Watches in the Wild (Rhetorical Stumbles, Volume 48)

Disclaimer: NWA, Farer Carnegie Manual Wind Chronograph

This is the forty eigth in a semi-regular digest of cool watches I happened to see this week.

Past posts in this series have been hashtagged to #watchesinthewild .

As always, my general policy is that I never ask for wrist shots (because approaching strangers and distant acquaintances to talk about watches is already weird enough) so all pictures below are sourced from the internet. People are mostly cool, I try not to annoy them.

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If you have learned anything from this column, you should know that I am very rarely at a loss for words especially when it comes to my chosen hobby of impulsively buying tiny little mechanical automatons to wear on my wrist.  I am extremely gifted at all manner of rationalizations, rhetorical backflips, and seamless transitions into appropriate topics.  

And yet, just yesterday, when a lovely woman who is the mother to my daughter's school aged friend complimented the color of my watch (the Farer pictured above), I stumbled.  Let me explain.

There's a point in every watch related conversation where  you have a choice to make about where the conversation goes: stay on the surface or go deeper.  Staying on surface is overwhelming the correct answer.  Watches are male jewelry.  They look a little shiny and that's all you need to know.  Move onto the next subject.

And yet, going deeper can be the most rewarding.  This is where great watch conversations begin, where rookies can be introduced to the beauty and insanity of the watch hobby, where fellow collectors are born and friendships are forged.

Just so you know, I took the wrong path.  Instead of taking the compliment gracefully and moving to a different topic, I ended up speaking for about five minutes on its provenance, the place it holds in my collection, and the merits of hand wound chronographs versus quartz.

I don't think I've bored a woman that much since the time I tried to convince my high school girlfriend to pick up competitive StarCraft.

That is all.

A tight collection of watches for you today but some awesome conversations (unlike my experience above) to match.  I hope you enjoy!

NTTD Omega Seamaster

Seen at the butcher, worn very loosely by an older gentleman on the Omega mesh.  I complimented the watch and he gave me a bit of a toothy grin but no further conversation.

It honestly took me a bit of time to understand why this Seamaster is so beloved among watch nerds.  I mean, in my mind, the Bond thing is super played out (no matter how cool a Bond Daniel Craig was), the broad arrow badging is a neat little bit of appropriation, and we as a watch community need to move past fauxtina.  Earn that creamy lume honestly and isn't a tropic dial just a code word for "damaged"?

At  any rate, it was not until I dropped into an Omega boutique some months ago and, on the insistence of the sales person, tried it on that it made sense.  In spite of my incredible indifference towards dive watches, I did end up trying it on and lingered over it an entirely inappropriate amount of time.

I've spent some time trying to figure out why this version of the Seamaster tickles me as much as it does and I've largely narrowed it down to three things.

1. For all of its objective merits, the steel Seamaster 300m is a bit chonk monster. I have multiple chronographs that are thinner than this watch at 13.7mm.  The NTTD Seamaster is 13mm tall, well with reasonable  for a dive watch.  I have been told this is because of a slightly different domed sapphire.  

2. Titanium bay-bee!  The basic 300m is a little heavy for my tastes (I remember reading somewhere that it was about 170g with the average amount of links taken out).  Whenever I've had it on wrist, I feel every milligram of that weight (yes, I'm very whiny, but what watch collector isn't about this sort of stuff).  The NTTD is about half the weight, making it wear even smaller on the wrist.

3. It's always good when a major luxury watch manufacturer completes the suspension of disbelief by removing the date complication that would only slow you down on your nonexistent dive expedition. I mean, who needs the date underwater anyway?

If it isn't clear by now, I kid because I love....and I kinda love this watch.  Despite wearing the Bond association on its sleeve, it is fun and rugged and I'm always glad when I see it on people's wrists.

Just one small niggle.  The Caliber 8806.  Yes, yes, this is a fantastic movement, coaxial master chronometer.  Just a fantastic and wonderfully decorated movement.  But this is what the same movement looks like in the back of the 40mm Omega Railmaster.

Now think about that in the 42mm NTTD Seamaster. Does that look a bit small to you?

A.Lange & Sohne Saxonia in Yellow Gold

Seen at a Chinese banquet on the wrist of a very well dressed gentleman who was deathly allergic to shellfish.  I can think of very few worse places to be than at a Chinese restaurant with a shellfish allergy.  We chatted watches for a bit and he referenced a small but blisteringly elite collection of Lange, Vacheron (a Disco Volante), and Moritz Grossman (I didn't know the watch he referenced).  When your sports watch is a Moser Pioneer, I think you might just be cooler than me.  I aspire to have this level of watch collecting confidence, where I can own this deeply and eclectically.

Once was the time that I lusted after this watch (in white gold, not yellow).  There's no doubt that this is a truly beautiful watch. I mean look at it!   Forget high falutin words like Bauhaus, this is minimalist dial layout at its finest. 

But the real magic is in the back.  Lange movements are renowned for their finishing and, up until a couple years ago, I thought this was broadly true and also broadly overrated. I mean how much better can the finishing actually be?  That was until I saw a Lange movement that was about 15 years old.

