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  • Tudor Releases Second Marine Nationale Pelagos FXD, Now As A Cool GMT; A Most Refined Metal G-Shock; A Cool MoonSwatch Complication; Nivada Revives 70s Icon; Glashütte Original's PanoLunarInverse

Tudor Releases Second Marine Nationale Pelagos FXD, Now As A Cool GMT; A Most Refined Metal G-Shock; A Cool MoonSwatch Complication; Nivada Revives 70s Icon; Glashütte Original's PanoLunarInverse

Hey, I just found my new favorite watch. I'm getting this one, for sure.

Author

Vuk Radic
October 30, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 19 minutes

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Let me give you a piece of advice, if you’ll take it. If you have a kid that goes to kindergarten, lock them in their room and stay away from them until they reach high school. Otherwise they’ll get you sick like a dog, just like I am right now. That’s why everything is so late. But here’s the newsletter and the promised Sherpa review and Watch School Wednesday for subscribers is coming right after this!

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In this issue:

  • Tudor Teams Up With The French Aéronautique Navale For The Pretty Fantastic Pelagos FXD GMT

  • The New Casio G-Shock GMC-B2100 Is The Most Traditional And Refined Metal Watch From G-Shock

  • Swatch Releases The MoonSwatch Mission to Earthphase With A Very Interesting Complication

  • Nivada Grenchen Brings Back Another One Of Their Iconic 70s Watches, The Antarctic GMT

  • The Glashütte Original PanoLunarInverse Limited Edition Gives A Brand New Look At The Moon

Today’s reading time: 8 minutes and 4 seconds

👂What’s new

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Tudor Teams Up With The French Aéronautique Navale For The Pretty Fantastic Pelagos FXD GMT

We all keep a list of our next watch purchases, right? And it’s an every changing list, with new watches coming in, some dropping off and all of them changing positions constantly. Well, for me, there’s been one watch that hasn’t budged from the list. It’s the time-only Tudor Pelagos FXD Red Bull Alinghi edition, the one made out of a black composite and with a purple dial. That sat firmly at the top ever since the day it came out as the next big watch purchase I had to make. Well, would you look at that. It’s just been knocked off the list and by none other than another Tudor Pelagos FXD, the just now introduced Pelagos FXD GMT Zulu Time.

This is the second official Marine Nationale watch from Tudor since the launch of the Pelagos FXD line, with the first being dedicated to the combat swimmers. This new one is made for the Aéronautique Navale, also known as the French Naval Aviation. On the outside, this will isntantly look familiar. The case is made out of a combination of grade 2 titanium on the central case and grade 5 titanium on titanium, completely brushed and with the iconic fixed lug bars ensuring that there won’t be a failure when you least want to experience one. The case measures 42mm wide and 12.7mm thick, with a significant 52mm lug-to-lug. On top is a brand new bezel, able to turn in both directions and with a 24-hour scale. The insert is made out of black ceramic and the scale is lumed to glow green, while also painted a slight beige tint. Water resistance is 200 meters, while the back is engraved with the logo of the Marine Nationale and “M.N.24” for “Marine Nationale 2024”. This will read “M.N.25” next year, and so on.

The dial is also very familiar, while remaining unique. The blocky markers and snowflake handset gets the same beige Super-LumiNova, which glows blue, all on a black background. What’s new is, of course, the bright orange lacquered, arrow-shaped GMT hand. At 3 o’clock is the date aperture with a date disc that’s color matched to the beige of the markers and hands.

Inside is the Kenissi produced calibre MT5652-U, a flyer style GMT that adjusts the local hour hand in one hour increments. It beats at 4Hz and has a 65 hour power reserve. The silicon hairspring helps with 15,000 gauss magnetic field protection and you get METAS and COSC certification, with accuracy rated at 0/+5 seconds per day. The watch comes on a 2mm wide single-piece textile strap made out of green polyester and closed by a grade 2 titanium pin buckle.

The new Tudor Pelagos FXD GMT Zulu Time x Marine Nationale is available now and part of the regular collection. Price is set at €4,690. See more on the Tudor website.

