Timex Releases Perfect Sub $200 Summer Beater, Raymond Weil Takes A Crack At The Pilot's Watch, The Bausele Sydney Diver Is A Colorful Take On A Military Diver And Urwerk Has A New Watch

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In this issue:

• Timex’s Perfect Sub $200 Summer Beater, World Time 1972 Reissue

• Raymond Weil Makes A Pilot’s Watch And It’s A Decent Start For Them

• The Bausele Sydney Diver: Endless Sunrise Is A Colorful Take On A Military Dive Watch

• Arnold & Son Continues Their Love Affair With The Moon

• Urwerk Has A New Watch, The UR-120 Space Black

Today’s reading time: 9 minutes and 56 seconds

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👂What’s new

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Timex Launches The Perfect Sub $200 Summer Beater, The World Time 1972 Reissue

Timex, it seems, is fantastic at two things - digging through their catalogue to find amazing watches to reissue and making cheap watches. Yesterday, they announced the Timex World Time 1972 Reissue, which is exactly that - a bitchin’ 70s design reissued in 2023 and at a price that can’t be beat.

The World Time 1972’s design is taken from a 1972 Timex simple called the Model 41. According to their website, the Model 41 had an electric movement and it looks like there were several Model 41s out there - all of them with a date, but not all world timers. And when Timex does a reissue, they remain faithful to the old watch. That’s the case here. It has a barrel case measuring 39mm wide. The case has polished sides with a circular brushed top and lugs.

Beneath a domed acrylic crystal, just like in the original, Timex recreated the retro black and white dial. Sword hands are filled with lume, while a wedge seconds hand is colored red for a pop of color. What we’re here for is the oversized rotating city bezel. It has bumps at each city pair that should give it excellent grip. While most world timers cram in 24 cities at 24 equidistant points around the bezel, Timex has reduced the clutter. I love how Timex paired up the cities that are on the exact same time zone just in different directions + or - from GMT.

I loved this watch the moment I saw it. Then I read up on it on A Blog To Watch. And it looks that Timex likes to take their reissues a bit too literally. It directly copied the bezel from the 1972 model, making it a bit useless today as it’s not in line with current UTC offsets. Starting 1968, England embarked on an experiment to maintain a GMT+1 setting year-round, but the House of Commons put an end to it in 1971. Which is to say that maybe 1972 was a weird year for time zones, too.

So, unfortunately, it seems that this Timex is only cosplaying as a world timer. However… it’s priced at $179. For that you get a quartz movement, a leather strap, 50 meters water resistance, a retro-cool watch and the headache of knowing your GMT doesn’t align. Can you live with it? Is it priced right for you to say whatever, and wear it as a summer beater? Or, could you maybe even embrace this quirk as a piece of history?

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Raymond Weil Makes A New Pilot’s Watch And It’s A Decent Start For Them

I don’t recall when the last time I looked twice at Raymond Weil was. Even in the lowliest of shopping malls I would find something more interesting than Raymond Weil to look at. At least a Swatch looks interesting. But this all started to change over the past couple of years. They seem to have a clear idea of where their watch collections are going and they have jumped on a couple of trend bandwagons (GMT, skeleton…) quite successfully. Now, they have a new addition to their family - the Freelancer Pilot Flyback Chronograph Limited Edition.

This is the only pilot’s watch that Raymond Weil makes, and right of the bat there’s some tomfoolery. The 42mm wide '(13.8mm thick) case looks to be titanium, but it’s not. They took stainless steel and gave it a grey PVD coat. I’m not a fan of PVD, but when it’s used like this, to mimic titanium, I dislike it even more. A titanium case would have gone great with the whole rugged pilot’s watch look and the riveted brown leather strap, oversized crown and giant pushers. Too bad.

Where they got it right is on the dial. While it does not look like a fully traditional pilot’s dial, it is very attractive, with a fantastic shade of green and details that go the extra mile: rough graining on the hour track, fine graining on the sunken center, and circular grooving on the subdials, which sit on the same plane as the center dial. The central and one of the subdial hands, as well as the model name at 6, are painted yellow to give it a welcomed pop of color.

