BrandonS from Equation of Time wrote a review on his new Dubey & Schaldenbrand Parade on WatchUSeek and Equation of Time.

Rolex introduced the new prices for 2004/2005, check them out here.

For example, the Sea-Dweller price has been gone up to 3990 Euro, the GMT-Master II up to 3850 Euro and the Date-Just 16234 (wg lunette, steel casing and jubilee bracelet) went to 3850 Euro as well. The Daytona in stainless steel went from 5900 Euro to 5930 Euro. Yeah, if they only made enough of them…

After a long week, here is part 2 of the conversation with Chuck Maddox. You can find part 1 in the archives (use the Search field) or by clicking here.

Part 2 is a bit more in-depth on watches, movements and the watchbusiness in general.

Click here to go to Part 2 of my conversation with Chuck Maddox.

Who? Well, Rolex ofcourse. Why? Because guys like this write stupid things.

Oh well, what do I care anyway. Because the biggest pimps and drugdealers drive BMW and Mercedes doesn’t make it a bad car either, and if you got a normal ‘look’, people probably don’t expect you to be a drugdealer either. It is only sad to find out that even watchafficionados make stupid statements like this. Anyway, my Sea-Dweller won’t get less wristtime because of these ‘image’-problems.

Today, 26 October 2004, Ole Mathiesen from Copenhagen, Denmark, has won the 2004 Classic Danish Design prize with a watch model which he produces since 1962.

Just like 42 years ago, this watch now comes in two variations, the OMB1 and the OMB2, with with roman numerals and index markers - both with a mechanical (hand winding) movement.

Click here for the full article

Timezone and WatchUseek regular BruceS reviews his RGM wriswatch. BruceS writes : “Roland G. Murphy, an independent watchmaker in Mount Joy Pennsylvania, makes some truly exceptional pieces. The RGM 150 is no exception”

Besides watches (Retrograde and Retrotwin), Paul Gerber also makes deskclocks with tourbillon. His site tells us :

“The flying minute Tourbillon is housed in an attractive precious stone casing, which enhances the beauty and elegance of the transparent Tourbillon mechanism. ”

This must be something for the guy who has everything. Unfortunately there is no price mentioned, only a few lines of introduction and the specs of this clock.

Strela, moderator of the Poljot forum at WatchUseek.com wrote a nice essay on the Sovjet space timepieces. Click here to read the article!

Yesterday, Antiquorum had their ‘Timless Beauty’ acution and it seemed to be a good one for them. You can read all about it in their report, click here (you’ll need Acrobat Read for this).

A Patek Philippe Calatrava, only 3 pieces made, in 1961 fetched the most… an amazing amount of 1,413,000 USD!! Besides a few more Pateks and Rolexes, Panerai acquired a lot of 5 diving instruments for their Panerai Museum. A wristwatch, compass, depth gauge, diving knive and a Morse code device made for the Italian Navy commandos. This went for 80,000 USD. Twice as much as estimated.

The Rolex “Ferrari Red” Daytona below, went for 240,000 USD. Click here for all its specifications.

Updated: 13:15 GMT+1, Panerai photo added.

Hans Mennink, co-citizen of the town where I lived for quite some time, wrote an excellent article on the history of the Speedmaster series by Omega. Mostly background information, but comes with some handy facts on Pre-Moon models as well. Unfortunately for the non-Dutch, it is in Dutch and you can find the site here.

However, Chuck Maddox sent me an URL which translates it for the people who can read English. It is translated by a site, so don’t mind the flaws in the text (it translates just about everything, even my Dutch last name ‘Broer’, which means ‘Brother’ in English or ‘Fratello’ in Italian)! Click here for the translated version. Could take a while to load this page, so be a bit patient.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Heel Verlag, publisher of German magazines (Armband Uhren is one of them) have a 2005 watchcalendar for sale on their site, you NEED this!! Nice present to ask for christmas if you ask me.

Ray Purkis is really crazy about his yet to be delivered A. Lange & Soehne wristwatch, at least his S-line A6 shows this….