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The New Casio G-Shock GMC-B2100 Is The Most Traditional And Refined Metal Watch From G-Shock

To paraphrase a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein, only two things are infinite: the universe and the G-Shock model lineup. Only, we’re not sure about the universe. And to make the lineup even larger, Casio is adding a new G-Shock to sit alongside the mega-popular GA-2100 collection, THE ana-digi watch to have if you want something rugged and cheap. Only, the new GMC-B2100 series takes the best things from the GA-2100, ditches the digital elements, gives the new collection a fully metal case and turns it full analogue.

On the outside, the new GMC-B2100 will look very much like the GA-2100. It measures 46.3mm wide and 12.4mm thick, which are humongous dimensions, but the GA-2100 was always pretty comfortable on wrist, so that should be the case with this one as well. OK, do take into account that this comes in a fully stainless steel case, carrying with it a lot more weight than resin variants, but still. Also, it’s still a G-Shock, so expect it to be resistant to a lot of impacts and has a water resistance of 200 meters.

On the dial side, things look similar, but are all new. At launch there will be two dial options — a black with anthracite details and a bright blue with silver details. It looks like a traditional chronograph, but there’s nothing truly traditional about G-Shocks. The bottom sub-dial has two hands, working as a totaliser for the chronograph up to twelve hours. The sub-dial at 9 o’clock shows the day of the week, while the one at 12 o’clock shows the mode and battery charge level. I’m a huge fan of the ana-digi layout, but I suspect that this one will bring in a lot of collaboration potential.

Inside, you’ll find the G-Shock 5733 module which has been developed for this model and will likely trickle down to other collections. Functions include day/date, stopwatch (chronograph), countdown timer, alarm, and a dual-time function. It’s also bluetooth compatible. The watches come on a stainless steel bracelet with a fold-over clasp.

The new GMC-B2100 series is on sale now and priced at $800. See more on the G-Shock website.

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Last year was horrible for the Swatch x Omega Bioceramic MoonSwatch lineup. After a blockbuster launch year in which they sold more than a million watches in three quarters of a year, mostly thanks to great color choices and fun designs of the original, Swatches messed things up with a very bizarre 12 releases that were somehow linked to harvest moons, or the zodiac, or… who can even remember. Things picked up this year with a couple of very nice releases — the Snoopy Moonphases, the really good looking blue moonphase and the very nice new colors for the Mission to Earth collection. At first glance, today’s new release of the Mission to Earthphase got me thinking: “oh no, Swatch is back to the boring grey releases”. But nope, this new MoonSwatch has a very cool new complication.

Like I said, on the outside, you know exactly what this is. It’s the same light grey 42mm wide plastic case. Sure, this particular blend of biosourced material derived from castor oil and ceramic powder carries the name Bioceramic, but in essence it feels and acts like plastic. It still comes on a mediocre Velcro strap with both Swatch and Omega branding. On the bezel you’ll find a tachymetre dial.

But the really cool thing happens on the dial side. First of all, the base of the dial gets a slightly textured finish to the grey colorway, mimicking the surface of the moon. At 6 o’clock is the 60 minute sub-dial, while at 2 o’clock you’ll find the familiar moonphase indicator used in the past several iterations of the MoonSwatch. But what’s new is the new “earthphase” function at 10 o’clock that Swatch patented. It imagines being used by astronauts on the Moon to track the phases of the Earth. It’s, of course, a fairly simple complication, one that just reverses the phases of the moon so that when we see a full Moon from Earth, an observer on the Moon would see a new Earth. I just haven’t seen anyone use one before. Maybe because it’s useless? Perhaps. But also, none less useless than a real moonphase and kind of cool. The little image on the Earth is very detailed, lumed and the oceans are coated with UV ink that glows blue under UV light.

The MoonSwatch Mission to Earthphase will be available from November 2nd 2024, but again, only at selected Swatch stores worldwide. The MoonSwatch became available online recently, but only a few models, and this one isn’t one of them. The price is set at €330. See more on the Swatch website.