Under the sapphire crystal, the army green dial reinforces the military and tool vibes of the watch. A number of finishes are working in concert for what appears to be a lovely dial: rough graining on the hour track (meant to evoke the texture of a tarmac), fine graining on the sunken center, and circular grooving on the subdials, which sit on the same plane as the center dial. The serif hour numerals are filled with Super-LumiNova, as is the almost propeller-shaped handset. The dial is offered a bit of pop with the yellow central and subsidiary chronograph hands that count off seconds and minutes. Also, let’s give them credit for not trying to mess up the dial with the addition of a date window, which even more advanced watchmakers don’t know what to do with.

Inside the watch is the automatic RW5530 caliber. Unfortunately, that and the fact that it’s a flyback chronograph that has a 56 hour power reserve, I can’t tell you much more about it, as neither Raymond Weil nor anybody online has released any detail.

With all this in mind, the price of $4,195 might be a bit steep, but seeing as RW is releasing this as a limited edition of 400 pieces, I’m sure they will easily sell out.

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The Bausele Sydney Diver: Endless Sunrise Is A Colorful Take On A Military Dive Watch

Bauselle has taken a pretty pedestrian concept - a mil-spec dive watch - and with just a small tweak - adding unusual colors to it - created something so fresh and nice. Enter the Bausele Sydney Diver: Endless Sunrise with four new colors for 2023 inspired by sunrise swims in the waters surrounding Australia.

The stainless steel case is 39.5mm wide, 47.5mm lug to lug and 11.6mm thick. It also has a matte sandblasted finish and a screw down stainless steel caseback and crown to give it 200 meters of water resistance. There’s an easter egg on the crown, by the way: a clear capsule that is filled with sand particles that come from Bausele Founder Christophe Hopper’s home beach in Manly, Australia.

While the Bausele Sydney Diver: Endless Sunrise collection is available with four different dial colors, all of them feature the same core design with a two-layer sandwich-style construction that has cut-outs and recessed areas for the hour markers. Dial colors for the new Sydney Diver: Endless Sunrise collection include yellow, orange, blue, and white, with the white dial variant being a fully luminous dial. Additionally, unlike the other three colorways, which are paired with black bezels that have white luminous markings, the white dial variant receives a matching white bezel insert that features a black non-luminous timing scale. Similarly, while the shape of the hands is the same on all four models, the blue dial variant receives orange accents on its handset, while the white dial version receives hands with black-finished surrounds to match the solid black hour markers on the dial.

Inside the watch, to no surprise, is the Sellita SW200, the favorite movement of microbrands, that has a power reserve of approximately 38 hours and hacking seconds. All four of the new Bausele Sydney Diver: Endless Sunrise watches come with both a stainless steel bracelet and an orange rubber strap. The stainless steel bracelet features a Milanese mesh design, and it includes articulating end-links at the lugs to increase its flexibility and provide it with a more integrated appearance with the case.

Each colorway will be limited to 100 pieces and all four will have the same retail price $1,200. However, at launch Bausele will have a limited time promotional sale at $840, which is a very good price, I think. Keep an eye out for the start of the sale at their website.

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Arnold & Son Continues Love Affair With The Moon With Perpetual Moon 41.5 Platinum “Celestial Blue”

Independent watchmaker Arnold & Son loves the moon so much they have two collections dedicated to it: the Luna Magna and the Perpetual Moon. These days they are updating the Perpetual Moon collection, with a platinum version called the Celestial Blue.

The Perpetual Moon first appeared with a traditional guilloché dial with a large, realistic 11.20mm representation of the Moon, followed by a more spectacular model with two moons, displaying the position of the Moon in both hemispheres. A few years later, the brand produced the lovely Perpetual Moon with an obsidian dial. Then, in 2022, it introduced a slightly smaller and redesigned 41.5mm case size with stunning “Stellar Ray” dials in salmon and royal blue. The latest Perpetual Moon sticks to the case dimensions of the “Stellar Ray” models – 41.5mm diameter x 11.30mm height – and shares the more refined lugs with bevelled edges and the slimmer bezel, giving precedence to the dial. Entirely polished, the elegant platinum case has a domed sapphire crystal over the dial and a sapphire caseback.

