Yema Brings Back The Wristmaster Traveler With Cool Dials; Airain's New Type 20 With Ace; Sternglas Releases Diver; Richard Mille And McLaren Team Up; New Watches From Czapek And Toledano & Chan

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I really like the lineup today, but I have to say, despite my best instincts, that meteorite Toledano & Chan is just spectacular.

In this issue:

• Yema Brings Back The Wristmaster Traveler With Very Unique Geneva Stripped Dials

• Airain Teams Up With Ace Jewelers For A Very Pretty Re-Edition Of The Legendary Type 20

• Sternglas Celebrates 8th Birthday With A Compressor-Style Diver With Some Great Colors

• Richard Mille And McLaren Team Up For Fourth Time To Mark The Launch Of Their New Hypercar, The W1

• Czapek Releases A New Antarctique for GMT Milano Edition With Beautiful Champagne Gold Dial

• Toledano & Chan Prepare A Truly Unique B/1 Meteorite Cased Watch For Auction

Today’s reading time: 8 minutes and 15 seconds

👂What’s new

1/

Yema Brings Back The Wristmaster Traveler With Very Unique Geneva Stripped Dials

About a year ago, Yema was teasing a brand new line they were about to name the Urban collection. They did so with the Wristmaster Traveller and the Wristmaster Micro-Rotor watches. They soon expanded the Urban collection with the Urban Traveller, the Urban Classic and Urban Field. But now, Yema is throwing it back to the start of the collection and releasing the Wristmaster Traveller once again, now a part of the regular collection and with some pretty spectacular dials.

Whether you’re over the integrated steel bracelet trend or not, the Wristmaster Traveller comes in a pretty nice package. The case has an octagonal design that measures 39mm wide, 11.4mm thick and with a compact 43.5mm lug-to-lug. Overall, the case and bracelet are brushed, with just the right amount of polishing. On top is a bezel inspired by a Sous-Marine quartz model from the 1980s and is made from a single piece of stainless steel with six scalloped chunks. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is brand new and pretty fantastic. There are four versions you can choose from — grey, blue, green and red. All of them feature the same look, with Geneva stripes running across in five thick lines, creating an incredible gradient look, from light on top to dark on the bottom. The dial is paired with applied stainless steel hour markers and faceted and polished alpha-style hands. The only text on the dial is Yema and its logo at 12 and “Automatique” at 6 o’clock.

Inside is the brand’s second-generation in-house Yema2000 calibre, which is their version of the basic ETA and Sellita movements. Yema was heavily criticised online for their in-house movements that have had quality issues, but these problems seem to be limited to their older movement and the issues appear to be handled. It beats at 4Hz and has a power reserve of 42 hours. The movement is regulated in 4 positions to a precision of -/+ 10 seconds/day. The watches come on an integrated stainless steel bracelet.

The new Wristmaster Traveller is available for order now and will be shipped at the end of October. Price is set at €890, which is pretty great as similar offerings from other brands have long gone past the €1,000 mark. See more on the Yema website.

2/

Airain Teams Up With Ace Jewelers For A Very Pretty Re-Edition Of The Legendary Type 20

The Dutch retailer Ace Jewelers is just unstoppable. It seems that I’m writing about a new collaboration from them every single week. And I’m not mad about it at all. The head of Ace Jewelers, Alon Ben Joseph is not just a great guy with a great podcast, he also has an incredible eye for detail and design. For their latest collaboration, they teamed up with Airain. If this brand sounds familiar, it should. They made the iconic Type 20 flyback chronograph and worked with the French military. Airain folded during the quartz crisis, but was revived in 2020 by Tom van Wijlick. And this new Airain Type 20 ACE is just very cool.

Housed in a stainless steel case that very closely resembles the original Type 20, the watch measures 39.5mm wide and 10.85mm thick, which are some pretty fantastic measurements for a chronograph. Ok, to be fair, the thickness is without the double domed sapphire crystal. And it’s quite a dome, so the total thickness goes up to 14.77mm, but in a world where most chronographs struggle to fall below 13mm even with flat crystals, this is fantastic. Even the lug-to-lug is decent at 47.7mm. Surrounding the crystal is a very cool brushed metal bezel with a 12-hour countdown scale engraved and painted black. You don’t see many of these around, but 12-hour countdown bezels were somewhat common on military and pilot chronographs in the post-war era and were used to track mission time. While the case back screws in, the crown doesn’t so you get 50 meters of water resistance.

