Although I have been to the P-Day 3 in 2004 and had a great time, I didn’t attend any of the later organized P-Days though. I figured out I am not the 1 brand kind of guy. Panerai are great watches however, certainly not the best watch you can buy for the money, but a great experience because with minimal effort you can change the entire look of the watch just by putting another type of strap on it.

I also understand the whole cult about the brand, being military watches during WWII; rediscovered and promoted by famous actors; being a family brand; having used Rolex movements in the past; using Zenith El Primero chronograph (36.000bph) and Omega Memomatic movements in limited editions; introducing their own inhouse movement; care for the online community etc. etc.

To celebrate all that, once a year, global Paneristi organize a P-Day! The vintage Panerai watches get most attention ofcourse, being rare / expensive and having that raw and military look. Using an ammo pouch strap on a brand new Panerai for example, can be seen as a way to imitate or as an attempt to get that look. The original deal though, is a vintage 1940s Panerai, with a handwound Rolex-Cortebert movement.

Although this brand is being critized by a lot of watchfreaks, the Paneristi community seems to be getting bigger and bigger every year. Panerai isn’t a hype or a fad anymore, this brand should be get a bit more respect in my opinion, using their own unique designed cases, nicely finished case/dial/buckles and movements. Besides using their own nicely crafted inhouse movements, the standard Unitas movements they use have been upgraded with a swanneck regulator and superb finish.

Perhaps not worth all the pennies you pay for it, but is a Rolex Daytona? Or an IWC watch based on a valjoux 7750? P-Day is about respect for Panerai watches, the company and for your fellow Paneristi. A nice thought!

Some fellow Dutchman did visit the 7th P-Day in Frankfurt and had a blast! Below are some photos to give you an impression of the Paneristi weekend. All pictures by Martin and Gert-Jan.

A few hours drive from The Netherlands to Frankfurt/Germany..

A happy place for Paneristi!

The new PAM 00026! Again, as with most Panerais, expect to be on a waiting list for this one

Same goes for this PAM 203!

More pictures can be found at www.paneristipix.com

More and more haute horlogerie brands are demonstrating their haute-ness to make sure that you know how to be different from other fortunate watch collectors. Although I would feel very frightened with an expensive haute horlogerie timepiece on my wrist, there are probably enough fortunate people that don’t. During my trip to Singapore earlier this year, I have seen a number of haute horlogerie timepieces that really struck me. I also wondered why we didn’t have these timepieces closer at home, in The Netherlands, Benelux or even the rest of Europe. But that thought crossed my mind for only a few seconds. North-America, Asia, Russia and only some parts of Europe is where the money ‘is at‘. Or at least to be spend on watches. Not here.

That’s too bad, because I would really love to see the Chapter One watch, made by three master watchmakers for a brand new player on the market, called Maitres du Temps. These three master watchmakers are Christophe Claret, Roger Dubuis, and Peter Speake-Marin. I have to admit that I only knew about Roger Dubuis before and heard about Peter Speake-Marin. However, a press release of 8 pages (text!) contained a nice introduction of all three of the master watchmakers and about Steven Holtzman, owner of Maitres du Temps.

These three master watchmakers have been carefully put together by Maitres du Temps. As Steven Holtzman said in an interview with the European Luxury Blog, “Every one of the three watchmakers has a particular skill. Mr. Claret has the capacity and ability to create a watch and come up with solutions. Mr. Dubuis’ traditional perspective is from the old school of Geneva watchmaking, and utilizing his traditional watchmaking experience meant we were able to blend different views. Mr. Speake-Marin’s ability to set up and manage the process, bringing us in contact with the right suppliers and helping us with the decisions, was a natural fit. That we were able to bring the three watchmakers together was like a dream for us.” The complete interview can be read at the European Luxury Blog, who also hold the copyrights of the interview.

Pictured left to right: Mr. Peter Speake-Marin, Mr. Roger Dubuis, Mr. Christophe Claret, and Mr. Steven Holtzman.

The philosophy of Maîtres du Temps is symbolized by a tree, with each branch representing a fresh opportunity to work with new masters, another collaboration, a future project. And as the branches intertwine and the tree bears fruit, so a new timepiece is brought to life. This philosophy (or tree-symbol) means we can expect some more horological wonders in the future, created by other (or in different combinations) master watchmakers. Actually, the Maitres du Temps website already mentions that Chapter Two is being launched in 2009! Great!

As you can see in the picture at the top of this article and the blow-up picture below, the first piece from Maîtres du Temps is, a combination of complications with tourbillon, mono-pusher chronograph, retrograde date, retrograde GMT, and two rolling bars at 6 o’clock and 12 o’clock, indicating the day of the week and phase of the moon, respectively. The movement (caliber SHC02) of this watch consists of 558 components and the case of the watch (18ct rosé gold, 18ct white gold or titanium) consists of 108 components. An overview of all technical specifications of this watch can be found here.

