Editor TLex of prominent diving watch blog OceanicTime has some exclusive information about Essex, a new watch company offering two saturation-diving watches using Swiss ETa movements and built in Germany.
«A technical engineer with an eye for style, Rainer Brändlein founded Essex in 2007 as an exclusive watch brand for today’s active gentleman.» Read more at OceanicTime.com
Having had a very humble start with a Chinese-made chronograph based on a Chinese Valjoux 7750 clone, Prometheus has moved to Swiss quality with its second collection, a diving watch with inner rotating bezel.
The young brand is now taking orders for its third collection, the Recon 5. The watch draws inspiration from WWII German aviator timepieces, and it seems particular attention has been given to keeping the dial clean and light.
The founder is very keen on listening to forumers opinions, so the second and third collections have been designed with inputs and suggestions from collectors.
It was due to happen sooner or later, and the only guess was “when”. After introducing its cerachrom ceramic bezel on the new GMT-Master II in 2006, Rolex applied the same technology to the Deep Sea, a new development released in 2008. This year, the brand finally unveiled the revamped version of it legendary diving watch, the Submariner, featuring a cerachrom bezel and a laser-engraved inner ring.
Besides the obvious technical upgrade, it seems Rolex has paid careful attention to the choice of materials and decorations. The new watch elements such as the atom-blasted ceramic bezel and the inner laser-engraved conical ring both require highly sohpisticated tools. This characteristic turns the task of replicating them into a difficult and expensive one. This blogs strongly dissaproves of fakes and replicas, and it is comforting for the watch collector to see Rolex put a lot of efforts in making their products hard to fake.
Another brand to take heed of collectors is Eterna, who unveiled at Baselworl 2010 a re-edition of the Super-Kontiki, a diving watch popular on forums.
The new Heritage Super-Kontiki comes on a Milanese mesh band, and features an extension that allows to wear it over a diving suit.
This is a very good example of a brand tapping into its rich heritage to provide collectors with distinctive products. Were brand to do this more often, with appropriate volumes and reasonable pricing, most of the mini-brand watches featured on this blog would not need to exist.
The Heritage Super-Kontiki seems to faithfully reproduce the details of the original. It is a limited edition, so I expect all items will sell out. I only hope the price will be reasonable.
“Voice of the people, voice of god” goes the century-old Latin expression, implying that the opinion of the people should be sovereign. Tudor seems to have taken heed by heavily drawing inspiration from their legendary chronograph collections, the Heritage.
The new Tudor 70330
The new reference 70330 combines various elements of pieces that have become collector items. The dial is that of the 7031/7032, minus the magnifying glass; the bezel is that of the 7169.
side-by-side comparison of the 1970 and the 2010 model, separated by 40 years
Original models 7031 to 7032 featured a Valjoux 7734 (based on the 7733); while models 7149 to 7169 featured the more prestigious column-wheeled 234.
credit: Francknwatch @ Chronomania.net
credit: Francknwatch @ Chronomania.net
The result is a product that looks like a New Old Stock piece that time-travelled from 1970. The new version features a “pineapple” texture on the bezel, screwn-down pushers and crown. Only connoisseurs will notice the inversion of subdials, consequence of the use of a more recent Dubois-Dépraz chronograph module. Movements using Dubois-Dépraz module have the advantage of being smaller than integrated complications, and they can sometimes come as a more affordable alternative to their integrated counterparts. However, watchmakers and collectors alike are mitigated about their shortcomings in terms of reliability.
Inerestingly, Tudor developed a woven strap like the ones that collectors often mount on highly-sought Rolex and Tudor watches.
The strap design uses two stainless steel loops and a not-seen-before kind of buckle design.
There are talks of a retail price of CHF 4000 (convert to other currencies), which in the author’s opinion does seem a bit steep. Tudor has always had a very competitive pricing policy, and they should make efforts to keep this watch within reach of mechanical watches collectors.
Kingston… as in Kingston Jamaica. The country where fictious character James Bond, played for the first time by actor Sean Connery, is sent to investigate the death of a fellow British agent. In the 1962 movie, Sean Connery is show on several occasions wearing an early Rolex Submariner.
According to I already have a watch.com editor Rrryan, the Submariner belonged to director Terence Young and it was fitted with a standard nylon strap to be worn by Sean Connery during takes.
credit www.fabricegueroux.com
Mr. Bill Yao has been working on a faithful homage to the original Submariner (the design of which is now in the public domain). Note the folded/riveted bracelet links faithful to the original.
It appears the Kingston was manufactured in a very limited series of 100 pieces. Probably all sold out. There are 2 different dial plates: one without the date window, and the other one with. There were several dial print, hands colours and bezel inserts to choose from.
This is not fresh news per se but Bill Yao (founder of legendary MKII watch company) announced on February 10th 2010 his decision to stop selling parts (dials, hands and case parts) to focus on complete watches only.
Mr. Yao started his business by selling modding parts for ETA-based watches (mainly dials and hands), and success allowed him to move towards the design of complete watches and the acquisition of the legendary Tornek-Rayville trademark.
The entrepreneur eventually found himself overwhelmed by the combined demands of development, orders fulfillment and family life. This new focus on complete watches seems logical to me. I bid Mr. Yao good luck on his new endeavour.
From left to right: Bill Yao, Watchuseek moderator Mike Stuffler and Watchuseek founder Ernie Romers (credit Watchuseek.com)
The Purists forum features January 2010 pictures of a prototype made by a new German brand called “VDB”.
The collection comes in diameter 46 mm and features a vintage GUB Spezimatic calibre. Click here to see the original post at ThePurists.com.
image: detail of installation by Bronwyn Lace