The dial is where things take a strong Dutch turn and seeing how both Ace and van Wijlick are Dutch, it’s not much of a surprise. The base of the dial gets a stark white paintjob, offset with very effective Arabic numerals that are just outlined in black and white on the inside. The matte black hands are also white in the centers, but both of these whites are Super-LumiNova BGW9 X1, so you know they will glow like crazy. So that’s all very black and white. Then, you get the Dutch orange details on the central chronograph seconds hand, along with the minute hand/roulette minute track on the 30-minute sub-dial at 3 o’clock. Oh, and everything painted orange? That’s also lume.

Inside, you get quite a special movement. It’s the calibre AM2, developed by Manufacture AMT in La Chaux-de-Fonds, which is Sellita’s high end division. It’s a very cool movement that’s a hand-wound column-wheel flyback chronograph, beating at 4Hz and with a 63 hour power reserve. The watch comes with on a black leather strap with orange accents and a orange NATO strap.

Want to hear the best thing of all. Unlike so many similar collaborations, the Airain Type 20 ACE is not a limited edition and will be joining the Airain regular lineup. So very cool. Price is set at €3,450, with taxes, which seems to be a pretty good price for a column-wheel flyback chronograph. In fact, I think this might be the cheapest one I’ve seen, except for that very limited edition Furlan Marri box set. What else is out there? See more on the Ace Jewelers of Airain website.

3/

Sternglas Celebrates 8th Birthday With A Compressor-Style Diver With Some Great Colors 

You know I love the German indie brand Sternglas. Ever since I reviewed their Hamburg Chrono Regatta I thought they offered pretty great value for money in a nicely designed package. What kind of surprised me is that they are only celebrating their eight anniversary. I guess it’s the huge number of watches they make, along with the subdued and retro Bauhaus-inspired styling, that gave me the impression that they have been around for decades. To celebrate this anniversary, they are releasing their first full-fledged dive watch, the Merion, with two fantastic colors, a distinct 60s style and great price.

The Sternglas Merion comes in a very classic compressor-style case. That means that it has two crowns of the side, one to set the time and the other to operate the internal dive bezel with a 60-minute scale. It’s not a real compressor case, one which gets more water tight the deeper you dive, but it does play the part just fine. The stainless steel case has polished and brushed finishes and measures 41mm wide, 14.2mm thick and has a 49mm lug-to-lug. Sure, on the large side, which is even more accentuated with the large double-domed sapphire crystal that gives you a pretty good look at the dial. Water resistance is rated as “up to 20 ATM” which is kind of a curious way to put it.

Then, we have the dial. It takes the best of Bauhaus-inspiration that Sternglas has used for the past eight years and transports it to the 1960s, with a bit more color. The dials have a wide band for the internal bezel, with a heavily grained central section of the dial. Around the perimeter are markings for the seconds/minutes, with colored dots above the hour marks and applied hour markers extending into the dials. You get pencil-style hands that are ¾ painted with lume and there’s a circular date aperture at 6 o’clock. Two colors combinations are available — one black with red details and the other green with blue and yellow details.

Inside the watch is the rather simple NH35 which will give you 41 hours of power reserve with a rated accuracy of -20/+40 seconds per day. But even more importantly, this is Setnglas’ first watch with a fully integrated metal bracelet. It’s a nifty bracelet that has a removable pin system that allows for adjustment of links with no tools, but you will need tools for the three micro-adjust holes on the clasp. You also get a tropic rubber strap with the watch that matches the dial color.

The new Sternglas Merion is available now and priced at €649, with tax. However, as I’m looking at the watch on their website, it’s giving me an option for a discount so you can get it for €629. See more on the Sternglas website.

