada Grenchen Makes The Ultimate Vintage Recreation With The New Antarctic 35mm

• The Medeor Pulsograph Is A Fantastic And Affordable Watch Made For Doctors

• Circula Adds New Dial Colors to their Protrail and Aquasport II Collections

• Byrne Teams Up With Middle Eastern Retailer 10tenlabs For The GyroDial Arqaam Limited Edition

Today’s reading time: 8 minutes and 33 seconds

👂What’s new

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Panerai Celebrates New Paris Store With A Wild Boutique Exclusive Radiomir Annual Calendar In Beautiful Green

I’ve heard someone say all Panerais look the same. And, to be honest, they might not be that wrong. It does seem that a lot of the Panerai models look like each other. But hey, at least they have a couple of model lines, which is more than can be said for some other brands (looking over at you AP). Not only do their models look very similar, they also adore doing limited edition models that are limited in numbers, but also completely wild in construction. And to best demonstrate this, Panerai is now introducing a new PAM01364 Radiomir Annual Calendar to celebrate the opening of their new Casa Panerai boutique opening on 20 Avenue Des Champs Elysées, Paris.

What does this particular Annual Calendar Radiomir have to do with Paris? Well, I’m not so sure. What I am sure of is that it looks like a regular Radiomir but it’s so, so, much more. It comes in a 45mm wide case Radiomir case, which means that you get those characteristic wire lugs and faceted edges with a pillow-like shape. But the real kicker is the material. The watch is made out of Panerai’s proprietary Platinumtech, a blend of materials that makes a much more robust and scratch-resistant version of platinum.

Complementing the very shiny case is the absolutely brilliant deep green sandwich dial. It has both a radiant sunray finish and a smokey fumé effect ranging from a beautiful green in the center to almost black on the edges. Indices, Arabic numerals, and hands are rendered in a warm hue, while lettering and date indications are done in a contrasting white. There’s a running seconds display at 9 o’clock and at 3 is day/date display. As you might notice, there’s an outside rotating ring that features three-letter abbreviations for the months in Italian. This, of course, is part of the annual calendar movement.

Inside the watch is the P.9010/AC annual calendar movement, which is based on the controversial P.9010 which Panerai claims is in-house, but independent journalists have denied. This has opened up the discussion on what makes an in-house movement and where we draw the line, but the P.1090/AC runs at 28,800 vph with 40 jewels and double mainspring barrels which get you three days of power. The watch comes on a classic dark brown and hand-dyed alligator strap.

The PAM01364 Radiomir Annual Calendar is only available at the new Casa Panerai boutique in Paris, with no word whether it is limited in number. Price is set at €59.000. See more on the Panerai website.

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Nivada Grenchen Makes The Ultimate Vintage Recreation With The New Antarctic 35mm

One of the darling stories of the watch industry has been the revival of Nivada Grenchen. The brand saw it’s peak in the 50s and 60s, but did not fare well in the quartz crisis. Just a couple of years ago watch entrepreneur Guillaume Laidet revived the brand and in a very short period of time launched an incredibly diverse lineup of watches. Most of these pieces are vintage-inspired pieces but often break from the vintage shape of tiny watches in order to appeal to a more modern audience. Well, here’s something for the purists - Nivada is introducing a new 35mm Antarctic and it doesn’t get more vintage than this.

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.

The new Antarctic is very similar. It comes in a 35mm stainless steel case that’s 10.1mm thick. The case has lugs that are rounded but just on the sides, and the watch has the same oversized crown. The crown doesn’t screw down, which means you get only 50 meters of water resistance. On the back is a solid screwed-in caseback with a penguin on a gold medallion.

Three colors, each with two options of luminous material, is offered. YOu can get a black, white, or eggshell dial with lume rendered in either beige Super Luminous or white Super Luminous. I like this huge range of options as it allows you to chose how much fauxtina you would like on your watch. All dials have applied steel hour markers with art deco numerals at 3, 6, 9, and 12. The one of two types of lume is painted into curved lines on the outer edge of each shiny index. Completing the vintage look are dauphine-style hands in steel and a choice of polished steel and a blued variant of the central seconds hand.

Inside the watch is the manually wound Landeron 21 calibre which runs at a frequency of 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. Also, just look at it, it’s screaming for a manual calibre. The watch can be had on either a black or a brown perforated leather strap, but also a number of other options that include rubber and bands from Forstner which include a beads-of-rice, a Bonklip and a Rivet.

