The closer you look at reality, the weirder it tends to look, especially if you're using the twin lenses of general relativity and quantum mechanics. It's thanks to the latter that we can build ultra-accurate atomic clocks (like this one). One of the most interesting features of high precision atomic clocks, is that they can actually measure something called relativistic time dilation effects – but when you add quantum theory to the mix, it turns out that the more accurate a clock is, the less accurate clocks around it can be.

How does that work? Well, relativity assigns an idealized clock – a non-physical one – to every "worldline," which refers to a timeline associated with a single observer, evolving in spacetime. However, as Einstein himself pointed out, not thinking of the clock as an actual physical object leaves some of the picture incomplete. Einstein wrote, " One is struck [by the fact] that the theory [of special relativity]… introduces two kinds of physical things, i.e., (1) measuring rods and clocks, (2) all other things, e.g., the electromagnetic field, the material point, etc. This, in a certain sense, is inconsistent…"

Indeed. As it turns out, if you look at what goes on with actual physical clocks things get weird, and if you add quantum theory to the picture, things get even weirder.

Here's what happens. In quantum mechanics, there is a little thing called Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which says (short version) you can't know two complementary values of a physical system to an arbitrarily high level of precision. For our purposes, the better precision to which time is being measured by a clock, the more uncertainty there is with respect to the energy content of spacetime around the clock.

In general relativity, the energy content of a given region of spacetime can cause a clock in that region to slow down or speed up relative to an observer looking at that clock from another reference frame (technically, a "non co-moving frame of reference.") This is a well known effect and you can actually measure time dilation effects with atomic clocks – a clock in orbit in a GPS satellite runs at a different rate than one on the Earth's surface. Therefore, if there is uncertainty in energy content in a region of spacetime, there will be imprecision in how accurately a clock can run in that region.

Researchers at Penn State, publishing in the Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences, say, " We prove that, as a consequence of this fact, the time dilation of clocks evolving along nearby world lines is ill-defined.We show that this effect is already present in the weak gravity and slow velocities limit, in which the number of particles is conserved. Moreover, the effect leads to entanglement between nearby clocks, implying that there are fundamental limitations to the measurability of time as recorded by the clocks." In their conclusion the authors state, "These results suggest that, in the accuracy regime where the gravitational effects of the clocks are relevant, time intervals along nearby world lines cannot be measured with arbitrary precision, even in principle."

So basically, if you have been staying up nights hoping for a perfect clock, well, the entrance to the land of high precision horology has a new sign over the gate that says, "Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here." To read a fairly accessible review of the article in question, check out this coverage from Pionic; if you would like to check out the original paper, it's right here (chock-full of mass-energy equations, but there nonetheless).

Ever heard of Dieter Rams? He was the design director of Braun from 1955 to 1995, the decades when it built its über-purist appliances, record players, radios, clocks, and watches. Even if you've never used one of his creations, you've definitely felt his influence in the objects you see and touch every day. We got in touch with the watch and clock designer that worked with Rams, the man behind the no-nonsense AW 10 and AW 50 watches, which were just reissued at Baselworld 2017, to get a little more insight into these truly timeless designs.

The Braun watches AW 10 and AW 50 embody simplicity. Just as do the clocks and electrical appliances made by Braun, they truly follow the "less is more" dogma that (arguably) stems from the Bauhaus school. Or, as Braun likes to put it: Less but better. Design has been at the core of the brand for seven decades, and its watches and clocks were designed by a team headed by two men: Dieter Rams and Dietrich Lubs.

But first, let’s rewind a bit. The former owner of the company, Erwin Braun, who expanded the family business after the WWII, had a radical attitude in an overly ornamental era. Because human beings are so diverse, he thought, the best way for a product to gain wide appeal was for it to be as neutral as possible. To embody his vision, he hired a young Dieter Rams in 1955 after seeing Rams’s outstandingly pure, naked, and plain sketches of an office interior. Six years after proving his skills through iconic creations including the combined radio and phonograph unit SK 4 – often lovingly referred to as "Snow White’s Coffin" thanks to the white metal and Plexiglas cover – Braun made Rams the company’s design director, a position he would hold until his retirement in 1995. 