4/

Richard Mille And McLaren Team Up For Fourth Time To Mark The Launch Of Their New Hypercar, The W1

Luxury cars and watches are kind of permanently linked together. Whether it’s IWC and Mercedes, Breitling and Bentley on the more accessible side of luxury, or Jacob & Co.’s long standing collaboration with Bugatti, including on the new Tourbillon hypercar. But the coolest of all hypercars has to be McLaren, the company that created the genre with the iconic F1. They’ve worked with Richard Mille for a while now, and the partnership does make a lot of sense. Now their are releasing their fourth joint watch, one that pays homage to the F1 successor, the 1,258 horsepower twin-turbo V8 hybrid W1. This is the Richard Mille RM 65-01 McLaren W1.

The case of the watch takes on a lot of styling inspiration from the car. It comes in the instantly recognisable RM tonneau shape, made out of Carbon TPT with titanium, and measures 43.84mm wide, 16.19mm thick and 49.94mm long. On top is a carbon fibre bezel with cutouts that match the shape of the W1 car where the door cutouts show up. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The dial is also very recognisable in its skeletonized layout, but with all new colors. IT’s all orange, light blue and yellow, all of which are iconic colors that McLaren has used for years. On the edge of the dial is a tachymeter scale, and working your way to the center you’ll find a minute scale, followed by an elaborate cutout dial. You get two sub-dials in orange, a chronograph 12-hour and 30-minute counter, while one split seconds hand is orange and the other light blue. At 6 o’clock is a running seconds sub-dial.

Inside in the RMAC4, a hi-beat movement that operates at 5Hz and has a 60 hour power reserve. The high frequency gives you more accuracy for the split-seconds chronograph which counts down to 1/10th of a second. RM is well known for their weird additions to movements, and this one is no different. It has a rapid winding mode that you enable with an orange quartz TPT pusher.

The new Richard Mille RM 65-01 McLaren W1 is, of course, a limited edition. But, quite shockingly, it’s not limited to 20 or 50 pieces. RM is making a staggering 500 pieces of this watch, which is more shocking when you consider not just the price of CHF 320,000, but also the fact that McLaren will make only 399 of the W1, meaning they have to find 100 people who don’t have the W1, but want a watch that looks like one. See more on the Richard Mille website.

5/

Czapek Releases A New Antarctique for GMT Milano Edition With Beautiful Champagne Gold Dial

I’ll admit, things have been very hectic in the It’s About Time headquarters. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends and I’ll need to find a better way to handle all the workload. So, I’m very cognisant of the fact that I’m often tired and prone to making mistakes. But this watch killed me. When I first saw the announcement for the Czapek Antarctique for GMT Milano Edition it took me way too long to figure out what was going on. At first, I spent some 15 minutes looking for the GMT hand and I couldn’t figure out where it was hidden. I came back to the photos and website three more times over two days. And it only then hit me, GMT Milano is the retailer Czapek is partnering with and GMT stands for Great Masters of Time. But while my IQ is diminishing as more stuff populates my brain, Czapek continues to make increasingly beautiful watches.

This particular one is based on the Antarctique, their take on the integrated bracelet sports watch. This means it’s made out of stainless steel and measures 40.5mm wide and 10.6mm thick. Good proportions, but what’s even better is the sunray-brushed finish and a beautiful glass box sapphire crystal on top. The watch is still a sports watch, with subtle crown guards and a 120 meter water resistance.

The dial is beautiful. Made by Metalem, a La-Chaux-de-Fonds-based manufacturer, it features a beautiful champagne color and a rough grain texture. The champagne/gold is kind of important here because it’s a direct link to GMT Milano, which uses this exact color on nearly all of their collaborations with other brands. You get applied hour indices, satin-finished minute track and the hands, all treated with Super-LumiNova and no date aperture.

Inside is the in-house SXH5 self-winding platinum micro-rotor movement you’ll find in other Antarctique models. It beats at 4Hz and has a 60 hour power reserve. The movement is, of course, nicely decorated with a visible gear train, and skeletonized, sandblasted black bridges. The watch comes on an integrated stainless steel bracelet and you also get an additional calf leather or rubber strap that matches the color of the dial.

This new Czapek Antarctique for GMT Milano is limited to just 30 pieces and can be pre-ordered exclusively at GMT Great Masters of Time, located on Via della Spiga 25 in Milan. Deliveries will happen by the end of the year. Price is set at CHF 22,000, without tax. See more on the Czapek website.

