This TZ Omega Forum member ‘Comatox’ not only has great taste in watches, he also makes fabulous pictures of them. Below you see a photo of the caliber 861 used in vintage Speedmaster Professional watches (amongst others). Click here to see more of these high-res pictures of this superb chronograph handwound movement.

Photo by ‘Comatox’ @ TZ Omega Forum

Browsing on my favorite Rolex Forum, I came across a post by a certain Claus. He once came home on a very cold evening. The roads were iced and everything went okay, until he got out of the car. He slipped and this was the result:

He cried because the bracelet broke down (only the bracelet replacement is probably around 7500 Euro), the saphire crystal shattered and didn’t know what more was wrong…  Claus asked the R-L-X.de members what to do and brought the watch to Rolex Deutschland GmbH (which seem to be cheaper than Rolex Switzerland).

Then he got the bill, which wasn’t THAT bad…

And then there was the relief…  ..a Day-Date ref.18239 like new!

Last week, I read this article at WebWereld (a Dutch IT news portal). It says that Microsoft is chasing sellers of illegal copies of their software at auction and online market sites. Nothing new here, however, Microsoft also wants auction and online market sites to be responsible for the items they are selling. I don’t think I agree with that bold statement.

Ofcourse, a lot of illegal copies of software, clothing, DVDs, games and watches are being offered on those sites. The most famous market site in The Netherlands for example, is www.marktplaats.nl, and if you do a search for Omega, Rolex, Panerai, Breitling, Cartier or any other famous brand, you will be amazed by the amount of watches being offered. A lot of them are one-time offers by private sellers, but there is also a big amount that is being offered by wholesale ‘companies’. I doubt if they have any form of administration :-).

Can you make, in this example, Marktplaats.nl responsible? I think not. Like eBay (Marktplaats.nl is part of the eBay company), there is a link at every item-page that can be clicked if an item is not allowed. You can’t expect such sites to check every item that is being offered. Making it possible to warn them about such fraud, is the best and maybe only thing they can do about it.

As for possible buyers… the golden rule is that if an offer seems to good to be true, it probably is.. Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean models for 119 Euro? Sure. Besides that, it will be more difficult to attract people who have original/authentic items to offer. You don’t want your expensive watch for sale with all those fakes, right? It doesn’t make sense, because the target audience is probably looking for fakes only. At least most of them are. Take your business to professional watch market sites like www.chrono24.com or have it sold in consignation.

The online market sites are booming business. eBay paid Euro 225 million to get Marktplaats.nl. And they probably will be for the next years to come, because you can get decent items from such sites. Just be carefull with luxury brands…

Seriously, there is nothing wrong with an Omega Seamaster Professional. On the contrary. However, introducing yet another(!) 007-Limited edition Seamaster Pro really provokes making the good old ‘Omega Limited Edition’-jokes. Seriously, 10.007 watches. It looks like Omega found another victim for their Limited Edition-jokes. Honoring a Limited Edition Speedmaster Professional with another Speedmaster Professional or even better… Honoring the 2 Limited Edition Seamaster Pro 007 series with another Seamaster Pro 007 Limited Edition.

Ok, all jokes aside now. This watch features the co-axial movement (Omega caliber 2500) and besides all Limited Edition crap on the dial and caseback, the case and bracelet are identical to those of the good old ref.2531.80 Seamaster Professional. The model you should actually buy and cherish. Nuff said :-) 

More specs over at WristWatchReview.Com

During the Basel 2006 expo, William Massena (TimeZone) had the privilege to visit Patek Philippe and interview Thierry Stern, Claude Peny and later on, Philippe Stern joined the conversation as well. Click here to read the interview.

Patek ref.5960

Dirk Claassen over at www.horlogenieuws.nl (Dutch) reports that Corum introduced the Admiral’s Cup Competition 48 especially for nautical sports.

The watch has a La Joux Perret caliber 8235 movement, which is based on the famous and often discussed valjoux 7750 movement. It is chronometer-certified (COSC), with 24 jewels, high-end finish and personalised rotor.

The watch case is 48mm in diameter and is made out of titanium. The Corum has a vulcanised rubber strap and the water resistancy is 300 meters. The watch is available in either black or blue. Dirk notes that the watch has this stunning twelve-facetted sapphire crystal.

Although the Corum website does not show the Admiral’s Cup Competition 48, it is really worth looking. The other Admiral’s Cup watches are definately interesting for the nautical sports fan!

Jon Vargas ordered a Jörg Schauer watch with serial number 356 to honor his Porsche 356 pre-A Speedster he has coming out of restoration…

The picture above is just a picture I grabbed from the 356registry.org website, but it is good to have some visual reference in every story :-)

His Jörg Schauer Kulisse watch shows the ‘356′ on the dial as shown below, on the picture taken by Jon Vargas

And here is the entire watch (right one):

Enjoy both your new ‘356’s

Nad wore his IWC Portugieser to his daughter’s Prom night/banquet. Although I am not in favor of most IWC watches, this watch is one of the few I really like. The chronograph is not my cup of tea, but the one Nad has is really nice.  

