As written before, Johan and I set-up a website to support the LinkedIn Group ‘a Passion for Watches’.

Not too long ago, Johan and I added a forum, to be able to discuss the watch industry and watch branch. “Another forum”, I hear you say. Indeed, we are aware of that, but this forum has a slightly different approach. This forum is there to discuss the movements (nice choice of words RJ :)) within the watch branch/industry. What happens over at Swatch Group? How do you become employed in the watch branch? And most of all, it should be a forum where people from the watch industry, jewelers and customers meet.

And yes, you have to register to participate. Blogs and forums are unfortunately the victim of spam and spam bots as well. You do not have to be signed-up on LinkedIn, but that is the place to get connected to other watch passionates.

My blog friend Alon Ben-Joseph posted a great article on ‘who’s the king?’

“We all love ranks, lists, competition and knowing who is the best. In the watch industry many players crown themselves as the king of the industry. Consumers always want to own the best watch. But who is actually the king?”

Click the following link to go to the article:
http://watchfreaks.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/whos-the-king/

Don’t forget to bookmark Watch Freaks Blog!

Oh, shoot me. This Panerai Forum is something I set-up with the help of some Panerai enthusiasts. The Dutch Rolex Forum is quite popular, so I wondered if there would be space for a Dutch Panerai Forum as well. Panerai is a brand that I have the famous love - hate relationship with. I had this wonderful PAM 113 and sold it because I thought I could do without. Boy, I was wrong. I really missed the whole Panerai experience.. being a Paneristi, buying and changing Panerai straps once in a while (or too often). So, about a year after I sold it, I ran into this great looking Panerai 000. As good as new. And the enthusiasm was immediately there again. Anyway, as a result, I started the Dutch Panerai Forum. For Flemish and Dutch writing/reading Panerai enthusiasts. So if you are one of those, click and take a look at the forum!

http://www.paneraiforum.nl

Photo by Gertjan, visitor of the paneraiforum.nl site.

I remember being very enthusiastic about the re-invented Rolex Milgauss watches in 2007. I am a regular visitor of several Rolex forums, and most active on the Dutch Rolex forum, as writing/reading posts in your mother language still works best. It occured to me that only few forum visitors/members have a Rolex Milgauss in their collection (or as their only watch). When I just visited the sales corner of ‘das R-L-X’ forum, I noticed quite a few for sale, including those with the green saphire crystal called Rolex Milgauss GV.

Although the odds were different one year ago, the Milgauss doesn’t seem to be an immediate hit as I expected it would be. The period where prices were over the list price is long gone already, except for the green sapphire model I guess. The regular models (white and black dial) start below 4000 euro. Although I don’t care much about block buster watches, I was clearly wrong about the future of the Rolex Milgauss. If you look at watches as an investment, it might be a good bet anyway. Rolex watches that do no sell very well at this moment, are probably the most sought-after watches in the (far) future. Think former Milgauss, 1960s and 1970s Daytona and (more or less) the Rolex Oyster-Quartz models. That is at least what I hope for with respect to my precious Yacht-Master Oh, anyway… for those who have a modern Rolex Milgauss, enjoy your watches!

Rolex Milgauss 116400, a LNIB for sale at Bernard Watch Co for less than list..

Interesting book on this subject:

TheTimeTV is a television channel for Watchmaking enthusiasts and professionals. New products, interviews, events, insights - TheTimeTV covers the latest Watchmaking industry news through exclusive reports and interviews. I blogged about the time tv on 11 May 2006 as well, but a number of things has been changed since then..

The Time TV now offer a wide range of videos – Products/ Interviews/ Events etc, and it is becoming one of the leading websites in terms of exposure. In June this year, they have also launched a new partnership with www.horlogerie.com, and now, the videos can be found on both WebTVs.