The watches are on preorder right now and preorders will be opened until December 23. Price is set at a fantastic €850 and deliveries should start in March 2024. See more on the Nivada website.

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The Medeor Pulsograph Is A Fantastic And Affordable Watch Made For Doctors

There is something incredibly romantic about a doctor using a complication on his wristwatch to asses your health. This is, of course, an antiquated way of doing it, and you would want a machine to do the job if your life depended on it. And with the increase of the demand for precision, less and less watches featured scales for measuring pulse and breaths. French Doctor of Pharmacy and former rescue swimmer Vincent Heyraud also noticed this issue and decided to rectify it by launching a new watch brand called Medeor with it’s first model, the Pulsograph - a capable diver that can help doctors gauge breathing and heart rhythms at a glance.

The watch comes in a 40mm wide stainless steel case that’s 12mm thick and has a 47mm lug to lug. And despite being basically a medical instrument, it’s also a full on diving watch. It has a knurled crown and bezel, solid caseback, a double-domed anti-reflective sapphire crystal and is water resistant up to 200 meters.

The party trick, of course are the bidirectional rotating bezel and seconds hand. The bezel has a polished blue ceramic insert for the Asthmometer, the scale that’s used to measure breath rate, and a brushed tungsten insert for the Pulsometer to measure heartbeat. The Pulsometer has a triangle starting marker, while the Asthmometer has a circle marker and measurements are taken for 15 heartbeats or 4 breaths. Count out to 15 or 4, see where the second hand is on the bezel and that tells you the breaths per minute or beats per minute. The seconds hand is the other part of the equation, as it’s spands the entire diameter of the dial, so both sides can be used for quicker measurements or you can read the scale from both sides.

Inside the watch is the La Joux-Perret G101 automatic movement that beats at 28,800vph (4Hz) and comes with a 68-hour power reserve. Accuracy is declared at +/- 7 seconds per day which sounds incredible for a watch at this price point. The watch comes on a steel bracelet and with a elastic strap with a hook and loop closure.

The Medeor Pulsograph is available to order now with deliveries expected in June 2024. The price until December 18 is EUR 795. After December 18, it increases to EUR 995 until January 14, while final retail price is EUR 1,130. And finally, you may ask why you would spend so much money on a watch that clearly only exists in renders. Fair question. For som reason, Medeor has only renders on it’s website, but the watch actually does exist and has been photographed by the French website Les Rhabilleurs and you can see it here. For more about the watch, check out the Medeor website.

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Circula Adds New Dial Colors to their Protrail and Aquasport II Collections

The German microbrand Circula is an absolute fan favorite. And why wouldn’t it be? They make super affordable, well made, great designed watches and have done so consistently for years. And every now and again they refresh their lineup, like they did the other day with brand new colors for the ProTrail and AquaSport II lines. And while a color update might sound boring, with circula, nothing is boring.

The AquaSport II, as the name suggests, is Circula’s take on the diver, in particular a modern skin-diver. It has 200 meters of water resistance and comes in a 40mm wide stainless steel brushed case that’s 12.6mm thick and has a 46mm lug-to-lug. It sports a 120-click sapphire bezel and the new colors in the range include a brown/gilt dial, along with recently introduced anthracite and red colorways. This brings the number of possible dial options to seven. Inside the watch is an Elaboré Grade Sellita SW200 and it comes on either a stainless-steel bracelet or a rubber strap. Pricing starts from €670.

Then there’s the Protrail, a field watch from Circula which has significant anti-magnetic properties (up to 80,000 A/m), a 1,200 Vickers scratch resistant stainless steel case. The case is very similar to the AquaSport II in size, with a width of 40mm, thickness of 12mm and a lug-to-lug of 46mm. Water resistance is down a bit to 150 meters and inside is the same Elaboré Grade Sellita SW200. You can have the watch on a sailcloth strap or stainless-steel bracelet and the two new colors are green and grey. Pricing starts at €755.

See more of the Circula range on their website.

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Byrne Teams Up With Middle Eastern Retailer 10tenlabs For The GyroDial Arqaam Limited Edition

We’re still catching up on great releases from Dubai Watch Week, but this one proves it’s worth it! Some of the most desired watches in the world come with numerals rendered in scripts other than Roman and Arabic. Chinese and Indo-Arab scripts come to mind. These tend to be cool, but can you make it cooler? How about rendering the display in more than one script? No, not giving each numeral it’s own script, that would be too much. Enter Byrne, independent watchmaking company founded only two years ago, with an incredibly intriguing time display that rotates and allows for up to four different scripts. While Byrne did not exhibit at Dubai Watch Week, they did team up with Middle Eastern watch retailer 10tenlabs to create the Arqaam limited series of their GyroDial.