The brand’s pure creations came out in an era when minimalistic purity simply did not exist. As one of the designers on the team expressed it: "Of course there was a lot of work – but it was really quite easy to make good design since we for a long time were the only designers around working in this direction," Dietrich Lubs told us candidly.

Ok, we do love all that pure stuff, but what about the watches? Bear with me. Before we get to the watches, it is important to realize that Dieter Rams was intrigued by ideas about modularity, which also led to creating genius minimalist shelving systems and modular chairs and sofas for Vitsœ. Thanks to Braun and its furniture, he has often been called "The Designer’s Designer" and is hailed by professionals of today thanks to his 10 principles of good design, a manifesto well worth Googling.

Among Rams’s disciples – in a kindred spirit kind of a way, to my knowledge they never worked together – you will find superstar designers like Jasper Morrison, Naoto Fukasawa, and, of course, Jony Ive. If you've ever touched an Apple product, Braun should feel extremely familiar.

A Plane Start

Braun’s first venture into timekeeping came about due to a chance encounter on a plane.

In 1971, the boss of Braun ran into the boss of a clock movement production company. At the time, Braun didn’t have clocks in its program and both bosses were traveling to increase business, so why not do something together? This airplane encounter led to the Analog Digital Phase 1, which was followed by Phase 2 and 3, as well as digital clocks like DN 18 and DN 42.

In 1975 came what for most people is the travel clock, the AB 20 showing time zones on the protective lid, which also served as a support. This also gave birth to one of the most striking details of the Braun clocks: the yellow seconds hand. If you ever wondered where Jasper Morrison got his inspiration for the Rado 5.5 seconds hand, look no further.

Two years later, in 1977, came the first Braun wristwatches. "First we made DW 20, but it was anachronistic to make a round watch with a digital, square LCD typeface," says Lubs. "We did have a reason: When we made it, we only had access to round movements." DW 20 was an instant success regardless, which offered the possibility to invest into having a rectangular movement made just for Braun. The DW 30 was released the year after. The designers wanted to put an integrated metal band on it, a very popular thing in this era, just a couple of years after Genta's iconic models. But at Braun’s price level it was simply too expensive with a bracelet in the end. Instead, the designer went for the segmented leather band, which gives an extremely ergonomic fit. 

A total of roughly 10,000 pieces were sold of the two models, which is not bad, considering they were only offered in appliance stores. Seriously. Prices at the time were 340 Deutschmark, and today on Ebay you would pay around €500-600 for a well-kept specimen. And even though the DW 30 retailed at 50% more back in the days of chest hair and roller disco, you could expect to pay the same for one today. But, collectors beware – there is a special thing to look for: Approximately 100 black DW 30 were made. They were never sold for a reason, but they are out there. "We wanted to give it an eloxan treatment, just like with the DW 20, on which the case was made of brass. But with the square DW 30, whose case was made of hard-pressed aluminum, the eloxan treatment wouldn’t last. This didn’t comply with the Braun quality standards," Lubs says. "That’s why we couldn’t put it on the market."

Comeback Of The AW 10

If the clocks had an unlikely start, the story of the analog watches is almost even more unlikely: In the late 1970s big clients of Braun, business clients buying several pallets of appliances, were sometimes rewarded with a little gift. And somebody within the company had gone for the trend in the 1970s of plastic Japanese giveaway watches with your company logo on it. When Dietrich Lubs first saw such a "Braun watch" he got very upset. "Such flimsy watches were just not Braun-worthy. 'This is just not right!' I said to Rams, who simply replied. 'So, make a proposal for an analog Braun watch then?'"

Thus frustration over a plastic throwaway watch developed into a serious undertaking for Lubs, who was largely inspired by watches like the Juvenia 21 from the late 1960s and early Patek Philippe Calatravas. Lubs’s goal was to create a watch that displayed the time in the most functional way possible. Rams was, as always, on the sidelines to help Lubs; he was friendly but also critical and questioning, an attitude that brought out the best in the other designers. 

"We settled for a 33.35mm case. Today this sounds small, but this was another time – and to me that is still the perfect size for a watch. Watches today I find too bulky and confused in typography and impression. Today’s huge watches around 45mm or even 50mm, plus a big crown jutting out on top of that…I just don’t get it. To me that is not a good solution." The 8mm-thick AW 10 which came out in 1989 had a black protection ring of fiberglass-reinforced plastic. "This was pressed onto the case. It was optically interesting and also very practical. It was really a good protection for the watch," Lubs says.

