Yema Surprises With An Affordable Tourbillon, G-Shock Teams Up With League of Legends, Ball Makes A Bomb Disposal Watch And Praesidus Recreates Legendary MACV-SOG Seiko

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. It’s only right I thank you all. Last month, this newsletter was read more than 700,000 times. I never imagined it could grow so much. However, now that we are here, I’m making some changes. You can expect this to become a more professional operation 😄 Here’s all the changes that are coming:

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In this issue:

• Yema Surprises With A Sub-10,000 Tourbillon To Celebrate 75 Years Of The Company

• G-Shock Teams Up With Riot Games To Create Two League of Legends Themed Watches

• The Ball Engineer Hydrocarbon EOD Is Developed For The US Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team But You Can Buy It Too

• The New Praesidus Rec Spec MACV-SOG Is The Most Faithful Recreation Of The Legendary Vietnam-Era Special Ops Seiko On A Budget

Today’s reading time: 9 minutes and 32 seconds

👂What’s new

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Yema Surprises With A Sub-10,000 Tourbillon To Celebrate 75 Years Of The Company

While not completely unknown, it would be very fair to say that Yema has somewhat disappeared from the global watch scene for a couple decades after they 1960s peak. Only in the past ten years, with the rise of popularity of micro and independent brands have they really resurfaced again significantly, mostly due to a complete overhaul of their offering and by doing what every popular brand does - reaching into their rich history and recreating their most popular models. While far from their peak in the 1960s when Yema was the top exporter in France, selling more than 500,000 watches per year, they now comfortably sell more than 40,000 per year, which is respectable. And while you might see them as a new-ish brand, they are actually celebrating the 75th anniversary of the formation of the brand with a new watch, the Yema Yachtingraf Tourbillon Mareographe 75th Anniversary Limited Edition.

In recent years we have seen an uptick of high horology at affordable prices. Chinese watchmakers have been able to produce tourbillons at really affordable prices and Swiss brands like Horage and Ba111od have been able to bring down the price of Swiss made ones to below 6-7,000 Swiss Francs. Yema is joining this club. While their tourbillon is not below CHF 6,000, it is priced under $10,000 which is a great deal. However, now might be the time to mention that there are numerous reports online and in forums of lacking quality control and sub-standard customer service from Yema, but from what I can see these are mostly concerning their MBP1000 movement from 2011, and I have seen very few such complaints for the new YEMA2000 and later movements. So, keep this in mind.

Now, on tot he new watch. It comes in steel or a very nice bronze case, with vertical brushing and polished beveled lugs and a circular brushed bezel. It measures 42.5mm and 14.5mm thick, including the double-domed sapphire crystal. The transparent caseback gives you a veiw of the movement and it’s outer ring is engraved with the unique Limited Edition number of your piece.

The dial takes inspiration from the iconic 1970’s Yachtingraf model. It features a sunray black finish with applied markers coated with Super-LumiNova and a colorful Maréographe register reminiscent of the regatta-style Yachtingraf vintage model. The Maréographe here is a tide indicator. To approximate the tides, the small indicator makes gradual half-revolutions every 6h 12m 7.89s (change from high tide to low tide and vice versa) and a full revolution every 12h 25m 15.79s. While mechanical tide indicators are not a new complication and might not make much sense in some places, it’s still a very cool detail. At 6 o’clock is the cutout for the 60-second tourbillon.

Inside the watch is the brand’s new CMM.30 tourbillon movement designed by Olivier Mory, a renowned French watchmaker from La Chaux-de-Fonds. The free-sprung balance wheel regulates isochronism for lasting precision and stability. In the absence of a regulator, the durability of the hairspring is increased, as is long-term precision. Adjusted in 6 positions, the CMM.30 ensures an accuracy of –3 and +7 seconds per day. The movement also has a single large barrel optimized to ensure a power reserve of 105 hours. Instead of traditional “guilloché” decoration, the movement gets satin-finishing and micro-blasting treatment with ALD (Atomic Layer Deposition) technology that paints the entire movement black. The watch comes on a rubber strap with a steel or bronze folding clasp.

The Yema Yachtingraf Tourbillon Mareographe 75th Anniversary Limited Edition is available for preorder right now with expected deliveries in January of 2024. Price is set at $10,000 for either the steel or the bronze version, and each is limited to 75 pieces. See more on the Yema website.

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G-Shock Teams Up With Riot Games To Create Two League of Legends Themed Watches

In the Venn diagram of interests, I’m really not sure how much overlap there would be between people who like watches and people who play League of Legends (LoL). I will assume a heck of a lot, not because both endeavours require a high degree of geekiness, but rather because LoL is played by more than 180 million people. That’s a lot of people, so it’s safe to assume that there’s a lot of them who also like watches. For the rest of us who are completely out of touch with what’s happening in the world, League of Legends is an online multiplayer video game involving team-based strategy. It is one of the most popular esports titles and is currently the top ranking PC esports game in terms of views.