In the meanwhile, as long as the man in the brown truck doesn’t show up, he could re-read the Lange 1 review that SteveG wrote.

Alan collects vintage wristwatches, amongst his collection are a lot of Timex watches and a vintage Rolex Explorer and Submariner. He describes his own site as:

Watch pictures, diagrams, unusual images, watch info, stories and more……

Enjoy!

This discussion shows up every once in a while at all the watchfora (see the links in the menu on the right), quartz movements vs mechanical movements. To me, a mechnical movement is definately more fun, but this doesn’t say a quartz movement is bad or can’t be justified in an expensive watch (think Rolex OysterQuartz with their ‘mechanical’ escapement). Marc started a thread about the costs of a quartz watch in the High-End quartzforum, is it really worth it? See for yourself, click here

As a watchcollector I must say that although I prefer mechanical watches, I do have my share of quartz watches and I sincerely regret selling a Rolex OysterQuartz DateJust but I can understand the worries of someone paying a lot of money for a high-end quartz watch. The only thing I can say to this is that the quartz movement in a Rolex, Omega or IWC is definately not the same as the one in a 10 USD plastic watch.

About every chronograph owner who is active on the internet probably has read an article he wrote or visit his website stuffed with horological links and articles…. Today I am posting the first part of a conversation held with Chuck Maddox about watches, interests and his point of view on watchrelated subjects.

You can find it here..

Enjoy!

Introduced at Basel, and now available for the lucky ones amongst us. The Paul Picot GMT Chronograph watch, a very nice 42mm wristwatch with a nice guilloche dial. Look for yourself at the japanese version of the Fed. of the Swiss Industry site

Their own site seems to be closed for maintenance.

Last saturday I went to the Sinn dealer near my home (and also the only one in The Netherlands) and tried the Sinn 142 St.S on. It is the black version, which is similar to the one that Reinhard Furrer (1940-1995) wore on the D-1 Spacelab mission. He wore a Sinn 140, which is the same as the 142 but lacking the 24h-feature. Another cool fact (for me) is that Wubbo Ockels (a Dutch astronaut) was also on this mission, a few years ago I exchanged mails with him about the watch he wore on his mission.

Below you see the entire STS-61A / D-1 crew, including Reinhard Furrer wearing his Sinn. Wubbo Ockels is the second from left. He wore a Seiko 100M Sportschrono by the way, which he still has.

Not an everyday watch, but the black finish on the bracelet and case and the Lemania 5100 movement inside make it a bit of a ’specialty’ in my collection. So I bought it! After wearing it for about 2 days I can tell you that I really love it and can see why people are so enthousiastic about Sinn.

I took the picture below from Gerard’s site, I expect to take some photos myself this week.

When I was trying to answer a question on the WatchUseek Rolex Forum, I suddenly couldn’t remember the movement number of the Rolex Explorer and Airking. A quick search on Oysterworld.de refreshed my memory.

If you are a Rolexaholic, go there.

Federation of the Swiss watch industry provided the Controle officiel suisse des chronometres (COSC) numbers of 2003. For the chronometer-newbies: these are the numbers of chronometer-certificates given to watchproducers in 2003. The factories with less than 1000 chronometer certificates are not on the published list.

Here are the first few:

1. Rolex with 756,408 certificates
2. Omega with 207,668 certificates
3. Breitling with 107,689 certificates
4. Panerai with 36,714 cerfiticates

For the rest of the list, click here…

Chronocentric has a nice article on their site about accuracy/COSC.

..if I can still find one that is, they are sold out as it seems. The Sinn142 in steel is one of my favorite Lemania5100 driven chronographs. A pure toolwatch, which is neat to time a pizza in the oven or to check how long it takes to boot a Windows 2000 Server at my work….all kinds of useless stuff that is

I definately need the German version, because I think it is much cooler than to read an English dial on a German watch. Although these watches were never that expensive while they were available, I never seemed to even think about getting one. Now that they are gone, I need one Odd.

Anyway, which Lemania 5100 watch are you going to buy?

For the Dutch readers, go here for the official Dutch Sinn site!