The watch comes in a Grade 5 titanium case that measures 41.7mm wide, 14.7mm thick and has a 48.1mm lug-to-lug measurement. The almost square stance of the case is achieved with short lugs and enhanced with alternating polishing techniques. The dial is covered by a box-shaped sapphire crystal. But the case, of course, is much less interesting than the dial.

It gets a sand-blasted treatment and has a salmon shade. The 3-6-9-12 indices are cubes connected to a central gear that rotate every 24 hours and each side of the cube has numerals printed on it. You get Nabataean, Musnad, Arabian, or Indo-Arab scripts, creating in essence four different dials for four consecutive days. The indices between the cubes are straight and hollow, while the outside edge is marked with empty dots for the minutes and every 5 minutes a solid dot.

Inside the watch is the automatic calibre 5555, a collaboration with Le Temps Manufacture based in Fleurier. The hand finished movement beats at 28,800vph and has a 60 hour power reserve. The movement’s brass plate and bridges undergo sand-blasting and rhodium-plating, adding an extra touch of refinement.

The Arqaam edition houses the automatic calibre 5555, a collaboration with Le Temps Manufacture based in Fleurier. This meticulously hand-bevelled and hand-finished movement comprises 261 components, operates at 28,800vph, and boasts a commendable 60-hour power reserve. The movement’s brass plate and bridges undergo sand-blasting and rhodium-plating, adding an extra touch of refinement. The watch comes on a nylon black strap with a grade 5 titanium buckle.

The Byrne x 10tenlabs GyroDial Arqaam Limited Edition is limited to just 10 pieces and is exclusively available at 10tenlabs. Price is set at $24,500 excluding VAT. See more on the 10tenlabs website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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A review of the Longines HydroConquest GMT

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Hands on with the Chopard Happy Sport

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

Farer’s take on the classic barrel-shaped case design is predictably quirky

The electric blue dial of the Paris edition is really quite something. A vibrant take on the city’s street signs, the dial’s brilliant blue has a subtle vertical brushing that complements the case and comes alive at the right angles. There’s no lume, so low-light legibility suffers, but it’s not as bad as it could be. The brightness of the white hands and markers provide excellent contrasts, so even when lighting wasn’t ideal, I could usually manage. I did really like the modern, three-dimensional Roman numeral markers; Roman numerals are so often stodgy and formal, but here they are light and playful, a perfect match for the brilliant dial. A thin minute track adds a slight texture shift, which I found to be an understated way to bring more character to the dial. Read the whole article on A Blog To Watch.

⏲️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 sure, this will be the wildest story you read this week. Near the height of the streaming boom in the fall of 2018, a half-dozen studios and video platforms lined up to woo a little-known filmmaker named Carl Erik Rinsch to fund his show about artificial humans. He had directed only one movie, “47 Ronin.” It was a commercial and critical dud. Netflix won the bid and over the years supplied Rinsch with millions of dollars, which he promptly spent on cryptocurrency speculation, really expensive cars and all-around lavish lifestyle, while Netflix didn’t receive a single episode yet. I didn’t even scratch the surface of the craziness.

• How does it feel to lose the ability to conjure the right words? Kelly Barnhill explains the long, difficult process of recovering from a brain injury in this moving essay on loss—and resilience.

• In this beautiful essay at Ruby Literary Magazine, poet Terry Kirts explores the deep pleasures of ice cream, whether by observing a stranger enjoy a cone or by eating it himself.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

It’s the weekend so kick back and enjoy this feature length documentary. Out There is an extraordinary adventure along Canada's Great Divide Trail, a 1200km long wilderness route through the heart of the Canadian Rockies. This outdoor film showcases the beauty and challenges of one of the world's most pristine and remote trails. The film follows a young couple, Kodak & Cinnamon, as they embark on an epic journey through the rugged Canadian Rockies. Along the way, they face unpredictable weather conditions, treacherous river crossings, and wildlife — from grizzly bears to wolves and pikas. The documentary also explores the origins of the Great Divide Trail and details the challenges of building and maintaining a long, mountainous route.

💵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 

• NEW WATCH FOR SALE: 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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