The Golden Age

Would there be a Patek Skymoon tourbillon in the age of mechanical watches? I think not. It would be too expensive and maybe because the lack of modern design technology. So the golden age of mechanical watches, where mechanical watches are luxury anyway, allow them to make a watch like this. And it gets sold as well. Would there be a Panerai Tourbillon diverwatch? I think not, because this complication is completely useless on a diverswatch. It is for people that have everything already.However, how long will this golden age of mechanical watches last? The former age of mechanical watches, between 1940 and 1970, Japanese quartzwatches passed the Swiss mechanicalwatch industry and they (the Swiss) couldn’t catch up with them. Only later (1990-now), where mechanical watches are considered to be luxury, things are going well again. But since they are doing extreme things now, tourbillon divers for example, how long is this going to last? That money doesn’t buy you a mechanical watch. People who adore mechanical watches are paying extra. And like every ‘extra’ in life for luxury, you have certain levels of it [luxury]. You can adore cars and be perfectly happy with your restored MGB, but some people take it a few steps further and buy Jaguar E and XK types for hobby. There is currently a market for extremes, and watchmanufacturers know this ofcourse. Although it is hard to do any new inventions in mechanical watches, they do add new features and try to perfect these.

The Golden Age

However, I gave the ‘golden age’ of mechanical watches a long thought and I think the Golden Age of mechanical watches was not in the era that Chris mentions, but I think it is now.Ofcourse, in the days before tuningfork and quartz, people had no choice. They had to wear a mechanical watch, so in that point of view, it was at least the ‘age’ of mechanical watches. However, the golden-part should be added after that era. In these days, a mechanical watch is luxury. You can buy a 10 Euro quartz watch in the supermarket, a quality quartz watch like a Seiko or Swatch can be had for 40 Euro.Recently, I posted about the limited edition Sinn 142 and added a link to an article on Chuck’s blog. In the comments of my post, Chris (Christopher Meisenzahl) made a remark about the golden age of mechanical watches which should be somewhere between 1940 and 1970. Here is a quote from his comment:“I know that in the mech. golden age (maybe 1940 to 1970?) watches were largely sold on the number of jewels, brand recognition, and amount of precious metal. But without the intricate knowledge that us WIS nuts have pulled together in our communities over the last decade, I suspect that movements would come and go withing anyone outside the company really caring or knowing.” This is all true, and should be written somewhere in the historybooks of watches.

Once again…

However, I am lucky that I don’t have to stick with one watch. This guy also has this choice, since you can easily buy two or more decent watches for this money.What’s the best watch for x money… (where x is 4000 USD in this case) It seems that the crowd at WatchRap goes Rolex.Click here to check the threadI would probably go Rolex as well.

Watch straps

They also have buckles and folding clasps in stock and are included with some straps. Prices are very fair!Sirtoli has a crappy website but it seems that most customers who report their experiences on TimeZone of WatchUseek are very happy with their straps. They carry a lot of Louisiana croco straps.I have very good personal experience with the straps by Officina Italia Bros, carried by my favorite watch-store in The Hague. I personally have a croco strap, lizard and python strap from their collection. The python is a bit inky ?but very impressive. They do have larger sizes for Panerai on request. All handmade in Italy.Update: Padraig @ WatchUseek came up with The Big Watch Boutique for elephant, python and other sorts of leather for your ‘big’ watch!I liked especially their Firenze Deluxe series. They also have buckles in stock for Panerais, not the original, but Pre-V style in 22 and 24mm. Prices are quite high at first sight, but the finish on these straps looks to be of very high quality.One of the largest selections (and made on request is also possible) can be found at Banda. They carry croco, rubber and even stingray straps. Available from very small (ladies) sizes to Panerai-sizes. I found the Navy-blue Stingray quite interesting for sports/diving watches.

Thomas Prescher: The Ultimate Goal Is To Create Excitement!

This will give the owner (or admirer) of the time piece a much better and clearer view on the tourbillon mechanism.  The triple-axis tourbillon of this new time piece, uses two conical gears to ensure nothing gets in your way of gazing at this beautiful tourbillon construction. See the picture above for a close-up of this magnificent art of work. As you can clearly see on the picture, a counter weight is in place to keep the tourbillon in balance when moving around on all three axes. The tourbillon moves one minute on the first axis, one minute on the 2nd axis and 60 minutes on the third axis (as a minutes indicator on the dial).Specifications of this movement are as follows:Movement dimension is 37mm x 6.5mm and has a total of 327 parts, including 43 jewels. This movement (caliber TP 3W6A.3) has a power reserve of 40 hours, 2 main spring barrels and ticks at 21.600 beats per hour. Nice detail: the smallest screw in this movement weighs 0.0009 grams.When you turn this watch around, you’ll see a magnificent finish movement. The gold plated brass plates and bridges have turned into true art of haute horlogerie! Below is a picture of the watch in full (seen from the back side) and a blow-up of the incredible detailed perfection of its movement finish.More information about the Thomas Prescher Triple Axis Tourbillon Regulator can be found at the official website. These watches will sell as unique pieces only, prices starting at 525.000 CHF.Myself, I got a pretty good understanding of them when Bernhard Lederer of BLU watches took the time to explain the tourbillon movement to me during the meeting we had in 2009 at BaselWorld.Thomas Prescher's tourbillon movements are so-called flying tourbillons, since they only connect to one side.

