Timepieces

[dgaddis]

Have eyed these since I first got interested in watches a few years ago. Picked it up a month or so back. Great watch, but not "perfect". The lume is essentially non-existent, it might as well not be there. And the crystal is crazy reflective, but I'm gonna swap it out as soon as CrystalTimes gets them back in stock. But it wears super comfortably, it's nice and thin, and looks great on whichever strap you put it on.

[NYCfixie]

While I still have several watches listed for sale on eBay, I am tempted to keep these 4 as a do-it-all collection: Land, Sea, Air, and Dress.

[j44ke]

I got a nice Maratec woven nylon band. It is about 1-1 1/4" too long. I have to fold the end under and run it back into the band loop. I'd rather not cut it and seal the end with a match. We had a hot knife for cutting climbing rope at the outdoor store where I worked ages ago. Do they still make those?

[j44ke]

I got a nice Maratec woven nylon band. It is about 1-1 1/4" too long. I have to fold the end under and run it back into the band loop. I'd rather not cut it and seal the end with a match. We had a hot knife for cutting climbing rope at the outdoor store where I worked ages ago. Do they still make those?

Okay, once again I am answering my own questions. Went to Chatham Hardware (a real hardware store with a cat - visit if you are in Chatham NY) and got a soldering gun plus a rope cutting "iron" so now I am slicing and dicing to the basket.

[NYCfixie]

Okay, once again I am answering my own questions. Went to Chatham Hardware (a real hardware store with a cat - visit if you are in Chatham NY) and got a soldering gun plus a rope cutting "iron" so now I am slicing and dicing to the basket.

You are going old-skool in every sense of the word.

[72gmc]

As long as you pronounce it "sold-er" and not "sodd-er" the crowd will be on your side.

(I've been watching James May's Reassembler videos)

[dashDustin]

(a real hardware store with a cat - visit if you are in Chatham NY)

Those are the best. Especially when they have creaky wood floors.

[j44ke]

Those are the best. Especially when they have creaky wood floors.

I think the wood one fell down long ago. This is a long prefab structure, but boy is it crammed with stuff.

[dgaddis]

Wildly nice for just over $400. The factory leather strap and deployant clasp wasn't great, but I had this sitting around already that works great.

[theflashunc]

Caved and did a thing. Tough to pass up a 120 hour power reserve in a 300m diver.

[72gmc]

I like the look of IWCs. What size is yours? I regularly pass a billboard with Lewis Hamilton modeling what looks like an IWC wrist shield.

[theflashunc]

I like the look of IWCs. What size is yours? I regularly pass a billboard with Lewis Hamilton modeling what looks like an IWC wrist shield.

Lewis rocks the Big Pilot 46 perpetual calendar, usually in ceramic. It's not a shy watch.

The Aquatimer is 42mm and a not unreasonable 14mm thick.

[bertiewhang]

Wildly nice for just over $400. The factory leather strap and deployant clasp wasn't great, but I had this sitting around already that works great.

I'm going to treat myself to an Oceanus one day. I love Casio stuff.

[dgaddis]

Can't recommend Oceanus enough if you want a great quartz watch. Great quality, tons of great quartz tech like solar powered, radio controlled, bluetooth connectivity if you want it (I don't use it), quick timezone changes, tough movement, perpetual calendar, all with beautiful case finishing (cases are made in a Grand Seiko plant FWIW). This one (all of them actually except the OCW-T200 models) is in titanium. It shows two time zones at once and has a stopwatch that's easy to get to - hit the button at 8:00 to switch to stopwatch mode, then hit the 2:00 pusher to start it. Lots of quartz watches require pulling the crown out to switch modes, which is annoying IMO. For less than $450 shipped from Japan to GA, pretty sweet I think.

[bertiewhang]

Can't recommend Oceanus enough if you want a great quartz watch. Great quality, tons of great quartz tech like solar powered, radio controlled, bluetooth connectivity if you want it (I don't use it), quick timezone changes, tough movement, perpetual calendar, all with beautiful case finishing (cases are made in a Grand Seiko plant FWIW). This one (all of them actually except the OCW-T200 models) is in titanium. It shows two time zones at once and has a stopwatch that's easy to get to - hit the button at 8:00 to switch to stopwatch mode, then hit the 2:00 pusher to start it. Lots of quartz watches require pulling the crown out to switch modes, which is annoying IMO. For less than $450 shipped from Japan to GA, pretty sweet I think.

