Nicky, also from The Netherlands, shows her collection of Panerais at ViaPaneristi.com:

Click here for her post at ViaPaneristi (more pictures!)

A while back I blogged on Horloges magazine, a Dutch (glossy) magazine on watches. You can read it here. Ofcourse, it wasn’t too positive, and last week I received an e-mail from Jette Vonk, editor at Horloges Magazine, about my posting and about their new website. She defended their 5th anniversary edition ofcourse, which was the edition that initiated my post about ‘Horloges Magazine’ in the first place.

Anyway, she brought up a good point on their 5th anniversary magazine, which is that not everyone is reader since day 1 of their magazine. Sounds fair. Besides that, she pointed out to me that the magazine has a new websites including a watchforum. It is in Dutch, so for those who are Dutch (or from Belgium), click here.

Gerard submitted the following for the WatchPic of the Week:

The picture is of my most recent purchase. It´s powered by an in-house 2.0 litre V6 bi-turbo, 306 hp, movement with four over head cam shafts and 24 valves. Build in 1996. I mentioned that either people love it very much or they find it disgusting; it is certainly good for a lot of discussions.

Keep them coming to fratellowatches@gmail.com.

Hans Mennink has written several very good reviews and essays on watches and watchbrands. The Speedmaster (Omega) and Christiaan van der Klaauw reviews were a great read. This time he wrote a very nice essay on Maurice Lacroix, an overview on the Masterpiece collection.

Click here for the whole article (be patient, a lot of pictures…)

German Krimis (detective series) on the television always drew (& draw) my attention. I can’t exactly explain why, but it probably has something to do that I grew up near the German border so the surroundings/environment is very recognizable. Germany always had an advance on Dutch (not to confuse with Deutsch) television, they (probably) have more money to produce decent and professional TV series. A few weeks back I bought this DVD set of Derrick (Aus der Reihe) tv-series. Derrick was aired during 1974 - 1998 and was quite populair in The Netherlands. The two biggest roles were those of Stephan Derrick and Harry Klein, both detectives in München (Munich). Probably due to nostalgic reasons I bought this DVD set and took them with me on this (everlasting) business trip. I remembered that oberinspektor Derrick always wore a gold watch. And now ofcourse, I paid more attention to the watch he was wearing in those series. On the title screens he is wearing this IWC DaVinci and in some series I spotted him wearing the IWC DaVinci with this crazy gold bracelet. We forgive him for wearing an IWC ofcourse, it was probably given to him by the three letter company from Schaffhausen anyway :-).

In the series themselves, ranging from 80s to the 90s, I noticed he was wearing this gold Rolex GMT-Master with jubilee bracelet. How could I not notice that before? Harry Klein, always in de shade of Derrick, seems to be wearing a Rolex steel/gold sportsmodel. I couldn’t exactly detect which model it is. To be honest, I am really starting to like two tone Rolexes lately, especially those with the gold/steel Oyster bracelets. Although it would give me a hard time when showing it to family and friends since they are quite repulsed by any gold featured Rolex watch.

Other (guest) actors in Derrick however, even if they had a role as poor farmer, seemed to be sporting Rolexes as well. This has everything to do with the lack of professionalism you probably don’t see in US detective series ofcourse, where attention is paid to every small detail. However, I wonder if that is the case for CSI Miami, where the red haired actor with the cool voice (too cool for him actually) is sporting a fake Panerai (these last two words will give me some unwanted hits from queries on Google :-)).

Have a nice weekend people! Back on Monday.

I get a lot of e-mails lately, to quote my best price on watches I even have never held in my hands. So, to clear a few things, I do not sell new watches. I might sell some used watches occasionally, from my own collection or those of friends, but I don’t sell new Breitling Bentley models or Patek Philippe Calatrava. People seem to think, after reading an article (some times full of bashing) they can order it right away.

Oh, and I recently got two e-mails on the name Fratello Watches. To some it looks like a commercial name or website, but it is not. Fratello is Italian for Brother, which is Broer in Dutch, which is my last name. And Watches… well, that’s what it is about! (most of the time at least)

Anyway, I am in Casablanca (Morocco) now so (I know) it is a bit quiet on the watch related posts, please be patient. I will be back on the 26th of September.

In the meanwhile, enjoy OmegaBlogger’s new watch winder. A very special design and very suitable for Omega watches.

Also check-out RolexBlogger, although I don’t get his subtitle ‘The Unofficial Rolex Blog’ (will there ever be an official Rolex blog?) and I am curious when Rolex is going to write some letters to them because they use the name Rolex in the URL (remember www.redsubmariner.com? He had to rename it, www.redwatches.com is his latest :-)). Anyway, congrats and goodluck to another fellow watchblogger!

I read about this brand before, also on WristWatchReview.com, but the last Dutch copy of Miljonair Magazine (and I am not the target audience probably :-)) did a small essay on ‘bling’ watches. Ritmo Mundo and ofcourse the terrible creations for hiphopping USA, Jacob & Co were both heavily mentioned in the article as being awfully hip and populair amongst Paris Hilton, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, 50 cents and a lot of his iced homies.

To quote probably the same target audience, these watches are “like school on sunday… no class!”

Just stay a bit on topic, here is the new watchpicture of the week. Steef Marcelissen has sent me a picture of his most recent purchase, a Girard-Perregaux Richeville Chrono, ref. 2710. This watch has a inhouse movement, the GP caliber 8381. The watch has a silver dial, blued Breguet style hands.