Riot Games, the developer of the game, is teaming up with G-Shock to release a pair of limited edition watches. The black and gold G-Shock GM-B2100LL-1A is a full metal stainless steel model based on the game’s magical Hextech technology. The front part of the bezel, two band pieces, and clasp cover have an aged ion plated treatment. The dial has light blue accents, including a blue-tinted inverted LCD display. The League of Legends logo appears on a band link and the case back.

The other watch is the colorful G-Shock GA-110LL-1A, which is based on the character Jinx, so it makes sense that her image is printed on the rubber strap. The black watch is covered in yellow, blue, and pink colors, including blue and pink tinted LCD display sections. The League of Legends logo appears on the band keeper and case back. The subdial indicator is designed like the rocket Jinx uses as a weapon.

Initial reports said that this pair of watches were going to be released on October 20, 2023 as Japanese exclusives and with a price of 137,500 yen for the GM-B2100LL-1A and 26,400 yen for the GA-110LL-1A. Quickly more information surfaced that the watches will get an earlier release in the U.S. where they will be available on October 3, available from the G-Shock website, their Soho store and select retailers. Price in the U.S. is set at $1,100 for the GM-B2100LL-1A and $110 for the GA-110LL-1A. See more on the G-Shock website.

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The Ball Engineer Hydrocarbon EOD Is Developed For The US Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team But You Can Buy It Too

Watch brands like to cosplay a bit with some of their products. Rolex, along with a bunch of other brands, will sell you a watch that you can strap to a submarine that you can take to the Titanic, not that anybody would ever do that. Ball, the cryptic watch manufacturer, also likes to play dress up sometimes. A couple of months ago they released a Ball Roadmaster that’s supposed to help first responders and now they’re targeting another tough profession - Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) of the US Navy with their new Engineer Hydrocarbon EOD.

First, to address the use of the word cryptic. Ball has been widely criticized for their not so clear ownership structure, questions whether they have Swiss-based manufacturing facilities at all and the fact that they heavily rely on preorders, as if they wanted to know how many watches they had to make in China and make logistic easier. Despite all that, they still make a couple of interesting watches.

Second, what is EOD? This is a branch of the US Navy formed in 1941 to clear the battlefields of explosives and make it safer for troops to advance. It’s a bit silly that Ball is releasing an EOD special edition Engineer Hydrocarbon and even remotely suggesting that it could stand up to the pressures of a bomb blast, but I guess it’s not that much different than the Rolex that can go down to the Titanic.

To make a tough watch Ball uses a large case - 42mm wide, 53.2mm lug-to-lug and 13.7mm thick. However, since it’s milled out of a piece of titanium, the watch weighs only 160 grams, which is really not that bad. The case has a brushed finish and polished bevels. But the finishing is where the elegance ends, as sticking out of the side is a huge hinged crown clamp and external cap that help with the 300 meter water resistance. You also get a uni-directional rotating bezel in either a high-end black ceramic, or stainless steel with painted SuperLuminova markers and gas tube insets. The bracelet is also titanium, or you can opt for a rubber strap.

Now, back to the silly part, Ball implying that they equipped the watch to survive bomb blasts. The truth is, it should be able to stand up to a lot more than regular mechanical watches. Ball claims that the watch can survive a fall from 10 meters and should continue running normally. The case is fitted with what they call a Elastomer Ring, a housing inside the case which surrounds the movement which can absorb shocks as strong as 50,000g. G forces, of course, are a tricky subject as they carry with them a lot of caveats like direction and duration, but there is a consensus that shocks over 100g will almost certainly lead to death.

The dial is large and legible, with luminescent sword hands, huge 12, 6 and 9 indicators and a magnified date window at 3 o’clock. Like all other Ball watches, in darkness, the watch illuminates brightly, as it is fitted with different colored tritium tubes. Inside the watch is the COSC-certified RR1101-CSL automatic movement, which is based on an ETA 2892

The Ball Engineer Hydrocarbon EOD is available for pre-order now, as is the case with all Ball watches, with delivery expected around December 2023. Price is set at $3,814 for the stainless steel bezel version and $4,786 for the ceramic version. See more on the Ball website.

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The New Praesidus Rec Spec MACV-SOG Is The Most Faithful Recreation Of The Legendary Vietnam-Era Special Ops Seiko On A Budget

The war in the Balkans attracted with it a slew of interesting characters that played different legal and less legal roles as either solo players or agents of foreign governments. As luck would have it, three decades after the end of the war I befriended one of these characters and we became quick friends. This older gentleman, as it turned out, served in one of my favorite military units of all time - Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group, better known as MACV-SOG, before he made his way to the Balkans where he was a liaison with the Americans.