Another interesting design detail is the crown. When you look at it from the side of the case, it is not centered on the case wall, but lower, almost at the bottom of the case. That could, of course, be very uncomfortable if it weren’t for the fact that the protection ring covers it. And the case does have a groove, so that you can easily get it out for setting the watch.

"Add the yellow second hand, which already came on the table clocks, and of course our other sign of recognition – our Akzent Grotesque typeface," says Lubs of Braun's now signature details.

Two years later came the AW 50 – a reduction of the reduced. Lubs: "This has no numbers, just a few lines and the strong red arrow by the date. I wanted to mark the date, because otherwise it can blend in with the other typography. If AW 10 was the everyday watch, the AW 50 was more elegant, more clear, more sober with its black dial."

As Braun only wanted a small and overseeable watch program and available quartz movements of the right quality were to be had at the right price, the brand never considered mechanical watches, even though Lubs had also designed a few automatic watches for the company LACO. 

In 2009, Braun’s watch department was sold to Zeon in England. After an explosion of references – a rather un-Braun thing to do – the company is now downsizing the number of models, and all designs must be approved by the Braun design team in Kronberg, Germany. And, what’s more: in 2017 two of the most iconic analogue models are being remade in close collaboration with Lubs himself – the AW 10 and AW 50. Both watches, re-editions without contemporary additions, go along with the Braun idea of being integrated in the room like a silent servant. When you are not needed, you should be invisible, but as soon as you are needed, you should just be there. 

"A good watch design is strict, geometrical, and pure in its typography. Without any additional schnickschnack! [a mix of bullshit and small talk]," reflects Lubs. "A watch should read the time, that’s it – not play with any other symbols."

Tomorrow we're launching a brand new video series – Friday Live. At the end of each week we'll be coming to you with a live video stream straight from the HODINKEE office (or somewhere else around the world) with a group of our editors reviewing the week in watches and looking forward to what lies ahead. Sometimes it will be just us and other times we'll bring in interesting guests. To get things started, we've got something extra special planned.

On our very first episode of Friday Live, we're bringing in the big guns. Cara and Stephen will be joined by Christoph Grainger, the newly-minted CEO of IWC. Grainger has been with IWC for over a decade, but comes from a design and architecture background – not exactly commonplace for watch CEOs. We'll be talking about his path to the top job, IWC's new collections, and the partnership with the Tribeca Film Festival.

To watch Friday Live, just visit hodinkee.com or open your HODINKEE app at 10:30 AM ET tomorrow morning. It's that simple and we'll see you soon.

Let's start this week with a big name: the Rolex 'Paul Newman' Daytona, easily one of the most coveted in vintage watches. The one we have is not only in nice condition, but comes full set directly from the original owner, according to the auction catalog. So we can expect some heated action in a Chicago auction room next week. We have also rounded up a great Eberhard Scientigraf, and a blue Universal Genève Compax, among other picks. This is your Bring A Loupe for April 21, 2017.

Eberhard Scientigraf Reference 11538, With Anti-Magnetic Properties

The Scientigraf got more than an honorable mention in Phil's love letter to Eberhard, and for good reason. It is a true tool watch, with winning looks thanks to its smooth bezel and Explorer-type dial. Launched in the early 1960s, the Scientigraf was a real competitor to the Rolex Milgauss, the IWC Ingenieur, and the Omega Railmaster when it came to anti-magnetic properties. This ability was proudly engraved on the caseback (antimagnetic resistance was stated by Eberhard as 900-1000 gauss) as was the fact that it uses an automatic movement.

This 38mm watch comes here with its original extendable bracelet, signed Eberhard on the clasp. This handset is absolutely correct for the reference (including the lollipop second hand), while the signed crown seems consistent with the shape shown in the original catalog. One caveat, it seems very likely that its dial underwent an expert restoration, not disclosed in the listing. The watch comes with its original guarantee, which is probably how the seller dates it back to 1964. 

An Italian dealer offers this Eberhard Scientigraf for €25,000 (approximately $26,815 at time of publishing). 