Whereas most higher end swiss movements use baseplates and bridges that are made of rhodium or gold clad brass (both of which are chemically inert and corrosion resistant), Lange uses German silver instead (a copper alloy with tin and zinc).  Much like bronze, German silver patinates over time (though much more slowly and much more gently) giving the movement a warm glow not unlike gold. Witness the gently aged Lange movement.

It makes your heart skip a beat.  

As for the Saxonia itself, it does not tempt like it used to.  I've realized over the years that extremely clean dials ultimately bore me, even if I appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into them.  The Saxonia is just a bit too subdued for my tastes these days 

But an 1815 Up Down?  That provokes no small amount of lust currently.

Hamilton Khaki Aviation Pilot Pioneer Mechanical

Seen while walking on the street while running out for lunch.  I stopped, asked about the watch and we had a perfectly pleasant conversation about her small but growing collection of military inspired watches (CWC, Hammy, and some vintage Seiko).  This is an area of watch collecting I have so very little knowledge of so I was a willing sponge.  It was a pleasant enough conversation that I eventually realized that I was beginning to follow her and decided to make my excuses and leave.  I hope you ended up joining WatchCrunch like I suggested!

It probably says something that I mostly identified this as a Khaki Pilot Pioneer the moment I saw it, but when I googled it for specs and other things, it took me about fifteen minutes to actually find a picture of the correct watch.  You see, Hamilton's absolutely baffling naming schema strikes again because I count at least twenty different watches that include the name "Khaki Aviation Pilot Pioneer."

Some are pretty straight forward military interpretations.

Some are chronographs

Some have cathedral hands.

Some are aluminum with internal rotating bezels and sunburst dials  

Look, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed but I think these are visually and stylistically distinct enough  to warrant calling them something else.  But hey, why would Hamilton management listen to me anyway.  I am just some guy on the internet.

Anyway, the Hamilton Khaki Aviation Pilot Pioneer that I happened to see was based on a Royal Air Force W10 model produced by Hamilton in the early 70s.  Similar variants of the watch were produced by CWC and I find it among the most visually identifiable military style watches out there.  The cushion/tonneau style case and small (by modern standards) diameter of 36mm.

I like how Hamilton resisted to  urge to modernize the watch, keeping the retro sizing and movement, even down to the mineral (not sapphire) crystal.  Interestingly, this is actually a bit of form following function because when I last got a look at one of these in person, I was pleasantly surprised by how much better the mineral glass performed in terms of reflectivity (or lack thereof), compared the sapphire of a Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical I owned at that point.  I can imagine how such things like lens ruggedness probably take a back seat to reflectivity while in the cockpit of a plane.  Of course, we live in 2023 so there's anti-reflective coating you can apply on sapphire, so maybe I'd be okay with a LITTLE BIT more modernity here.

The dial is one area where they did take a bit more creative liberty.  The layout is the same, but the grainy black dial is definitely not with a bit of the gloss of a black sand beach.  It's a very simple, very visible, but rather handsome finish that I would love to see more of in different contexts.

I kinda get why this isn't a more popular watch.  It's a bit underspec'd for the price they're asking for and the size is definitely on the smaller size of modern.  It also faces a ton of internal competition against rival products that look rather similar and also bear the Hamilton name at lower prices.  All of that means you end up  reducing your market to a set of historical purist watch nerds who are specifically seeking this design and history.

Still, a very cool watch and a less common spot for me.

Breitling Avenger SeaWolf Yellow

Seen outside my favorite Berkeley sandwich shop.  No conversation.

From one watch brand's alphabet soup of branding to another's.  One of my biggest complaints about historical Breitling (aside from watch size) is how muddled the different watch lines were.  Prior to Georges  Kern taking over, I kept on confusing last generation SuperOceans, with Colts, with Chronomats,

Brands need a look but Breitling looked very samey after a while.  Giant watches, with crowded dials, roughly similar specs, and big tabs at the cardinal points of the bezel.  What compounded it was an ever increasing explosion of different references.

Things are a little better now and each of the Breitling lines has an increasingly distinct visual identity.  The SuperOcean is their modern dive watch line, the SuperOcean Heritage is their vintage dive line, the Chronomat has the distinctive rouleaux bracelet,   Navitimers are their vintage aviation watches, Top Time is the motorsport line.  Premier is their dress watch line.  It all finally makes sense!

So what is the Avenger line?  Ostensibly it is their military/extreme performance line, but I rather think of it as the last refuge of old Breitling.  Big 45mm sports watches  with the old wing logo and strong visual presences and, as often as not, in bold colors.

It's hard for me sometimes to assess watches like these.  I don't think I'm the intended audience for these watches and I find it difficult to envision a world where I would be the intended audience for them.  Unless I start packing on the muscle, the entire Avenger line tends to dwarf my wrist.  I should also point out that I'm more nerd at a keyboard than extreme performance.

I am a big fan of the direction Breitling has taken in recent years (i.e. largely away from this aesthetic) but the fact that they still produce and invest behind watches like this makes me happy.  It gives me hope that whatever stylistic turn this hobby takes, there will still be a niche for every watch nerd out there.

What cool watches did you see this week?