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- The Seiko Presage Style 60’s Collection gets a GMT, Hamilton Has a Stunning Pink Jazzmaster and Louis Erard Teams Up With Konstantin Chaykin For The Clow Watch You Can Afford
The Seiko Presage Style 60’s Collection gets a GMT, Hamilton Has a Stunning Pink Jazzmaster and Louis Erard Teams Up With Konstantin Chaykin For The Clow Watch You Can Afford
It's retro, it's affordable, it might be the next GMT you buy
Vuk Radic
April 26, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 16 minutes
Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time, your favorite daily watch news resource. We’ll keep it short and get to it right away:
In this issue:
The Seiko Presage Style 60’s Collection gets a GMT
Stunning Pink Jazzmaster Open Heart For Hamilton’s Spring Collection
Louis Erard And Konstantin Chaykin Team Up
Formex Releases Bronze Dial On Their Diver
And… invite your friends to win a Seiko Alpinist, or three.
Today’s reading time: 7 minutes and 40 seconds
Everybody needs a green faced watch in their life. That’s why we have a new giveaway - it’s the Seiko SPB121J1, aka the Seiko Alpinist in a wonderful shade of green. In fact, we’re giving away two of them!
All you have to do is click the button below and have five of your friends subscribe. Both you and one of your friends will be eligible to win one of the watches
We only have two conditions when entering this giveaway - invite 5 of your friends to subscribe and live somewhere were you can buy the Alpinist, so we can get this for you and ship it to your address. That’s it!
👂What’s new
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The Seiko Presage Stule 60’s was introduced in 2021 as a way to offer vintage-inspired elegant watches at a lower price. Modeled after the 1964 Crown watch, Japan’s first wrist chronograph, this series has since been updated with yet some more style and functions, including a power reserve indication or bolder colours. Now Seiko is introducing a GMT variant, with three new models, the references SSK009, SSK011 and SSK013.
Design-wise, the base remains identical to all previous watches in this Presage Style 60’s collection. This means that the case retains the 40.8mm diameter, with angular shapes and a thin bezel. Seiko doesn’t mention the exact thickness of the case, but we’ve seen slightly over 13mm. Being on the vintage/elegant side, it doesn’t feature a screw-down crown and the water-resistance is rated at 50m. The dial is covered by a domed Hardlex crystal.
Updated is the bezel, which gets a two-tone black and grey treatment with a 24-hour scale compared to the monochromatic 60-minute scale on the time and date model. The Calibre 4R34 GMT movement on the watch is a caller/office GMT, the less desirable of the GMT movements. This type of GMT watch has an independently adjustable 24-hour hand (with one-hour increments), practical to track a time zone while at home or at the office. It’s less user-friendly when travelling.
The Seiko Presage Style 60’s GMT collection comes with three models. All have the same dial design, with hairline finished base, a contrasting chapter ring and applied, faceted markers. Luminous inserts are found on the hands and next to the hour markers. The SSK009 is presented with a Blue Grey dial, silver-coloured accents and a steel bracelet with folding clasp. The SSK011 has a Sand Grey dial with silver-coloured accents and a perforated leather strap closed by a folding buckle. Last, the SSK013 also wears a leather strap, but has a Smoky Black dial with gold-coloured accents.
The Seiko Presage Style 60’s GMT reference SSK009, SSK011 and SSK013 will be part of the permanent collection, and available from May 1st, 2023 at a price of EUR 670.
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Yesterday, Hamilton introduced their “spring-inspired capsule collection” in which “soft shades of pink and delicate textures take center stage in our new capsule of lady’s watches”. I’m sorry, but no.
While one of the two watches unveiled by Hamilton yesterday, the Ardmore Quartz with pink details, might be considered a lady’s watch, the other, a 36mm Jazzmaster Open Heart with a stunning pink dial is decidedly unisex. Provided you can pull off a 36mm watch, which many, many, guys can do.
The only difference we get here over the regular Open Heart is a new dial. And what a dial it is. On first glance it’s a very pastel pink, but then you notice the sunburst pattern on the dial that shimmers as the light hits it. As such, it would be a true feminine lady’s watch. But then the dial gets aggressively and harshly cut out, revealing the Hamilton H-10 movement inside. It’s a perfect blend of feminine and masculine.
The Ardmore Quartz, on the other hand, is very feminine vintage-inspired rectangular cased watch. The dial on this one isn’t pink but silver, which only helps emphasize the pink on the Roman numerals. The case is 18.7mm x 27mm, the movement is quartz and the crystal is mineral, but think of this more of an accessory.
The Quartz is priced at $475 and the Open Heart is $1025, which is an interesting price for an interesting watch.
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Say what you will about his clown-faced watches, but Konstantin Chaykin is a master watchmaker. He creates works of art and as such, two things are almost a certainty with his watches - they will be expensive and they will be scarce. So, it’s good news today - Louis Erard has handed over their classic Regulator to Chaykin to create whatever he wants. The result is a dyptique of fun gaping-mouthed cyclops watches known as the Time-Eaters.
Louis Erard might not be on your radar, but you would be wrong. Apart from the fact that they employ some highly complex manufacturing in their watches, like the Marqueterie which uses dials with miniature marquetry handmade by a single artisan, they do this at exceptionally low prices. The Marqueterie, for example, comes in at under CHF 4,000. Louis Erard has also in recent years collaborated with numerous high end watchmakers to bring their watches to the masses. Just like they’re now working with Chaykin.