Rolex 'Paul Newman' Daytona, With The Whole Shebang

The "Paul Newman" dial is such an iconic feature that it has its very own Reference Points article. There you can find some info on the transitional reference 6262 – with pump pushers, it very much looks like the reference 6239, except that it relies on a more recent evolution of the Valjoux 72, the caliber Valjoux 727. It was only produced in 1970-1971, which is consistent with the 2.5M serial number of this example (the listing dates it to 1968, which is tad too early for such a serial number).

However, there is much more to this chronograph than Rolex geek points: as mentioned in this article from Watchpatina (where the photos also originated) it comes with a fascinating provenance and accessories. It is described as "full set," meaning that the original box and papers are included, although the guarantee was almost left blank, without any matching serial number and only the 6239 reference, which is an issue in establishing full correctness of such a set. The true kicker is that it is said to come from the original owner, who consigned to with an auction house after he realized that the watch he had bought and quickly put aside in the 1970s was actually very valuable, especially since he did not get much use from it over the past 40+ years. And this Daytona's overall condition fully reflects that, with not much stretch to the expandable bracelet, and a thick case.

This special Paul Newman Daytona will be auctioned at Leslie Hindmans Auctioneers next week, on April 25, with a $65,000-85,000 estimate.

Universal Genève Compax Reference 885107, With Striking Blue Dial

The peculiar blue dial of the Compax reference 885107 is often nicknamed "Exotic," much like its even bluer sibling, the reference 885108. In looks, those are definitely not your traditional Universal Genève Compax, as they were made later in the 1960s, and come with the Valjoux 72, instead of an in-house chronograph caliber. Their striking design makes them no less desirable, alongside the more monochromatic "Nina Rindt." 

The handset here matches the style of the Rindt, although you might have expected a red seconds hand, which more commonly seen. That said, another example with the exact same all-black configuration has been previously spotted, which seems to validate the possibility of multiple handset variations. The blurry pictures of the listing seem to show some aging marks on the dial, some bruised lume plots, and some yellowing of the formerly white seconds hand. Lastly, the signature on the crown does not seem correct.

Bidding for this Universal Genève Compax listed on Ebay was still below $5,000 at the time of publication.

LeCoultre Memovox Reference 2404

The Memovox is Jaeger-LeCoultre's masterful take on the alarm complication – it first appeared with a hand-wound movement, and then later with automatic calibers such as the massively popular caliber 825, with its date window. And the Memovox can be found with the LeCoultre branding, since Jaeger-LeCoultre also offered watches under this moniker, mostly for the US market (and those were often at a lower price point).

In that context, the VXN import mark on the caliber 814 makes total sense, and so does the "Cased and Timed in USA" engraving on the caseback. Its smaller case size was aimed to further differentiate it from the "regular" Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox which was 37mm in diameter. Yet, the reference 2404 deserves some attention, especially since it is more often sized at 34mm than at the 33mm mentioned in the listing. The sun-ray alarm disc works really well with the cream dial (both showing light aging signs), while the alarm is said to buzz nicely. Lastly, both of the crowns are nicely signed with the "LC" monograms, something you don't see very often.

The dealer HQ Milton has this interesting LeCoultre Memovox reference 2404 listed for $2,250.

Today we're kicking off our newest video series – Friday Live. At the end of every week we'll now be bringing you a live video stream direct from HODINKEE HQ in New York City (or wherever our editors happen to be in the world) to recap the week in watches and look ahead to what's coming up. To get things started, Cara and Stephen will be talking about the May auction previews, Stephen's most recent visit to Switzerland, and Cara's favorite new release. As a bonus, we've got Christoph Grainger, the new CEO of IWC to chat about this year's novelties and where he's hoping to take IWC.

I’ve never had to explain to someone why I write about watches for a living. People instantly get it. It’s an incredibly fascinating position to be in. However, I often find myself explaining how I’m able to write about watches without repeating myself. For whatever reason, people seem to think that at some point, you run out of things to say or watches to talk about. The truth is, there are plenty of watches I've never written a word about, and even more I'm yet to see. Even some of the big ones, like, until now, this.