Personally, I especially like the product videos on the TheTimeTV website. A number of great watches of known and less known brands are present! Video is the next best thing on the web imho, and I am glad that TheTimeTV is showing how it should be used for us watch freaks

The Atmos clock by Jaeger LeCoultre always has intrigued me. I really love the later models with a moonphase and in rhodium plated steel.

These clocks do not need a power plug or a winding key. Atmos clocks get their energy from temperature changes in the environment. The following explanation is grabbed from the Atmos wikipage, as I couldn’t say it better (in English at least):

“Its power source is a hermetically sealed capsule containing a mixture of gas and liquid ethyl chloride, which expands into an expansion chamber as the temperature rises, compressing a spiral spring; with a fall in temperature the gas condenses and the spring slackens. This motion constantly winds the mainspring. A variation in temperature of only one degree in the range between 15 and 30 degrees Celsius is sufficient for two days’ operation.

In order to run the clock on this small amount of energy, everything inside the Atmos has to work in as friction-free a manner as possible. For timekeeping it uses a torsion pendulum, which consumes less energy than an ordinary pendulum. The torsion pendulum executes only two torsional oscillations per minute, which is 60 times slower that the pendulum in a conventional clock.”

As pictured on Atmos Adam’s website:

A bit of googling learned me that there are quite a number of Atmos collectors and freaks around. However, most Atmos clocks you will encounter on the collectors web pages and on ebay are gold plated. This has probably something to do with its price. The vintage models that are gold plated are very affordable. I have seen them going for 650-800 euro, probably the same range in USD, but importing them to another continent isn’t a good idea, since air-mail isn’t doing them any good. The rhodium plated models however, are much more expensive. I haven’t seen them below 3000 euro and a moonphase complication will add another 2000 euro at least. It would be fun to own one, even gold-plated give the price, but since I would like to place it in our living room, gold-plated is not the way to go It simply doesn’t fit. I guess I will have to keep saving up or get a gold-plated one and keep it in our study.

Note (thanks Hessel): In 2008, the JLC Atmos celebrates its 80th birthday with three limited models. In these 80 years, JLC has manufactured more than 750 000 Atmos clocks. Click here to see a nice SIHH report on the Atmos specials (you need a login code for the WatchProSite!).

Click here for the official Jaeger LeCoultre Atmos pages: http://www.jaeger-lecoultre.com/la/en/watches/atmos-classique

Click here for a collector’s page on Atmos clocks: http://www.geocities.com/atmosclocks/

Click here for Atmos repairs: http://www.atmosclocks.com/index.html

Photos grabbed from various eBay auctions. The How-it-works description is from atmosadam.com. A great source of information for Atmos-adepts, make sure to visit this website.

As promised (to Martijn, see the comments of the GP post below), I hereby post a few pictures of a watch that I bought a few months ago, from a fellow Dutch collector. It is a Titus Geneve chronograph from the 1940s (ca.1946-1948) with a Landeron 48 handwound movement. It is a 38mm watch, which was quite big for those days, in a 18ct red gold case. The case is very light and has a metal ‘ring’ inside, to make the thin 18kt red gold case a bit of solid. I was told that these watches were quite populair for US ex-soldiers from WWII to bring home, because these were one of the few gold watches allowed for them to import. I am not sure, but I think there were some kind of restrictions for the import of gold items. The Landeron caliber 48 (31mm) is produced between 1937 and 1970, ticks at 18000 beats per hour, has 17 jewels and a power reserve of 44 hours. Another brand from that era which produced quite similar watches was Chronographe Suisse. This brand was brought back to life just recently.

Anyway, I bought this watch because I was eager to try out a red gold (chronograph) watch. I always feel that I am a bit too young (and pale) to wear gold watches, but this one is really fun to wear with a nice shirt or suit. These type of watches can be bought for relatively little money, I think I paid between 250 and 300 euro for this example (including a new Officine Italia Bros strap).