I Am Not Cool Enough For This Watch, But I Want to Be: Zenith Defy Extreme

 

 Worth the price? Not at all, but it will find a few buyers who will appreciate the intricate viewable complexity of the tourbillon movement.In addition to the model pictured, Zenith will offer a gold version which is arguably more attractive. The problem with tourbillon watches is that so much emphasis is placed on the viewer being able to view the tourbillon complication. The actually time telling window on the watch is pressed to the side, and the watch does not do anything other than tell the time. While the list of technical achievements on this watch are impressive, I am infinitely more smitten with the standard Zenith Defy Extreme series which is a more tangible object of affection at between $5000-$30,000 retail. Mr. Nataf will certainly want to keep one of these Zenith Defy Extreme Zero G Multi-Dimensional tourbillons near him at all times.Do these watches make sense? Not particularly. The tourbillon complication is intended to allow the escapement rotate more freely in a cage to increase accuracy as the watch changes orientation, thus the "multi-dimensional" label because the watch will maintain the same operation while moving around. A bit of a stretch in the name, but clever. The increase in accuracy is noticeable, but the increased cost is much more noticeable; not a trinket for all buyers. While a quartz watch is going to be more accurate, the Zenith Defy Extreme Zero G Multi-Dimensional Tourbillon is complex, rare, and interesting timepiece at about $500,000 dollars.

YES Watches Offer Celestial Time Telling At A Glance

Look at the face of the YES watch and you will notice two things at first, one large analog hand, and what looks like an LCD pie chart on the face. The first thing you need to tell the YES watch is what city you are in, you can change this on the fly, but it uses this information plus the internal calendar to tell you everything you need to know. The large hand is a 24 hour hand. Meaning that it makes one full revolution every 24 hours. The numbers along the bezel indicate the time. This is also supplemented with a digital readout display of what time it is on the face. This big hand isn't there just to be redundant, it also serves another important purpose. It tells you how much daylight or darkness is left. The LCD display has many little "slices" on it. Each representing 15 minutes in the day. Those pieces displayed indicate which part of the day is night, and the non-displayed area is daytime. This is an amazing piece of functionality because you get to see how long the day and night are, and it measures how much daylight or darkness you have left.  I must say that the first time I saw the YES watch, I was confused and did not know what to make of it. I read the long list of features it had and all the information it was able to provide and was instantly perplexed. I certainly believed all the promised information was there, but I was not convinced that it would be easy to use or understandable. I based this conclusion on my experience with other "information rich" watches, but I was wrong. Take the slide-rule available on certain Breitling watches. You practically need a user guide and training course on how to use that thing. Sure you can calculate airplane fuel consumption, if you know how.The YES watches aren't as complex as their rich feature list would have you believe. The computer inside makes things ***r than you'd think, and the information displayed right on the face is what you need to know the most. For a full list of YES watch features, visit the YES Watch homepage here. What I will talk about are those features I find most interesting and useful. Although you can get buried in the functions, setting them is *** enough, and with a slight learning curve, you can easily figure out how to almost anything you'd like to with the yes watch easily.

Nivrel Sea Series Diving Watch Makes Sense For Any Collection: Coming in Red, Yellow, And Blue Trim

The Nivrel Red Sea and South Sea watches only differ in color, while the Nivrel Deep Sea has a deeper depth rating of 1000 meters rather than 300 meters for the other two. Inside each of the watch you will find a familiar ETA 2824-2 automatic Swiss movement, and a look enhanced by a half century of refinement.Other than the color modifications, the rest of the watch is a rather strict adaptation of the Submariner style of diving instrument. Which is not bad thing. Other makers refine the look to best represent their individual brands, while Nivrel took the approach of adding a dash of color. What is interesting is that other watches in the Nivrel line up are totally unique to the brand, so it must say something about the classic diving watch look that encouraged Nivrel to make such a "faithful" adaptation.At 42mm in width, and retaining all the other standard measurements, this is a great watch to enhance any collection, whether you have and classic diving watches or not. Years of proven utility and quality have made watch such as this a essential for any watch lover. Prices are very fair for what you get at between $650-$1000 depending on the source. Some of these watches are still in production, while others are not. So you are bound to find a great example.It is my firm conviction that each watch collection must have at least one classic diving watch. I am not just talking about a timepiece with a 100 meter or more water resistance, I am talking about that look, with the three link metal bracelet, rotating bezel, and large and bright hour indicator dial. In other words, a Rolex Submariner 'homage' watch. It is ok, there are few watches that deserve such an homage, the classic Rolex diving watch is one of them. Otherwise, if you don't have a watch of this ilk in your possession, you aren't only going to feel left out, but you'll be missing out on a phenomenon of watch ownership where one style of watch, really seems to fit perfectly in every occasion and for all purposes.To satisfy that end, you have literally hundreds of options, within a range of style, quality, and function. On the low end are $50 Casio watches that to an extent give you a taste of the look. On the high end are fine watch makers like Blancpain who can put even Rolex's high prices to shame. Then there are those excellent sub $1000 choices of which there are many, and today I present you with yet another option from the likes of German watch powerhouses of Marcello C., Stowa, Limes, and now Nivrel.Nivrel watches have a good deal of merits, but I will save such praise for another time, my focus now is on the "Sea" series of diving watches. Of which are the Red Sea, South Sea, and Deep Sea; which accordingly have red, yellow, and blue trim. By this I mean that the tips of the hands are specially colored along with the model name, and the first fifteen minutes on the rotating bezel scale.