The “Celestial Blue” tone is obtained with a PVD treatment and then coated with several layers of transparent lacquer. The Moon is hosted in the large aperture in the top half of the dial. Set against a grained midnight-blue sky, the hand-painted, luminous constellations represent the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia. Floating in the night sky is the realistically rendered mother-of-pearl Moon, complete with hand-painted shadows and a coating of Super-LumiNova. Rhodium-plated hour markers and hands relay the passing hours and minutes.

With a deviation of only one day every 122 years, the precision moon phase display has an adjustment system on the movement side. Traditional moon phases are usually adjusted by the crown, and it’s tricky to get the position of the moon just right. To counter this common problem, A&S has placed a second moon phase indicator with a precise scale and representations of the cycles on the caseback, allowing you to adjust the phases with extra precision.

Matching the colour scheme of the dial, the watch comes on a blue hand-stitched alligator leather strap with an 18k white gold pin buckle. The Perpetual Moon 41.5 Platinum “Celestial Blue” is a limited edition of 38 watches and retails for CHF 46,600 (incl. tax).

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Urwerk Has A New Watch, The UR-120 Space Black, And It’s Just As Weird As You Would Expect

That title was a bit of a reach. Urwerk has introduced the UR-120 last year, as an evolution of their UR-110, and the brand is now releasing a new version of it, the Urwerk UR-120 Space Black with a black case and neon yellow details. While it’s not necessarily a new watch it is, in fact, just as weird as you would expect.

The evolution into the UR-120 has not gotten rid of the Urwerk recognizable time display, but only resulted in a more dynamic display and better legibility. Urwerk’s signature wandering hours look familiar; the satellite carousel moves along the minute sector at the right-hand side of the case. The satellite in position on the minute scale tells the hour and the minute. What is new, and Urwerk should be praised, among other things, for continuing to innovate its avant-garde displays, is that each satellite comprises two cubes that split, rotate, and converge in sequence to display the hours. Once separated, both blocks spin on their axis and merge to display the new hour, so the satellite carousel spins on the central axis, each satellite counter-spins, and each block spins on its axis.

The previous version of the UR-120 came in a steel and titanium case that measured 44mm long, 47mm wide and 15.8mm thick, made up of two interlocking parts, equivalent to a caseback and a bezel, connected with lateral screws. Also, the case featured articulated lugs. The new Space Black case is a combination of sandblasted titanium and stainless steel, both of which got a black DLC treatment and then coated with silicone. The watch comes on a calf leather strap with an embossed Cordura pattern.

This will not be a limited model, except for any limitations that might come from the price - CHF 110,000, excluding taxes. For more, hop on over to Urwerk.

🫳On hand

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⚙️Watch Worthy

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

REC Watches: Made From The Vehicles They Pay Homage To

Several watches and brands pay homage to certain aircraft or vehicles. Even more are designed specifically for flight or racing. But I get excited about watches that capture something special about these modern machines we humans obsess over. The REC Watches Limited Collection does just that. These watches contain physical pieces of the vehicles they represent, making each unique. It lets one wear a piece of history and engineering on their wrist in a way few other brands can offer.

⏲️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

• Both the US and Mexico hoped that they may have put at least a dent into their pointless war on drugs with the capture of El Chapo. Surprise, surprise, it did nothing. But the most interesting part of how ineffective the capture is was the reaction from El Chapo’s sons. Once dismissed as “narco brats” flaunting fast cars, pet tigers and a golden AK-47 on social media, the brothers have emerged as key figures in the Sinaloa Cartel and built a fentanyl empire that is killing America.

• A fantastic story in the New York Times about a Picasso painting that went missing in 1969 and turned up at a museum’s doorstep before the F.B.I. could hunt it down. No one knew how or why — until now.

• When Vincent Richardson was 14 years old, he wore a police uniform into Chicago’s Third District Grand Crossing police station and reported for duty. It was January 24th, 2009, and he told officers he’d been assigned by another district to work a shift there. An intake officer issued Vincent a police radio and ticket book; then, the officer assigned Vincent a partner and a police cruiser. Wow.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

VICE joins French Free Solo Climber, Alexis Landot, as he prepares for his hardest climb yet, The Mercury Tower in Paris, and learns why he climbs and how free soloing skyscrapers brings him peace amid the many stressors and sources of anxiety in his day.

💵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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