Yip well smart

[vertical_doug]

A piece of history for sale.

As per FT for Phillips Auction House
It hasn’t been serviced in 86 years and its dial has been shamelessly scratched, but that probably won’t prevent this ultra-rare Ref 96 Quantième Lune moonphase watch, by Patek Philippe, from fetching more than $1mn when it crosses the block at Phillips later this year. Part of its worth is accounted for by the fact that it is one of only three similar models known to exist. But equally significant is its provenance. It originally belonged to Aisin-Gioro Puyi, the last emperor of China.

Unseen in public since it was sold by a Parisian Patek Philippe retailer in the late 1930s, the watch was sent to Phillips in 2019. Its life in between has been remarkable. At the surrender of Japan in 1945 Puyi (who became the 11th and final emperor of the Qing dynasty in 1908 at the age of two) was captured by the Soviets and imprisoned in Chita as a prisoner of war, then a Khabarovsk detention camp, as a result of having served for more than a decade as Japan’s “puppet ruler” of the state of Manchukuo. Along with his nephew and brother-in-law, Puyi remained incarcerated for five years, during which time he developed a friendship with Russian translator Georgy Permyakov. The friendship grew so deep that, when Puyi was extradited back to China in 1950 to face war crimes charges, he gave Permyakov the watch as a parting gift. The more we learned the deeper we wanted to dig Phillips senior watch consultant Aurel Bacs According to Phillips senior watch consultant Aurel Bacs, Permyakov kept the watch until his death in 2005, at which point it passed to his estate – from which the current owner acquired it around three years ago in circumstances not revealed. “There are certain watches that need very particular research,” says Bacs, “and the more we learned the deeper we wanted to dig. That research has taken us almost three years and I truly believe no auction house has ever spent more time and energy confirming the provenance of a single timepiece.”


Beyond the usual checks with the Patek Philippe archive, the research also took in carbon-14 dating and calligraphic testing of a hand-inscribed Japanese fan that Puyi gave to Permyakov when they were reunited during his Tokyo trial in 1946. The only previous clue that the watch had survived came in 2002 when it was mentioned in a South China Morning Post interview with Permyakov, which was illustrated with a photograph of it on his desk at his home in the east Russian city of Khabarovsk. The watch retains its original leather strap and, Bacs believes, has never been serviced since its completion at the Patek Philippe workshops more than 85 years ago. The poor condition of its dial is accounted for by the fact that, according to a Chinese museum curator called Wang Wen Feng, Pu Yi commanded his longtime servant Big Li to determine if it was made from platinum by removing some of its silver paint; only ordering Big Li to stop when it became apparent that only base metal lay beneath.


Of the two other examples, one is in the Patek Philippe Museum and the other was sold in 1996 to a private collector. This watch will go on show at Phillips on 18 March to mark the opening of the firm’s new Asia HQ in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District. It will be exhibited along with the Japanese fan handpainted by Puyi, his personal notebook and other objects given by him to Permyakov in 1950.

[j44ke]

I remember there was a Piljot copy of Patek Philippe's thin watch, the earliest post-WWII version of which may or may not have used authentic PP parts "liberated" from German shops and elsewhere. A friend had a small collection of them that he had picked up in Eastern European shops after the demise of the USSR. There were plenty of copies but only a small number of these with possible PP parts. He said it was more likely that the Russians had actually purloined the watchmakers themselves, with or without the parts - which is something they did as a form of reparations for German war damage to Russia. They did this with Zeiss-Contax and Leica cameras as well.

[ides1056]

We named our first Chow after him after seeing The Last Emperor.

[AngryScientist]

Speaking of Patek.

Most expensive watch ever sold at auction just went for a cool $5.8M. Wow!

[NYCfixie]

Most expensive watch ever sold at auction just went for a cool $5.8M. Wow!

I thought the most expensive watch sold at auction - to date - was the Paul Newman "Paul Newman" Rolex Daytona for 17.8 million.

Paul Newman's 'Paul Newman' Rolex Daytona Sells For $17.8 Million, A Record For A Wristwatch At Auction - Forbes Article