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Toledano & Chan Prepare A Truly Unique B/1 Meteorite Cased Watch For Auction

Earlier in the year, Phil Toledano, artist and watch collector, and watch designer Alfred Chan released the first watch from their new watch brand Toledano & Chan called the B/1. The release was a huge success and they sold out all 175 pieces priced at $4,000 within the first day. Since then they made a couple of one off watches that were intended to auction and this is exactly what this one is as well. And I might not have mentioned it, if it wasn’t so spectacular. This is the one-off B/1M.

The original B/1 is already a striking watch. Inspired by the Marcel Breuer-designed Whitney museum building in New York, the angled stainless steel case measures 33.5mm wide and is between 10.4 and 9.1mm thick. The stainless steel is cut sharply and deeply brushed to give it an amazing texture. But the piece unique ditches the stainless steel for what might be one of the best uses of meteorite I’ve ever seen — the case is all meteorite, as is the dial. The hands are dauphine shaped and just as sharp as the case, with an interestingly cut off end on the hour hand, giving it a knife-like look.

Inside is the not-so-special Sellita SW100 automatic movement. It’s an off-the-shelf movement, very compact to fit in the small case, but the relatively generic movement allows for a lower price. It beats at 4Hz and has a 42 hour power reserve. But what is special is the super-rough grey ostrich leg strap that is a great addition to the case.

This Toledano & Chan B/1M is a one-off prototype that’s heading to auction this December at the dedicated TimeForArt, which will be held as a part of The Phillips New York Watch Auction. Hold up, prototype? Oh, yeah. T&C say that they will eventually be releasing this meteorite version as a production version with small changes. That will be cool to see. In the meantime, see more of this watch on the TimeForArt website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

1/

A review of the Tissot PRX Powermatic 80 40mm Forged Carbon

2/

Hands-On with the Glashütte Original Sixties Chronograph Annual Edition

3/

A review of the Bauche Stargazer Carina Nebula

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

RZE's popular Resolute Pro now comes with a date complication or a rich green dial

The Resolute Pro offers incredible daily comfort and combines it with magnificent toughness when you put the watch to the test. That is what makes it a perfect modern GADA watch for not even US$700. So, what could make it even better? If it is to fulfill the role of an everyday watch, a date complication is a very welcome feature for many watch enthusiasts.

Read the whole review on Fratello

⏲️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 plan was audacious, even by New York’s standards. Step one: set fires all across Manhattan. Step two: “seize the chaotic moment to take over the city’s federal infrastructure.” Step three: free the Confederate prisoners from Fort Lafayette, just off of Brooklyn’s shore. Step four: imprison the local Union general and establish the burned-down city as a Northern outpost of the South’s pro-slavery forces. The conspirators did manage to get the fires lit. But the plan only failed for the flimsiest of reasons, leaving one of the more harrowing “what ifs” from a period full of them.

• I just discovered this website The Stacks Reader which specialises in republishing some of the greatest articles from the history of journalism. And I always loved this piece from The Village Voice called Death of a Playmate. I’m assuming you already know what it is. It’s the recounting of the murder of Dorothy Stratten, Playboy playmate and girlfriend to Peter Bogdanovich. Read the article here, but if this story really interests you, make sure to listen to the incredible Death of a Starlet podcast on Wondery.

• Eric Adams’ recent indictment was troubling—but also kind of hilarious, with its descriptions of travel perks for political favors. The New York Times’ Sarah Lyall had the rather funny idea of retracing one of Mr. Adams’s luxurious trips, from the Turkish Airways lounge at JFK (Wi-Fi password: TKNYCADAMS) to the 1,345-square foot Bentley Suite at the St. Regis in Istanbul. “We, too, enjoyed not thinking about our wearisome responsibilities back home and not having to use our own money while on this rarefied assignment,” she writes.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I’m very much digging this watch. On one hand it confirms that my predictions that outdoor gear/climbing equipment will become more of an influence in watches in the coming years. On the other, it kind of makes a couple of plans I hade superfluous. I can live with that.

💵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