That photo above is me holding Breguet's Marie Antoinette Number 1160, a 63mm pocket watch crafted from gold, and one of the world’s most complicated pocket watches. Technically, it's a replica of a watch made in 1783 that we thought was lost to history, until its miraculous recovery in 2007. And there’s a reason my left hand was a little shaky in that moment, besides the fact that it's a pretty hefty timepiece. For a couple of years, Breguet thought this would be its only connection to the most important watch it had ever made, pocket watch number 160. More on that watch later.

Number 1160 is a big deal to Breguet. When Nicolas Hayek presented the watch back in 2008, the Swatch Group filled Hall 1 of Baselworld with seats and held a massive press conference. I didn’t attend the fair that year – I was halfway into my sophomore year of college – but I’m told by those who were there they'd seen nothing like it, and I've not witnessed an event like it since I've been going.

Breguet rarely brings the watch out these days. I've only seen it once before, and it was earlier this year actually. I walked past it during Baselworld, in between meetings, and I only saw it long enough enough to take a bad picture through its display case. It's a watch I’ve been wanting to hold for many years, but which has eluded me despite visits to the Breguet manufacture and the Breguet museum. When it does come out, it's only allowed in the hands of people who have received authorization all the way from the top. This week, they gave it to me. Don't ask me why.

But first, let's talk about the Perpétuelle, better known as pocket watch number 160. This is the original watch, on which the 1160 is based. A quick word though on the word "replica." It's the most commonly used descriptor for the new Marie Antoinette watch, but it's not the most accurate. Breguet has made several replicas of original pieces, the latest being a reproduction of Churchill's Turnip, which will soon make an appearance in The Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as Sir Winston Churchill and Kristin Scott Thomas as his wife, Clémentine. As I understand it, that watch will chime, just like the Turnip, but it's technically a non-working rattrapante minute repeater. This watch, on the other hand, was built to replace the thought-to-be-lost number 160, and it behaves just like the original.

Number 160 is a pocket watch that many have obsessed over. Some, out of self-interest. Marie Antoinette’s admirer, an officer of the queen’s guards, thought that it would bring him love. Naaman Diller, the thief who stole it from the L.A. Mayer Institute for Islamic Art in Jerusalem in 1983, thought it would bring him wealth, or notoriety – no one knows his true motive, since he held onto the piece until his death.

In fact, the watch has only ever satisfied those who have approached it with pure and reasonable expectations. Men like Sir Spencer Brunton, who bought it from Breguet in 1887 after the first owner  inexplicably returned the watch for a service and failed to collected it. Men like Sir David Salomons, who acquired the watch in 1920 and bequeathed the piece, along with 57 other Breguet timekeepers, to the Mayer Institute. And men like Nicholas Parsons.

Last year, the BBC followed the television veteran all the way back to Israel, where the watch was returned in 2007. In some ways, it's thanks to Nicholas that I got to spend some alone time with the new Marie Antoinette, number 1160, since the watch was briefly loaned out to Breguet's flagship boutique in London for a special evening hosted in honor of his documentary.

I'm aware that quite often on this site we say that a watch is special. What can I say, there are a lot of special pieces – but number 1160 is up there with Patek Philippe's Calibre 89, George Daniels's Space Traveler, and the Vacheron Constantin reference 57260 as one of the most important, and certainly most complex, timekeepers of the modern era. It's very existence is fascinating.

Everything about the original piece was special. The fact that it was ordered by one of Marie Antoinette’s secret admirers. The fact that she didn't know it was being made. The fact she never did receive it. The watch took 44 years to make, and both Marie Antoinette and Abraham-Louis Breguet were dead when it was completed. One of the reasons it took so long to make is because Breguet was given no deadline for finishing it. As long as it was a perpetual calendar, a symbol of his everlasting love for her, and that any part that could be made in gold would be made in gold, Breguet had, in watchmaking terms, carte blanche.

When Louis-Antoine Breguet finally completed this father’s work in 1827, number 160 was the most complex timekeeper in the world, and it held that title for 77 years. Nearly a dozen complications fit inside, all of them powered by a massive rotor. It displays central jumping hours and minutes, an independent central seconds hand (an early chronograph, of sorts), running seconds at six o'clock, a, full perpetual calendar with the month at eight o’clock, the day at six o’clock, and a date hand at two o'clock, plus equation of time at 10 o'clock, a 48-hour power reserve indicator at 11 o'clock, and a thermometer at one o’clock. Yeah, it's a lot.