During my ‘research’ on chronographs from the 1940s/1950s, I came across this interesting French site about chronographs. Make sure to visit if you are interested in these vintage beauties as well. http://monsite.wanadoo.fr/chronotictac/page5.html

I took three pictures to satisfy Martijn I hope I was able to capture its ‘modest’ beauty in these pictures. The black ‘aged’ dial with gold printing is really nice IRL, a good picture was hard to take with all these reflections in the plastic crystal.

The watch has a small dent in one of the lugs. Like I wrote above, the material is quite thin and this dent was probably caused by bumping into something or it was dropped on one of the lugs. The crown is in doublé or plaque and a bit too yellowish. Perhaps I will put on a 18ct red gold crown in the future, if I can find one cheap. The watch runs acceptable, but I wouldn’t wear it for days in a row, because the deviation will become too annoying.

The looks of the watch at least convinced me to get myself (or as a present :)) a nice red gold modern chronograph in the far future.

I just posted a blog on watch advertizements over at Watch Freaks! Click here to read it.

Last year, I have been posting a lot on Rolex watches. A brand you can’t ignore in my opinion. However, this year I promised myself to have a good look around for other interesting watches and brands. Earlier this year, I bought myself an IWC Ingenieur and a vintage Titus chronograph in 18kt rosé gold (very very thin ;)) and now I am investigating other watches for a possible future purchase. I had my share of impuls purchases in the past, and most of them ended-up on the various sales corners again.

A while ago, I read an article about the Girard-Perregaux (GP hereafter) Laureato. GP is a brand that you won’t see much, perhaps because their name isn’t as known as the Rolex, Patek, IWC or Audemars of this world, I don’t know. However, GP is one of the few brands that can call itself a manufacture. I assume that most of you visitors here, know GP, so I don’t have to further introduce the brand itself. The full history can be found on their website.

The model that caught my attention is the Laureato Evo³ chronograph. It is the third generation of the Laureato series (considered by GP as sport classique) which was initially introduced in 1975.

The Evo³ ref.80180 was launched in 2004 and has been upgraded to the current standards of watch design, without losing touch with the initial Laureato. The Evo³ chronograph has an inhouse movement, caliber GP 033C0. This automatic winding chronograph is ticking at 28.800 beats per hour, has 52 jewels and a powerreserve of 52 hours. The watch has, besides chronograph functionality, a day/night indicator and a date sub-register. As regular readers may know, I have a weak spot for integrated bracelets, and this watch has one as you can see on the pictures below! I’ll put this watch on the list

Pictures by Bernard Watch Co.

This 43mm giant has a list price of over 14.000 USD. Bernard Watch Co offers a BNIB for 8395 USD.

Today, Roger Ruegger pointed out to me that The Crossing is being presented by IWC on their website. The Crossing has been played in front of 1700 guests during a gala night organised by IWC at the SIHH watch fair earlier this year.

The text below is a short summary of the official press release by IWC:

“IWC presents the short film of a multimedia performance by the Sydney Theatre Company, interpreting the story of how the watch manufacturer was founded and starring Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes. The watch manufacturer IWC Schaffhausen is celebrating the online premiere of “Minutes of a Separation”, with the lead roles played by Oscar winner Cate Blanchett and Hollywood actor Joseph Fiennes. The “Making-of”, which contains interviews with Cate Blanchett, the director and other actors, provides a fascinating look behind the scenes.

In the film, Oscar winner Cate Blanchett is the pregnant wife who is left behind by IWC founder Florentine Ariosto Jones, played by the British actor Joseph Fiennes. Joseph Fiennes plays an adventurous watchmaker and engineer struggling to succeed in his bold vision, which drives him into European exile in an attempt to raise the manufacture of watch movements to a new and cheaper level of production.”

Have fun. Click here to go to IWC’s microsite ‘The Crossing’.

About seven years ago, in 2001, I had this Bulova Accutron Spaceview wrist watch. I wrote a review on that watch and posted it here.