Nad has taken some more pictures in this thread at TimeZone.com.

The text of this website is like playing import video games, unreadible :-). However, a Japanese collector did a hell-of-a-job taking all these high quality photographs of his watches. Enjoy!

Movement of a GP Richeville.

Financial Times Deutschland writes that Diego Maradona has been busted by the Italian Tax police. They took his Rolexes (it seems that he always wears/wore two) and his diamond studded earrings. Now, I think a man should not wear earrings, but who am I…

Anyway, the Italian tax police took his 2 Daytonas. Worth approximately 10.000 Euro, according to the Financial Times Deutschland. I wonder whether if that is for one Rolex or for the two of them. If it is for two Rolex Daytonas, it is a bit unfair for Maradona. The 10.000 euro is being deducted from the 30.000.000,- Euro he still owes to the tax department. Because of their former owner, they might deliver some more euros if Italy is going to put them on eBay or Antiquorum

A sad day for Maradona. Taking a man’s watch must be one of the all time lowest things someone can do.

Source: Thanks to Hannes for posting this over at www.r-l-x.de

Every time when I bought a new computer, all data of the former PC went into a seperate folder. This way I could start allover again, and just copied what I needed (again). However, I always left the old data in these special folders, since I am not a guy that fills over 100GB that easily anyway. I don’t care for games or downloading movies. So, plenty of room and no need to clean.

It is also fun to browse through those old files once in a while. Last weekend I noticed a folder which belonged to a few PC’s of mine back in time. It contains some watch pictures and one of them is this one:

If I am not mistaken, this picture was saved from the Rolex.com website a few years back. I remember that I mailed it to a friend telling her that I really needed this one :-). She wrote “Nice watch, especially the white-ish steel.”. Indeed, the stainless steel bracelet looks a bit white on this one. That was approximately 6 years ago. And as soon as this flashback came along, I realised that I finally had it Took me 6 years. 6 years to discover I still ended-up with something I wished for back then. A vintage Rolex GMT-Master passed my collection earlier, but I realized that I didn’t care much for the plastic crystal and the rather ‘flat’ casing of the watch. This is it, the Rolex GMT-Master II. I am quite sure this is a keeper, I even made sure the papers got stamped on the date of my birthday.

My friend Rob also bought one last week. Blue/red bezel, A-model, complete with box and papers. Good job!

I have never cared much about Rado watches because of the lack of mechanical movements. Just recently my attention was drawn to the re-introduction of the Rado Diastar with automatic movement. I also noted that Rado introduced their high-tech ceramic Sintra watch with an automatic movement. Well, finally :-). I have to admit that I like the concept of unscratchable watches by using ceramic materials, but I always linked this watch to old people who play tennis all day. But don’t let me hold you back from purchasing this Rado Sintra XXL! With the introduction of the use of mechanical movements, it might attract the younger crowd as well.

As always, this ETA driven automatic Rado has a high-tech ceramic case and bracelet, a domed saphire crystal and a crystal clear dial. The movement is displayed through another saphire crystal at the back. The dial, available in black and white, features big arabic numerals. Visit the Rado website for detailed information.

Source: Europastar

A new blog is in town, at least to me it is new. It is called Professionalwatches.com and as far as I can see it is managed by Jason. Not only professional watches seem to get attention, also other high-end watches are part of the blog!

Good luck fellow-blogger!

Last week I upgraded the WordPress software which I use to manage and administrate this website. A nice free Content Management System, in short CMS. Besides some fixed security issues, it also has a few new features for the administrator (me). One of them is an overview of the ‘Incoming Links’. This way I can check who is linking to one of my articles. After upgrading to Wordpress version 2.02 (from version 1.2) I noticed that I was linked to by the Grange Blanche blog.

It seems to be the blog of Jean Marie. Once in a while, I am having a nice chat with him through Microsoft Messenger (MSN). The article he wrote (which contains the link to this site) is in French, so I used Babblefish to translate the whole thing into English.

Jean Marie stopped wearing a watch for a week. And immediately, he felt the freedom of having no questions anymore. Questions about which brand to wear, which type of bracelet (leather or a metal..), which type of movement. No more watch spotting in the streets and in movies, no more gazing at watches in windows etc etc. You get the picture.

My first thought was, ‘he is right’. About two years ago, during a holiday in France, I left my watch(es) in the safe and bought a sporty Swatch (Athene 2004 rubber band model) to keep me company at the campsite. In those 2 weeks, I didn’t miss my watch(es). The Swatch did the job perfectly. So it is nice to know that this watch addiction does not require any clinics to get ‘clean and watchless’ again. Just like that, cold turkey. Stop wearing one.

My second though however…  what exactly is the problem with this addiction? You can’t buy watches you can’t afford, or you must have been tricked by a jeweler with one of those evil finance constructions. So I don’t see much problems with this watch addiction, it is just a nice passion or ‘interest’.

Actually, those little choices you have to make in the morning when picking a watch (bracelet/strap, mechanical/quartz, handwound/automatic etc etc) are choices I make with great pleasure. Especially compared to decisions you have to make at work