The Time-Eater offers a unique twist on the regulator format that is Louis Erard’s best-known model. Two versions of the Time-Eater are available, a larger, 42 mm model and a mid-sized 39 mm. The face of the Time-Eater is a silver dial with a stamped radial pattern along with distinctive minute ring that’s green for the 42 mm version while the 39 mm model gets a purple minute track. The monster’s revolving eye indicating the hours is lodged in the sub-dial at noon, while the black star-shaped mouth (the time-eater) spinning inside a shiny red flange at 6 o’clock is for the running seconds. Like the Joker watch, the pupil of the eye indicates the hours that are transferred on the anthracite flange. A squiggly matte black hand traverses the dial and alights on the peripheral track to indicate the minutes.
The leather strap gets color matched stitching and the material are also very interesting. It’s black toad leather, with a green or purple rabbit leather lining. Bizarre, but it works for this watch. Don’t expect anything special inside, as it’s powered by a Sellita automatic movement.
However, this rather generic movement allows you to get your hands on a watch that has the same spirit of Chaykin’s more expensive offerings for a fraction of the price. The Louis Erard x Konstantin Chaykin Regulator is a limited edition of 178 pieces in purple and 178 in green and retails for CHF 4,000. The two models are also sold as a set in a special box and are limited to 28 pieces retailing for CHF 7,900.
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It wasn’t a week ago that I wrote about a new watch born out of a collaboration with Collective Horology, a members-only collectors club from California that creates collaborative watches for enthusiasts and retails independent brands with limited distribution in the US. Then it was the Czapek’s Antarctique with an unexplainably beautiful blue dial. The only issue was that the watch retailed for $26,000+.
Today, we have a more budget-conscious collaboration. Collective has teamed up with Formex to create the Reef 42mm Radiant Bronze COSC 300M Automatic.
Bronze is nothing new, specifically in the field of dive watches. However, instead of using it for the case, as it is often done, Formex and Collective have opted for a bronze dial instead. According to the brand, making this dial has not been easy. Given its unique nature, it required new tooling to machine the blank dials, as well as multiple prototypes. The result is a dial made in-house, from solid bronze, with a vertical brushing, in order to bring all the tones and reflections offered by this material.
The rest of the watch is identical to the classic edition of the Formex Reef 42mm COSC 300M Automatic. This means a solid, bold dive watch of 42mm in diameter, 11.4mm thick. Complex in its shape, this case is also fully-equipped, with a screw-down crown, a screwed back, a sapphire crystal and a 120-click unidirectional bezel made of ceramic, with a raised 60-minute scale. this Formex x Collective edition retains the brand’s tool-free system to change the bezel. So instead of a black ceramic bezel, you could also opt later for a blue ceramic or a solid steel insert.
The watch will be produced in limited quantities exclusively for Collective Shop. The first 50 will be available this year. Prices are $1,935 on a rubber strap and $2,065 on a steel bracelet.
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Monta releases their Noble collection of watches in 2020 and has instantly become a distillation of what Monta has come to represent. Rather than diving into the retro theme or doing something too avant-garde, they would perfectly be described as mature. They’re fantastic alternatives to big-brand watches and can be worn for years in almost any setting.
Up to today, the Noble has been a rather subdued watch. That’s why the mint dial will be welcomed by some as a good refresher for the brand. Aside from the new dial, the rest of this new Noble remains unchanged. The steel case measures 38.5mm in diameter, and a hair under 10mm in thickness, with a lug to lug distance of 47mm. The quick adjust mechanism remains in the clasp, and inside we get the Monta M22 movement, based on the Sellita SW300. The case and bracelet feel more premium than the sub $2,000 price might suggest.
The Monta Noble Mint is available now at the price of $1,795.
🫳On hand
Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon
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⚙️Watch Worthy
A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like
Like many other SevenFriday watches, the “dial” of the new T1/08 “Bauhaus Inspired” timepiece isn’t so much a dial (in the traditional sense of the word) as it is more of a colorful multi-layered display that primarily consists of the concept of a circle set within the rounded square aperture of the case. Geometric shapes are printed in a matching shade of blue on the underside surface of the crystal at each of the corners to help create a balance with the negative space below them, while the partially open-worked center section echoes the same orange, blue, and yellow colors that are present throughout the rest of the 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
Remember Anna Delvey? Recently she threw a party to celebrate being released to house arrest, awaiting deportation out of the US. Which brings me back to her incredible story. Always worth a read, especially from the point of view of a Vanity Fair employee who she seduced.
I recently stumbled on the Bourdain episode where he and the Joe Beef guys eat pate and drink wine in a cabin on the ice. That’s one of my favorite pieces of reality television ever filmed and it reminded me of this profile of Joe Beef, the most excessive restaurant in the world.
Peter Max is one of the greatest artists of his generation. Unfortunately dementia stopped him from painting. However, a NYT expose from a couple of years ago says that Max’s associates are trading lurid allegations of kidnapping, hired goons, attempted murder by Brazil nut and art fraud on the high seas.
👀Watch this
One video you have to watch today
If YouTube did one good thing, it would be bringing the world of exploration and adventure to our living rooms, so we didn’t even have to read books written by adventurers that managed to survive. Like these people, who decided to cross the Atlantic ocean from South Africa to the US in an experimental airplane. And filmed everything.
💵Pre-loved precision
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Everybody needs a green faced watch in their life. That’s why we have a new giveaway - it’s the Seiko SPB121J1, aka the Seiko Alpinist in a wonderful shade of green. In fact, we’re giving away two of them!
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