Sales of Swiss watches are declining, and sales of Apple watches are rising steeply. This must be a surprise to the makers of Swiss luxury watches, who lifted their imperious snouts in disdain at the cough-drop shaped Apple Watch when it first came out. From Enrique Dans's piece in Forbes, titled, How Apple Killed The Swiss Watch Industry:
In 2015, the year the Apple Watch was launched, LVMH watch division president and Tag Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver said the Swiss industry was not afraid of Apple’s new product, because it could not be repaired in a thousand years or eighty years, nor inherited by children, nor would it ever become a status symbol. As is always the case when disruption occurs in an industry, traditional competitors are not able to see the threat, and continue to try to analyze it according to the variables that were important yesterday.
Dans writes, "As soon as you start using the Apple Watch, you realize one thing is clear: the rest of your watch collection will live on in a drawer from now on."
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Someone I know buys fake Rolex watches from a maker who shoots detailed videos of the fake watches and emails them to potential customers. The phonies sell for about $450. I'm not a watch expert nor a watch collector, so I can't vouch for the quality of the knock-offs, but the care that goes into the videos is impressive. Anyway, here's a video in which an expert compares a $4,000 Omega Seamaster Diver 300M with an incredibly impressive knock-off costing 1/10th the price. Only when you zoom way in to see the minute details do the differences become apparent.
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A man went on Antique Roadshow with a Rolex watch he'd purchased in the 1970s for $345 and never really wore. His reaction to be told it is worth $700,000 made me smile.
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Here's Bond's wristwear from Dr. No to Spectre. While the Seiko M354 Memory Bank Calendar from Moonraker (1979) and the Hamilton Pulsar LED watch seen in Live and Let Die (1973) were high-tech icons of their age, it's the, er, timelessness of the Rolex Submariner from Dr. No (1962) that always feels so right now.
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Casio G-Shock and Transformers are releasing a Nemesis Prime action figure that contains a G-Shock wristwatch in its chest. More than meets the eye, the Optimus Prime also transforms into a fancy pedestal for the watch when it's not on your wrist. The ¥30,000 JPY (US$275) set will only be available in Japan.
G-SHOCK DW-5600TF19-SET (Hypebeast)
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Snoopy has been a NASA mascot for more than 50 years going back to the Apollo missions. Now, Timex has released a wonderful "Snoopy In Space" collection of wristwatches. The watches in the line start at $89. Here's NASA on the space agency's history with the Peanuts gang:
NASA has shared a proud association with Charles M. Schulz and his American icon Snoopy since Apollo missions began in the 1960s. Schulz created comic strips depicting Snoopy on the Moon, capturing public excitement about America’s achievements in space. In May 1969, Apollo 10 astronauts traveled to the Moon for a final checkout before lunar landings on later missions. Because the mission required the lunar module to skim the Moon’s surface to within 50,000 feet and “snoop around” scouting the Apollo 11 landing site, the crew named the lunar module Snoopy. The command module was named Charlie Brown, Snoopy’s loyal owner.
'All Systems Are Go!' with Timex 'Snoopy In Space' watch collection (collectSPACE)
NASA image below: "Headed for the launch pad, Apollo 10 Commander Tom Stafford pats the nose of a stuffed Snoopy held by Jamye Flowers (Coplin), astronaut Gordon Cooper’s secretary."
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Is it LSD o'clock yet? This far out Timothy Leary wristwatch from 1970 is up for auction on eBay. In more than 20 years of looking at Leary memorabilia on eBay, this is only the third time I've seen one of these. I bought the first that came up for myself and only wear it at, er, the right times.
The starting bid is $600, which is hundreds of dollars more than the selling price of previous examples. Read the rest
Check out the new "Swatch x You" artist edition from longtime Boing Boing pals eBoy, the pixelmasters whose dingbat font FF Peecol birthed our own Jackhammer Jill mascot! With the new Swatch, you get to choose from a variety of eBoy characters in a pre-determined pattern to "design" your own watch. From Swatch:
Three designers, never-ending 8-bit paradises. The always-surprising pixel creations by the Berlin-based trio have been on the cover of numerous magazines, ad campaigns and many art galleries. Since 1977, eBoy keeps building, pixel by pixel, the most original digital environments and characters that invite people on a journey of discovery and wonder.
