Part of being a Paneristi is to collect nice and special watch straps. I have written about straps made from vintage ammo pouches and one – not for Panerai in this case – made from the leather interior of a Mercedes SLR 300 (1956) formerly owned by Jean Todt.

Last week, I received an e-mail about DaLuca’s Panerai Straps. The owner, Daniel Luczak, creates one-off straps for Panerai watches made out of ammo pouches and other vintage leather used for (mostly) military purposes. Each strap is individually named and will never be duplicated.

On PaneraiSource.com, you’ll find a well written and documented review of DaLuca straps. As I wrote some time ago, these kind of straps and intiatives makes me want to own a Panerai again. Just a basic Luminor model, or the new 1950 with in-house caliber, PAM312.

One of the vintage Panerai straps from DaLuca is called ‘Bunker Hill Revolt’! Although violent scenes from WWII movies come to mind,the strap at least looks impressive and indeed made from leather that has been in or around bunkers during that time..

Below you’ll see a vintage Panerai strap called ‘flame thrower’. One can only imagine what this leather must have been going through..  The leather goes back to the 1940s and is super soft. Dan’s straps come with a sewn-in buckle (Pre-Vendome style), includes the tubes for attaching them safely to your Panerai and free shipping within the USA (outside, add 10 USD).

Prices for the pictured straps are 290 USD (Bunker Hill Revolt) and 210 USD (Flamethrower). Payments can be made through PayPal or by Credit Card.

Click http://www.dalucastraps.com/categories/Vintage-Watch-Straps/ for their entire collection of interesting Panerai straps. They also now create gorgeous croc handmade panerai watch straps.

Paneristi world wide celebrated their shared passion in Firenze (Florence/Italy) this year, during the P-Day 8 event. The Panerai forums are flooded with pictures, like every year after the event.  Although not having  a Panerai in my current collection, I still have lots of love for this brand. After owning a Panerai 113 and a Panerai 000 Logo, it still itches every now and then. Especially now that Panerai has great inhouse movement models (like the Panerai PAM 00312), for decent prices.

Dutch Paneristi Martin Wilmsen, also known for his blog www.wristwatchphoto.com, has this great website PaneristiPix where you can find great photographs of Panerai, Paneristi and their famous get-to-gethers.

Photo by Martin

Besides PaneristiPix.com, make sure to visit the mother of all Panerai sites, www.paneristi.com for some great photo stories about P-Day 8.

Since a few weeks, I am following my friend Jan from Denmark with his watch blog. He blogs mainly about Rolex and Panerai, including new & vintage models. He also seem to have – like myself – a weak spot for the Danish Linde Werdelin watches. The 3-Timer I ordered won’t be here before September, so I am grabbing every chance I got to read about Linde Werdelin Jan’s WatchBlog.dk website is, like FratelloWatches, a personal blog about watches. His opinion, his knowledge, his thoughts and rants.. Great! Especially when a blogger knows his stuff, and Jan certainly does.

Click here to visit WatchBlog.DK!

Paneristi (= dedicated Panarai fans) are famous for their GetToGethers. The best known GTG is P-Day, this year to be held in Florence, Italy. Home of the Officine.

Last weekend, WatchRon (one of the Dutch Paneristis) organized a GTG for all Belgian and Dutch Paneristi. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to join them, but the stunning pictures they posted on PaneristiPix and the wristwatchphotoblog by Martin make up a lot.

A good GTG comes with a good meal, and according to some of the attendees in the Dutch Panerai Forum, the meal was excellent.

Part of the Panerai fun is about straps (and changing them). Dirk Grandry, one of the most famous strap sellers, was also there, presenting a large collection of Panerai straps. I blogged about Panerai straps several times in the past, including an article on the ammo pouch straps (click here to go the article).

Besides good food and Panerai straps, there were a lot of fabulous watches. I came across this picture by Martin, of two Panerai PAM127 models, or also known as “Fiddy” or “1950″. Panerai stopped the production of these watches, and prices are going sky high ever since. I think a lot of people are upset because they either sold them too early or didn’t buy them at all back when these were in production.

Paneristi love tradition. Making a table shot of all watches from the GTG attendees is also tradition. PierreSim (also responsible for the first two pictures), did a nice job on the table shot below.

It is just incredible that a brand initiated such a cult of vintage diving watches, straps, GTGs and loads of dedicated websites and forums. Angelo Bonati (CEO of Panerai) did an excellent job, not only on branding, but also on listening to the buyers/collectors of Panerai watches. After the use of relative simple handwound Unitas movements, Panerai upscaled to the fine few that uses their own inhouse movements. Their basic (Luminor Base and Luminor Marina) models still make use of the Unitas movement, still enabling ownership for (almost) every watch enthusiast.

Martin, Paneristi and moderator of the Dutch Panerai Forum, started a blog on watches (Panerai mainly) and watch photography, http://www.wristwatchphoto.com The pictures he shows on the various forums are always fabulous, like the picture of the Panerain Submersible (PAM243) below.

To be able to take this shot, Martin had to set the shutter speed of his camera to 1/100th, using two speedlights wrapped into plastic to protect them for the splashing Submersible. Ofcourse, the camera was mounted on a tripod for a steady shot.

To read more about this particular shot and how it was done, please click this link.