And I haven't even mentioned what it tells you audibly yet. The watch also strikes on command the hours, quarters, and minutes. Making things even more impressive, everything is displayed on just one side, so you don't have to turn the watch back and forth. The transparent dial lets you see everything at work, and is one of the most appealing things about this watch. Visually, it's truly astonishing. It’s also a little overwhelming at first, which is one of the reasons number 1160 comes with an alternate grand feu enamel dial.

Every component was reconstructed from scratch by Breguet, based on historic drawings and the few words jotted down beside them. Once again, the Marie Antoinette became one man’s obsession, that of Nicolas G. Hayek. The Swatch Group CEO, who loved Breguet and bought the company in 1999, thought of it as the group's crown jewel. Irritated by the absence of number 160, he ordered that an exact working replica be made using the techniques used during the 18th century.

I've never seen the original number 160. It was recovered, just one year before Breguet completed number 1160, under bizarre circumstances. When I run out of stories, I'll always have that one. The watch is back in the hands of the L.A. Mayer Institute for Islamic Art, and I very much doubt it will leave during my lifetime. I'd be curious to see if there are any differences between the two watches, minus the obvious signs of number 160's age. I'm told there aren't, and even if there were, I'm sure they're so small I wouldn't be able to pick them up. 

I hope to cross that watch off my list one day, but already I feel a little nearer to it thanks to my short encounter with number 1160, which is now back in its box and on its way out of London.

For more information, visit Breguet online.

In late March, the vintage watch world was rapt with attention over one very particular eBay watch auction. The listing was for a Submariner – but not a Rolex Submariner, a Tudor Submariner. And to be clear, it wasn't even for the desirable "Big Crown" Submariner. No, this was actually a far more special and to many – including myself – one of the most quietly interesting Rolex or Tudor dive watches of all time. 

The Tudor Submariner reference 7923 is unique in this family because it is the only manually wound dive watch that either Rolex or Tudor ever made. And what's more, this watch appeared to be truly untouched and in original condition. It sold on eBay for $99,999 but as we reported then, a seldom seen eBay seller protection plan, that requires bidders to telephone eBay's fraud protection unit if they want to bid into six figures, prevented it from selling for more. So, while the 7923 became the most expensive vintage Tudor to sell publicly, the feeling was it could have actually sold for more. And now, it looks like it just might.

San Francisco based vintage watch retailer HQ Milton (who we've featured here) quietly posted pictures of what has to be the very same eBay 7923 late on Thursday evening. By Friday morning, the collector community had noticed it, become curious what the asking price was, and was reveling in the beautiful high resolution images provided by HQ Milton. One must remember that though the watch was surely in excellent condition based on the eBay photos, seeing it in all its glory is a very different thing and wow, is this watch incredible.

This 7923 is in legitimately remarkable condition. All the radium luminous material on the dial is present and perfect – the original small crown in place. What's more, we have the almost-always replaced bezel without minute marks. And the quality of the case? My lord, this is is how a Submariner should look. 

Ultimately, what we have here is one of the rarest watches ever made by Tudor or Rolex, in true preservation class winning quality. HQ Milton has changed the crystal on the watch to give a clearer view of the perfect dial, but the original crystal will be included to keep the watch just as it was discovered. 

As you've likely gathered, this is an incredible, investment-grade quality Submariner. And when it sold for $99,999 last month, it became the most expensive vintage Tudor to ever be sold publicly – but now that it has reached the hands of one of the most well established, and well known, purveyors of vintage watches, that price has sky-rocketed. HQ Milton has listed the watch as "Price on Application" – but that asking price is $350,000. Is this an enormous price for any Tudor Sub? Absolutely. But as we've seen, it is often worth paying tomorrow's price today, for the very best of the best. Will others agree and pay HQ Milton's asking price? We will see very soon.

You may see the listing for this incredible Tudor reference 7923 right here.

For its May meeting, the Horological Society of New York will welcome a special guest from Germany, Ulrike Kranz. Kranz will lecture on the history of the German Marine Chronometer, a topic she is very familiar with after her time working at the German Watch Museum and her position today at Glashütte Original. In addition to the lecture itself, a selection of historic timepieces from the German Watch Museum will also be on display.