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I’m just going to say that nobody does the vintage revival trend better than Nivada Grenchen. The company was relaunched in 2020 and bases its entire lineup on recreating their past catalogue. And that’s kind of their winning strategy, the incredibly rich catalogue of some sensational watches. For their latest release, Nivada is reaching back to the 1970s with the new Nivada Grenchen Antarctic GMT. And it was only by chance that Nivada CEO Guillaume Laidet saw this watch for sale online, not even knowing that Nivada used to make an Antarctic GMT in a EPSA compressor case that’s water resistance to 200 meters.

The new Antarctic GMT, however, doesn’t feature a true compressor case. Instead, it just has the look of the old EPSA Compressor with its two crowns, but without the compressing capabilities that made the watch more waterproof the lower you went. The stainless steel case is all polished and has a very 70s inspired cushion shape, with some pretty great proportions — 36mm wide, 11.1mm thick and a great lug-to-lug of 41mm. On top is a domed plexiglass crystal for a vintage look and feel but you get a bit of a disappointment when it comes to water resistance. I believe they could have pulled off a bit more than 50 meters.

There are two dial options — a matte black or an option that resembles a black dial that has faded to a light brown tropic dial. The latter is a limited edition. Other than the color, the two dials are identical. On the periphery is a black-and-yellow 24-hour rotating bezel, made out of plexiglass for a very cool look. You get very retro indices that are filled with lume and surrounded in polished metal. The hands are also polished, while the GMT hand is short and red-and-black chequered.

Inside, you’ll find the seldomly used Soprod C125 which features a caller style GMT complication. The watch beats at 4Hz and has a 42 hour power reserve. Like all other Nivada watches, this one can be had on a range of straps, be it leather, rubber or steel bracelets.

The new Nivada Grenchen Antarctic GMT goes on sale on November 14th, 2024 at 4PM CET, with the regular black version being a permanent part of the collection, while the brown one is limited to 99 pieces. Price is set at €1,500. See more on the Nivada Grenchen website.

5/

Glashütte Original is not a brand that’s here to blow your hair back with their radical new releases. They’ve been working on the PanoMaticInverse for forty years, with slight updates. A new color, a new texture, a new material, these all come gradually. And now, for the first time in all of these years, the PanoMaticInverse becomes the PanoLunarInverse, which is the first moon phase in the lineup.

The watch comes in a platnium case with brushed and polished surfaces and measures 42mm wide and 12.5mm thick. It’s a very elegant round case, with a minimalist bezel and a sapphire crystal on top. Water resistance is 50 meters.

On the dial side, things get way more interesting. There’s no traditional dial to speak of, as you get to see the 3/4 main-plate of the movement that has a pyramid-like guilloche decoration. Exposed also is the balance bridge, with the dual swan-neck fine adjustment at 4 o’clock and the oversized Panorama date at 2 o’clock. New is the hour and minute dial, situated over the small seconds sub-dial, featuring the moon display in the middle. The moon disc is made from blue aventurine, with two relief moons that have been laser engraved with craters and mountains, and that’s all covered by a by a partially tinted sapphire crystal.

Inside is the calibre 91-04, a modified movement used in the PanoMaticInverse. It beats at 4Hz and has a 45 hour power reserve. The movement is decorated with the same guilloche on the side visible from the backside, and the rotor gets a domed moon.

The new Glashütte Original PanoLunarInverse is limited to 200 pieces and priced at $42,600. See more on the Glashütte Original website.

🫳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

Compared to the original SAR-D models, the OSAR-D benefits from plenty of upgrades and improvements that Marathon has developed over the years. The watch contains the latest Swiss Made Selitta SW200-1 automatic movements, which are specially modified and regulated for Marathon (better shock resistance and accuracy for the 4Hz, two-day power reserve mechanical movements), better design for the crystal and magnifier lens, as well as Marathon’s still fresh and very comfortable Swiss Made rubber strap. If you already own a GSAR and are happy with it, the OSAR-D is not an upgrade but rather a different flavor for collectors and enthusiasts who like this style. With that said, given the geometric design of the face, the Original Search & Rescue has a bit more personality than the General Search & Rescue. For me, it all comes down to sliced eggs.

⏲️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

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Leica watches, despite not having a new model out, have been making a push to inform buyers of how good their watches really are. I’ve seen at least two longform articles on the watches, some 10-15 social posts and now this video. But I’m not mad about it. They really are cool watches.

💵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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