Hours and hours of talks about Vietnam and Laos mesmerised me and naturally, discussion turned towards watches. Stories of incredibly cheap Rolex watches from Vietnam brought from PXes are plentiful, but as this gentleman first informed me, MACV-SOG weren’t of the fancy pilot type to buy GMTs. Their watches were much more simple, but, surprisingly, much more dressy than the expected tool and field watches.

MACV-SOG was a covert unit operating not only in Vietnam, but also in Cambodia and Laos, and have relied on local suppliers for much of their gear with little support from regular military procurement channels. This also applied to the watches, so the unit ended up with a series of Seiko 6119-8090 watches that looked completely different than the standard watches that the US military provided in the 1960s. These weren’t watches intended for the field, but rather dress watches from the 1960s. These watches, especially with provenance, sell for serious money (regularly over four figures, which is much more than similar watches from this era), so are mostly out of reach who would like to own a piece of history.

Enter Praesidus, a small watch brand that has established themselves as a producer of great modern remakes of classic military watches. I recently mentioned them for their Dirty Dozen recreations, but now they have something right up my alley, something that I was sure I was ordering next. If only they didn’t sell out in less than a day. This is the new Praesidus Rec Spec MACV-SOG, created in collaboration with legendary SOG member John “Tilt” Stryker Meyer.

The original Seiko watches had 36mm cases. Praesidus, however, chose to use a 38mm wide case with a lug-to-lug of 45mm and a thickness of 11.8mm, with a crown recessed into the case at 4 o’clock. Water resistance is a paltry 50m, but it will do, and the case has a mix of brushed and polished surfaces, much like a dress watch and less like a field watch. Topping the case is a curved, sapphire-coated mineral crystal.

The watch comes with five different dials combinations, four of them black and one brown. There are the OG versions, which feature large green applied hour numerals, come in either a sunray brushed version or what the brand calls popcorn or a dial with a rough asphalt texture. There are also the “white” variants, which feature white hour numerals in the same combinations of smooth and rough dials. The final version is a glossy brown dial which is a modern take on a potentially tropic degradation of an original dial.

Inside this recreation of the original MACV-SOG watches is the Seiko NH36 movement which is, interestingly, actually very close to the original. This automatic movement operates at a 21,600vph frequency and has a 40-hour power reserve. The watch comes with a black Tropic-style rubber strap and a brushed steel pin buckle. Also included is either a black canvas strap or a brown leather strap.

The watches came out just two days ago, on September 30th and they’re already sold out. So much for me getting one… And it’s no surprise they sold out as the price was just $295, an incredible bargain for such a great watch. However, I do have some good news - the brown dial version is still availble, so head on over to Praesidus if you want to get one.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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Hands on with A Porsche Design Chronograph 1 and a 911 Carrera T

2/

A review of the Isotope Hydrium California

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

The Balmont BDX004 — A Versatile Everyday Watch From A Fledgling French Brand

At first glance, you might have thought the watch was slightly dressier than sporty. Perhaps that is due to the clean dial, its three-hand layout, and the polished bezel. That was my first impression too, but when wearing it, I found that there’s a great versatility to the Balmont BDX004. And as good as it looks next to a shirt cuff, there’s something about the watch that invites a sportier wear. Is it the water resistance? The 40mm size? Or is it the field-watch-adjacent styling? I’ll let you decide. 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

• It’s easy to look at the rise of generative AI and imagine the singularity roaring toward us as an extinction-level event. It’s harder to look at it the way Virginia Heffernan does: with a canny sense of optimism. But that’s exactly what her feature on Cicero, an AI bot trained in the negotiation-focused strategy game Diplomacy, provides. What if ChatGPT isn’t heading toward HAL, but R2-D2?

• Entrepreneur Bryan Johnson made hundreds of millions when he sold his company. His current venture is Blueprint, an algorithmically run life-extension system he’s developing that’s meant to reduce biological age. The idea of insanely rich people experimenting with peculiar longevity treatments is nothing new. But Johnson, who views himself as an explorer in an unprecedented era of humanity and AI rather than some kind of biohacker, believes he can achieve immortality. Charlotte Alter observes Johnson in his home, which resembles “an Apple Store in a jungle,” to see what his strict (and bizarre) diet and lifestyle routine looks like. She manages to make us both laugh and ponder our own mortality in the process.

• Rats: are they vile plague spreaders or much-maligned innocents, falsely accused of spreading human suffering? J.B. MacKinnon weighs the evidence for you in this fun piece from Hakai Magazine, complete with terrific illustrations by Sarah M. Gilman.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Over the past few months I have posted fantastic documentaries, insightful videos and overall great content here. How about we change it up and watch something completely ridiculous together? Before you is WhistlinDiesel, a YouTuber that completely needlessly and ridiculously destroys nice thing. I know it sounds incredibly obnoxious when I describe it, but the dude has a sense for good timing and humor.

💵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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