With the founding of the German Empire in 1871 and growing interest in international trade, the German Navy became more and more important to the German government. To reduce reliance on English imports (including the well-known English marine chronometers), significant support was provided to encourage the production of marine chronometers in Germany. In 1886 the first marine chronometers from Glashütte were sent to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg for testing. In the following years, numerous innovations and technical improvements brought international attention to marine chronometers manufactured in Glashütte.

After World War II, Germany was divided, but the production of chronometers in Glashütte continued. The state-owned company VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe took up the tradition and manufactured a large number of both mechanical and quartz marine chronometers. These were deployed primarily on GDR ships but also exported worldwide.

Although today navigation at sea is performed around the world using GPS, Glashütte in Saxony remains a significant location for the production of marine chronometers and observation watches. Following the reunification of Germany, the Glashütte astronomical observatory was restored. Today it houses a chronometer testing facility, which also officially certifies the chronometers made by Glashütte Original – the legal successor of the VEB Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe.

About Ulrike Kranz

Ulrike Kranz is the head of Corporate Communications for Glashütte Original. Previously, Kranz worked at the German Watch Museum in Glashütte. She holds a MSc in Ethics & Corporate Governance from the University of London and a B.A. from the University of Greenwich.

All HSNY lectures are free and open to the public. Doors open at 6:00 PM; lecture begins promptly at 7:00 PM. For more information, visit HSNY's website.

Monday, May 1, 2017, 6:00-9:00 PM

HSNY at the General Society Library, 20 West 44th Street, between 5th & 6th Avenues, New York, NY 10036

HODINKEE is a sponsor of the Horological Society of New York.

When it comes to vintage watches, collectors tend, for obvious reasons, to focus on the watch and not what’s attached to it. The condition of the case, the sharpness of the lugs, the purity of the dial. All of these are part of the checklist when evaluating what’s in front of you. But when the watch comes on what looks like an interesting bracelet, and the opportunity to find more clues arises, one might have found not just a rare watch, but a rare accessory too. Today, we investigate what is undoubtedly the most famous bracelet maker, Gay Frères, only to discover that the story goes far beyond watch bracelets.

If you pick up a vintage watch and engraved in the bracelet's clasp you are able make out the letters "G" and "F" and in between them the bust of a ram, there's a good chance the bracelet in your hands is original to the watch (or at the very least from the same time period). With time, the lines will have softened, the engravings likely will have become less visible. Like the names of those who once upon a time supplied the watch manufacturers, they have faded. But make no mistake, this is a bracelet from one of most renowned metalworkers of the 20th century. This is the story of those watches, presented in auction catalogues today "with original Gay Frères bracelet."

We've already discussed Gay Frères as an early bracelet supplier to Rolex, one of its first clients in the watch industry. Not a bad way to get your foot into the door when it comes to watches, right? For The Crown, Gay Frères would deliver large orders of Bonklip bracelets from the early 1930s onwards.

These were extendable, supremely comfortable and robust. They were also very simple to produce at scale for someone with Gay Frères’s expertise (more on that later). The style was popular at the time and other companies were capable of supplying the same design to Rolex (and they did!), but the build quality of GF’s impresses the most.

If these stainless steel bracelets are rugged by nature, what makes Gay Frères an appealing partner is the creativity of its designers. Over the course of the 20th century, the company was able to offer products that perfectly captured the various fashions of the day, using steel, gold, and platinum to create bracelets in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Those made during the Art Deco period were particularly impressive in their variety and outstanding in their artistry. While across the border the French maison Cartier proved its sense of style during the 1920s and 1930s, so did the Geneva-based bracelet-maker. Interestingly, the trend towards stainless steel cases in the 1930s allowed Gay Frères to prosper as this metal is considerably harder to craft than gold, and therefore requires a lot of specialized craftsmanship, definitely one domain where Gay Frères had special expertise.

Arguably though, Gay Frères reserved its finest work for Geneva's most illustrious manufactures. During the 1940s and 1950s, the company supplied Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin, two of its closest neighbors, with bracelets that matched the quality of the watches to which they were fitted. The beads-of-rice pattern proved its versatility at Patek, which paired it with simple stainless steel Calatravas and rose gold perpetual calendars alike. Lest we forget, the bracelet that secures the most expensive wristwatch ever bought at auction – the $11 million Patek Philippe ref. 1518 in stainless steel – to the wrist of its new owner is a Gay Frères bracelet. The same references in precious metals? Their bracelets are often made by Gay Frères as well.