The Chapter One will be available in only a few carefully selected boutiques, so please keep an eye on the website for these places if you want to catch a glimp of this shiny beauty. There will only be 50 pieces of the Chapter One and the list price will be around 400.000 USD (excluding VAT). You are probably not in the banking business if you are currently on the look-out for a piece du haute horlogerie from Maitres du Temps.

Jokes aside: myself and probably most readers would buy a cool German or Italian sportscar (or a home) for this amount of money and a nice Rolex or Audemars Piguet on the side to go with it, but for the wealthy collector with a nose for haute horlogerie, the Chapter One is undoubtly the way to express this. It definately sets you apart from other fortunate watch collectors with Patek Philippes or Vacheron Constantins stuffed with neat complications.

Let me show you this beautiful timepiece once more:

Thanks to Sylvia Gelton, Mary Beth Tomko and Steven Holtzman for providing me with all the Chapter One information. All pictures are copyrighted by Maitres du Temps.

Omega has this almost irritating habit of introducing Limited Edition Speedmasters for about every event. However, try to get a NASA patch model (such as the Snoopy Award edition or any of the Apollo 11 editions) and you probably feel stupid for not see that one coming

Speedmasters are, besides being linked to the NASA programme, also connected to racing. Initially, the Speedmaster was created as the watch for car drivers, as you can see on the picture below (pre-NASA programme).

In 1968, Omega even produced a Speedmaster Professional with a so called ‘racing’-dial. Not to be confused with the later 1970s Speedmaster Professional Mark II with racing dial. This 145.012 (1968) model is printed in the Time Capsule (by Imai) book and in the Omega Journey Through Time book (page 604 in the English version). I found a low-quality picture of this particular model somewhere on the web, so forgive me for being unable to credit and being unable to provide you with a better picture:

This was the first and last Omega Speedmaster Professional with a racing dial. Later on, as I wrote before, a Speedmaster Mark II was equipped with a racing dial and muchos later on, Omega introduced the Speedmaster Reduced series. These series were focussed on Racing as well. Just recently, when the Omega - Schumacher connection was established, Omega started to create some ‘Racing’ / Schumacher Legend models with caliber 3303 (Broad Arrow caliber). However, non of these are marked as a ‘Professional’ model.

In 2004, Omega produced a limited number of 2004 Speedmaster Professional (ref. 3570.40.00) watches with a racing dial. Compared to the original 145.012 with racing dial, the hands are ‘inverted’. The hour and minute hands are orange of the Japanese model, as where the original model’s hour and minute hands are white and the chronograph hand is orange. The same goes for the hands of the chronograph subregisters.

Pictures by JK.

If you are a Speedmaster collector, this piece might be missing in your collection, as I think 2004 pieces are really limited. I wonder how many actually left Japan, as Japan is a Speedmaster-collectors country. There is currently one for sale on Chrono24, for approx 3000 euro.

I hope you don’t get tired of my Speedmaster posts and rants..

Today, there was a watchfair in Houten/Netherlands. There is currently nothing on my ’shortlist’, but it is only a half an hour drive from the city where I live in, and it’s always nice to meet up with some other watch fanatics. It seemed that the whole Dutch Rolex Forum crew was there. I also shook hands with a few of my forum sponsors, including JK of JK Watchstore.

He showed me this new Rolex Sea-Dweller Deepsea, a.k.a Rolex Dipsy (ref.116660). Although Rolex is catching up with the orders of this watch, it isn’t a watch that you’ll see often for the coming months. The watch is BIG. At first sight, a lot bigger than my regular Sea-Dweller (ref.16600) and my fairly big IWC Ingenieur (3227-01). However, after trying it on, it actually suited my wrist quite perfectly. This also could be a sign for me to keep a bit more control of my weight ofcourse.

Anyway, the watch looks big and is big. But if you can, try one on to be sure if it suits you or not. On the Basel 2008 pictures and photos (see below) I had seen till now I reckoned that the lettering ‘Original Gas Escape Valve’ and ‘Ring Lock System’ on the innerbezel would annoy me. It didn’t. I actually didn’t even notice it at first, only when I studied the dial/face a bit better. Too bad the photos on the official Rolex site are focussing a bit too much on this lettering. Well, perhaps some people DO like it.

The thickness of the watch suits the large diameter of 43mm. The bracelet is the same as the ‘old’ Sea-Dweller bracelet, until you flip it and see the clasp. The new clasp system is a 100% improvement over the old clasp (that probably wasn’t too hard to achieve). The micro adjustment can be done with minimum effort but pulling the middle part of the GlideLock(r) clasp and re-adjust it. Very nice. The only con I can think of, is the size of the bracelet. In my humble opinion, the bracelet should be a straight bracelet (everywhere the same size) instead of a tapered model. Perhaps a nice rubber diving strap will do the trick I don’t know if the Panerai OEM rubber strap will fit, but that will probably look very cool.