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Van Cleef & Arpels' Midnight Planétarium timepiece features a mechanical orrery integrated in the watch face. It is only US$214,000. From the company:
The movement of each planet is true to its genuine length of orbit: it will take Saturn over 29 years to make a complete circuit of the dial, Jupiter will take almost 12 years, Mars 687 days, Earth 365 days, Venus 224 days and Mercury 88 days...
44 mm pink gold case; pink gold bezel; aventurine dial, pink gold sun and shooting star, serpentine Mercury, chloromelanite Venus, turquoise Earth, red jasper Mars, blue agate Jupiter, sugilite Saturn. Pink gold crown with sapphire case back. Matte black alligator strap with pink gold folding clasp. Self-winding mechanical movement (Stern Manufacture), equipped with a Christiaan Van der Klaauw module developed exclusively for Van Cleef & Arpels, 48 hour power reserve. Numbered edition
Midnight Planétarium Watch (via @pickover)
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Photographer Alireza Rostami scavenged the lens and shutter from his broken Chinese Seagull TLR camera to create this fantastic wrist-worn camera complete with a self-timer. More at PetaPixel.
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Besides white supremacy, one of the key drivers of the last election was trade, with outsourcing being the main scapegoat (even though any economist able to count to 10 will tell you that it was technology rather than bad trade deals that really created the Rust Belt). But back in the Depression, one group of Ohio factory workers were delighted to have all their jobs outsourced, and some of them even went along for the ride. They were the workers of the bankrupt Dueber-Hampden Watch Company, which was bought in 1930 by the Soviet Union. At the time, the Soviets were keen to create from scratch a watchmaking industry to rival Switzerland's. In his latest story for Collectors Weekly, Hunter Oatman-Stanford interviewed a collector of Soviet watches (who happens to be Oatman-Stanford's younger brother) on this suddenly timely topic.
Here's a snip:
Three Soviets traveled to Canton, Ohio, where these two companies were based, to pack up all the manufacturing equipment, leftover watch movements, and pieces to ship back to Russia. Twenty-one former Dueber-Hampden employees from Ohio sailed with them to help set up this new facility in Russia, which was aptly named the First State Watch Factory. They began making 7- and 15-jewel pocket-watch movements made with parts from Ohio. The Soviets changed all the lettering to Cyrillic to signify their new ownership, and there were slight design modifications, all very minor. Starting around 1935, they began taking ownership a bit more, using different insignias that said “First State Watch Factory,” and as the years progressed, they began customizing their pocket watches to be a bit more Soviet-specific.
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It's always fun to watch a master craftsperson at work. In this case, we get to observe a watchmaker named Harry service a Omega Speedmaster Professional, which has 234 parts, and costs $(removed),444 on Amazon.
Consider there are significantly more old watches that need service each year than there are new watches that need to be made, and yet the Swiss invest so significantly into watchmakers for creation and yet barely consider after-sales service. In this video, we head up to Manfredi Jewels in Greenwich, CT, to talk about this, and see why now more than ever we need qualified repairmen via a detailed look at servicing one of the most iconic timepieces in history – the Omega Speedmaster Professional. For the full story, go to Hodinkee.
Several years ago, when I was editor-in-chief of MAKE, I had the delightful inventor Tim Hunkin write an article about learning to be an amateur watch maker. You can read the article on his blog. Read the rest
I've always wanted a Mickey Mouse watch. This model is on sale for $(removed) on Amazon, and looks better than more expensive ones. Until I can afford this Masonic watch (which David and I have both been coveting for a couple of decades) this will do the job.
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Hyungsoo Kim's wristwatch allows blind people to tell the time by feeling a metal ball in a circular groove. Sighted people want the watch too, because they can check the time without being rude to the person telling them a boring story. It's a handsome watch! (Via Marginal Revolution) Read the rest