Congrats on your purchase and thanks for submitting it for the WatchPic Of The Week!!

Please keep them coming! Send them to fratellowatches@gmail.com. All other mail can be sent directly to info@fratellowatches.com ofcourse.

A small update on my trip. Unfortunately, no watches so far. I am wearing my Omega Speedmaster Pro and I haven’t even seen one jeweler selling them. To be honest, I haven’t seen a jeweler with watches at all. I have to say that I also didn’t have a chance up til now to do a grand tour through the city. I visitted some places to eat (on the streets, seems to be common) and took a boat trip on the Nile.

I am doing a consultancy job here for a large oil company and today I am heading to Tunis to do the same overthere. I hope things are a bit better arranged over there. Egypt is a disaster for me as a European I guess. Last week I got a confirmation that the company I work for booked the Marriott Hotel in Cairo, to be sure, I called the Marriot telling them that I was arriving late and if that was OK. No problem they said. My collegue who is working and travelling with me, did the same thing. When I arrived sunday night (actually Monday morning at 2:00) I called my collegue who was already at the hotel (he flew from London, I went from Amsterdam) and he told me that the Marriott Hotel cancelled our reservations because we didn’t confirm with our credit cards. Perhaps they should had ask for it when we called to confirm. Thanks Marriott Hotel, for letting us down at 2 o’clock in the night in Cairo, looking for another Hotel with free rooms (even the Hilton and Sheraton were fully booked) up till 5 o’clock in the morning. The Marriott can expect a ‘peppered’ letter as soon as I get back.

Anyway, the hotel we found was quite crappy and the next day we managed to get rooms in the Sofitel at the Nile. Very nice and good rooms.

So to be cautious, we confirmed all our other hotels during this trip as well. We also try to confirm the flight this evening. We have boarding passes, but that wasn’t a guarantuee they said when we called them to ask about it. They needed our tickets to make the confirmation. We had our tickets send over there by a driver to have everything confirmed. When the driver gave them our tickets, they said they needed our passport as well, even after we asked (by phone) what they exactly needed and we even used the word ‘passport’. So the driver came back and took our passports for his second trip. This is plain stupid and quite unbelievable, it can’t be the language, because my collegue is originally from Egypt and speaks the language here fluently. It is probably the Egyptian way, just like their driving style, everything seems to go unstructured and chaotic. Unbelievable that you’ll need at least half a day to get your flight and hotel confirmed, even after you confirmed already and got their confirmation as well. They like to have their confirmation confirmed probably. Oh, well, just have to lower my expectations a bit probably, even from the greater names as ‘Marriott’.

I am away for my work for the next two weeks. Egypt, Tunis and Morocco to be exact. I don’t think there will be any time to post about watches, unless the hotels have an internet connection available in the rooms.

Anyway, when I am back I will finally post the Speedmaster article (new vs vintage) I have been working on last weeks. I only need to update some photos and it is ready to post.

Flying on the 11th of september still doesn’t feel very comfortable though.

According to The Purists, Maria Grazia Cucinotta, was spotted wearing a Joaillerie 101 Reviere by Jaeger Le Coultre. The Internet Movie DataBase learned that she played roles in…..All the Invisible Children, Miracolo a Palermo!, Marcinelle, Strani accordi and many many more. Whatever.

Great watch.

Last weekend I had a Rolex Explorer in my hands, ref. 1016 from the 70s. It was 30 years old and looked quite nice actually. The owner didn’t know exactly what he was carrying (he wanted to bring it in for resizing of the bracelet, which is quite difficult with the old style folded links Oyster bracelet) I think, because he told me before he had a steel Rolex, but couldn’t tell me the exact model name.

Anyway, I googled a bit and will hand over the following URL’s to him:

Robert Keulen’s site with an Explorer article from James Dowling

Alan’s Explorer article

Both links are definately worth checking out for Rolex (Explorer) fans. Another link that has to be ‘read’ is ofcourse the famous Walt Odets article at TimeZone, you can find it here. It is about a newer Explorer, and Walt Odets bashes the movement a bit :-). However, newer Explorers have another (COSC) movement inside, so at least you don’t have to feel upset if you just left the jeweler today with your new Explorer :-).

Picture by Alan

What would I buy with approx 3000 Euro? Not that I can afford it right now, but it doesn’t hurt to make some plans already…

Today I visitted Gerard’s store in The Hague and he had this fine Panerai 210 in one of his windows. Great watch, I had seen and hold it already at the Panerai meeting in Antwerp, a few months ago, and I am still impressed by it.

At www.ruegger.ch I found this nice picture of the Panerai 210:

Another idea is to get a nice watch from my year of birth, 1977. I already tried a couple of times to get a Speedmaster Professional from this year, but could only find 1978 models. Maybe a vintage Rolex Submariner ref.1680 dating 1977 is easier to find. I have seen them in the past on eBay and at various ‘Sales Corners’ online, but never had (and still don’t) the money laying around when I had seen one.

Anyway, if you help me out a bit with the stuff I have for sale on the Classifieds page here at Fratello, I am at least a bit closer to add a new watch to my collection That, and saving up ofcourse. Bwrrrgh…

I decided to put up a ‘Classifieds’ page, to put some watches or watch related stuff for sale from me/friends or perhaps *you* (mail me for details).

Click here for the classifieds page!