I bought it off eBay and wore it for about a year or so before I traded it again. I remember that I was too afraid of damaging the movement, which would result in having a useless watch in my drawer. Repairing an Bulova Accutron is expensive and time consuming. Good spare parts are hard to find. However, there is hope. The Watch and Clock Forum created an Accutron forum. Perhaps I should have kept it and wait until there was this Accutron community The nicest Accutron Spaceview I’ve ever seen is a triangular cased 14ct white gold version on a leather strap. Beautiful.

Have fun!

Just very recently, I noticed the website of Maximilian Büsser (and friends). Maximilian has been working in the past for prestigious brands like Jaeger LeCoultre and for Harry Winston Rare Timepieces (as a managing director) being responsible for the Opus haute horlogerie watches of the latter brand.

Maximilian Büsser

In 2005, Maximilian started his own brand (MB&F) to assemble dedicated collectives of talented artisans, artists and professionals to design and craft each year a radical horological masterpiece. And if you take a look at the MB&F website, you’ll see that these masterpieces are radical indeed! The MB&F watches are being called ‘Horological Machines’ and are successively numbered (for each year a new model is introduced). Horological Machine No.1 for example, has four barrels in parallel and is the first to have the regulating system receive energy simultaneously from two different sides (two barrels on each side). Its automatic winding movement consists out of 376 parts, 81 jewels, 4 mainspring barrels, a 7-day power reserve and an elevated central tourbillon.

The MB&F website gives information on every Friend that helped constructing and building each Horlogical Machine. The watch is delivered with a black hand-stitched alligator strap with an 18ct gold folding clasp. Horological Machine No. 2 – also an incredible radical designed wrist watch – features an instantaneous jumping hour, concentric retrograde minutes, a retrograde date and a bi-hemisphere moon phase. The automatic movement of the HM2 consists out of 349 parts and 44 jewels. HM1 is made in 18ct white gold and red gold. HM2 is made in 18ct red gold combined with titanium and 18ct white gold with titanium, limited to 125 pieces each. Prices are unknown and I really wonder if that is of any importance to the MB&F clients, this is a whole different level of the watch making art.

HM No.2

The packing material of both watches is as ‘radical’ as the watches are. HM1 comes in a very impressive wooden case with an extra alligator strap (brown) and a screw driver to be able to change it yourself. I would not forgive myself if I would scratch the case with a screw driver in an attempt to change the strap. The wooden case is safely tucked away in a pin striped flannel and leather carrying bag by Etro. HM2 comes in a leather case with brushed aluminum sides. One side of the case includes a thermometer.

HM No.1

MB&F has 15 selling points world wide, by 8 selected dealers. The MB&F website gives a personal introduction of each dealer. One of them is The Hour Glass in Singapore, a well known high-end watch store in Singapore. I have been to Singapore two months ago, but I didn’t visit The Hour Glass shop on Orchard Road, which I really do regret now I have seen the MB&F website…

HM3 will be introduced late 2008.

Thanks to Mr. Büsser of MB&F for some corrections.

The 24 Hours Le Mans is over. Audi wins the 76th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2008. The Audi trio consists of Kistensen (wins for the 8th time in 9 tries), McNish and Capello.

What has this to do with watches you ask? Besides Steve McQueen wearing his Heuer Monaco in the 1971 movie ‘Le Mans‘, Rolex is long time sponsor of the event. Every year, Rolex presents a stainless steel Rolex Daytona to personalities who embody the spirit of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This Daytona has ‘Spirit of Le Mans’ engraved in its caseback.

Picture by J. Holbrook, from his wallpaper collection @ The Rolex Reference page.

This year, the “Spirit of Le Mans” Rolex Cosmograph Daytonas will be presented to Yves Courage, constructor and driver who has competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1982 (Lola-BMW), and Martin Birrane, a former 24 Hours of Le Mans driver, who is celebrating his 50th birthday this weekend.

With this limited Daytona (with engraving and background story), their funding for their early-retirement is secure.