Here are some pictures from JK’s website:

The price of this watch is 7060 Euro (BNIB, 2008) at JK’s watch store.

Additionally, JK sent me some more pictures of the GlideLock clasp.

A while ago, I posted about this watch strap made out of the leather interior of this Mercedes-Benz 300SLR (owned by Jean Todt). If you own a Panerai watch, you probably know all about this strap thing. I have seen them in all kinds of colors, materials (even elephant) and with all types of buckles and inscriptions.

A very popular leather strap seems to be the ammo pouch strap. Yes, an ammo pouch. Below you’ll see one of a Russian soldier outfit from the early 20th century.

I have seen some really nice models over at Catcherstraps, and for a decent price as well. The straps made by Ted Su are also very popular amongst Paneristi world wide. I really like the vintage Swiss ammo pouch strap by Ted Su, as pictured below, but for 250 USD I would like to see it before I buy it.

I have a couple of straps for my Panerai and a few of them are really stiff, which kinda annoys me after a full day of wear. It is great that WatchUseek has this special ‘StrapUseek’-forum, this way owners of these non-OEM straps can exchange information and experiences. I also have good experiences with buying straps from TCStraps, although they don’t seem to carry a lot of Ammo Pouch straps. However, they do have the famous Mario Paci 1938 straps The military pouch strap they have is quite nice though, see the picture below:

You can get really caught up in this Panerai strap thing if you don’t watch out!

Last month, several watches that were sent with FedEx have dissappeared from the radar. An online dealer in The Netherlands had ordered three watches from different dealers. Although FedEx claims to be a reliable business partner, they are not. The three watches with a total value of +30K Euro were lost in the process of being ‘handled’ in the distribution center of FedEx in Amsterdam. After complaining to FedEx, nothing more than a ‘we are sorry’ was given to the victim of this theft. After a few days, FedEx at least found one of the three watches and had it delivered to the on-line dealer by another courier company (cowards). Ofcourse, it was the cheapest watch of the three and the total damage is now a whopping +26K Euro. A gold Rolex and a IWC are still missing.

Unfortunately, reading the Dutch Rolex Forum on a regular basis, this is not the first time that FedEx loses watches in the mail process.

So, a warning for you who wants to send a watch by mail. Always make sure the watch / package is properly ensured and make sure to pick a trustworthy business partner. FedEx is not.

Rolex doesn’t seem to make too much noise about their 100 year anniversary, but Guido and Franca Mondani do! Yet another great book from the famous publisher Mondani is this “100 Years of Rolex“-book, written by himself and his wife.

This book covers the Rolex-story (about founder Hans Wilsdorf and the Heiniger-family who are running the Rolex organization since 1963) from 1908 till now, including the introduction of the Rolex Deep Sea-Dweller during the Basel fair of 2008. The book covers all important Rolex watches of the last century by publishing great detailed photographs of these watches, where Mondani also favors Rolex collectors by putting much effort in capturing details of bezels, bracelets, boxes and papers. All texts in this book are in Italian as well as in English.

As the pictures above and below indicate, the book has a nice and almost complete overview of watches that were introduced in a certain year. Besides that, the book comes with a smaller booklet with estimates of modern and vintage Rolex wristwatches. Additionally, Rolex dealers (authorized and unauthorized) placed ads in this booklet which might be usefull when you are planning to buy or sell your Rolex timepiece. Our own blog sponsor SubGMT is also listed in this section.

This book is limited to 4000 pieces, which makes it even a nicer ‘wannahave‘. Gone is gone I guess and I am more than happy to have my copy. It is a nice addition to Mondani’s ‘Collecting GMT-Master watches’ and ‘Collecting modern and vintage Rolex watches’ books, but certainly interesting when you don’t have either of these books. 100 Years of Rolex covers all watch series produced by Rolex, either vintage or modern and is very up-to-date.

SubGMT sells 100 Years of Rolex (over 340 pages and an extra booklet with collectors price guide) for the special price of 299 Euro (normally 350 Euro)!

Click this link if you are outside The Netherlands. SubGMT is a trusted party for all your (modern and vintage) Rolex purchases.

Sometimes, a watch has more than one face or ‘look’. It is all in the eye of the beholder ofcourse, but the photos below support this comment really well

If you look at your watch from different angles or when being in different locations, it can become a watch with a totally different look. The first photo below show the Ingenieur being this raw, rugged tool watch and the second photo shows this fine shiny sophisticated timepiece that refers to the first GG designs from the mid-1970s. To me, these photos demonstrate that this watch is suited for casual as well as more formal occasions. A Rolex Sea-Dweller (or Milgauss? :)) and Yacht-Master in one so to speak. The photos have been taken by Cinq, visitor of the IWC forum at TimeZone.