But the brilliance of Gay Frères was understanding the very fine nuances that distinguish a bracelet that pairs well with a dress watch from one that pairs well with a sports watch. Being able to adapt a design from one realm into another was critical.

When the focus of certain manufacturers shifted toward creating chronographs and other professional watches in the 1960s and 1970s, Gay Frères opted for new designs, and presented companies such as Heuer with a beads-of-rice bracelet flanked with Oyster-like folded links. This is the case for several models, including early Carreras and Autavias – but not the Monaco, which used a Novavit S.A. (NSA) bracelet. Heuer, like Rolex, had several suppliers.

Meanwhile, Zenith would order both ladder bracelets and hollow-link bracelets for its own chronograph, the El Primero, meaning that GF’s notoriety in 1969 was such that is was supplying manufactures in direct competition with one another with bracelets so different in their designs you might think they were made by separate entities. The ladder bracelet in particular has become something of a Zenith icon, to the point where some don't even know it's a GF design. These certainly gave the watches their own distinctive looks, which is why, because they often pop up on the market without their original bracelets, those now cost anywhere between from up to $2,000 on their own, even for stainless steel examples.

In the 1970s, the delicate balance between elegant and powerful design attracted some of the more established grands marques, including former clients such as Patek Philippe, but also watchmakers who had never worked with steel. Before the Royal Oak, Audemars Piguet had been a manufacturer of complicated dress watches, all of them in precious metals, and so it relied heavily on GF's expertise with non-precious metals for the design of the first integrated bracelet. Same went, four years later, when Patek Philippe launched the Nautilus.

In fact, by 1976, Gay Frères was much, much larger than Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe. Still family-owned, run by the brothers Jacques-Hubert et Jean-Francois Gay, the bracelet maker was Geneva’s largest and most professionalized factory, with more than 500 specialists in their employ.

Before There Were Watch Bracelets

By Louis Westphalen

The list of Gay Frères' illustrious clients could go on; Jaeger-LeCoultre, Universal Genève, Tissot, IWC and Eterna all probably deserve a mention. Yet, one crucial thing about Gay Frères is often overlooked – it was founded all the way back in 1835. This date shows that Gay Frères was not a wristwatch bracelet manufacturer from the start, given that wristwatches were non-existent in the first part of the 19th century. In fact, Gay Frères never really defined itself solely as a maker of bracelets, nor does it today, now that it belongs to Rolex (which acquired it in 1998).

Gay Frères was indeed born a chainiste, the French word for a company that manufactures chains for pocket watches (and marginally for jewelry, a trend from the 16th century that eventually came back three centuries later and culminated with the fashion of the penditifs in the 1920s). In the 19th century, Geneva was very much renowned for the quality of its chainistes, to the point where links of the chains would have set currency value in northern Italy, Turkey, and Balkan countries, according to a 1942 article from Montres Et Bijoux de Genève. As pocket watches lost grounds to wristwatches, those chainistes had to adapt and offer bracelets in addition to chains (those that survived, of course – many simply went out of business). While precious necklaces and bracelets made a natural extension, Gay Frères also offered the other classical jewelry items including rings, one even featuring the ram that can be found on the clasp of its watch bracelets.

This is a side of Gay Frères fairly unknown today, and yet this was one of the biggest businesses the company promoted at the time. A look at the yearly catalogs from the prestigious exhibition Montres Et Bijoux de Genève is extremely revealing: Gay Frères always exhibited some sophisticated necklaces and ornate bracelets, and never any of the more "common" watch bracelets that it was manufacturing in mass quantities at the time (for that it was attending the Basel trade show). Obviously, one could say that those prestigious pieces allowed GF to better showcase the craftsmanship it could achieve, sort of how the automotive industry creates concept cars, but truthfully this was not an anecdotal production made just for the show.

In talking with previous Gay Frères employees now crafting impossibly thin bracelets for Piaget, we got to discover that it was the jewelry pieces which had shaped their skills and allowed them to come up with more advanced watch bracelets afterwards. Or, as one veteran explained, even the finishing of the Royal Oak bracelet felt easy in comparison to regularly making one of those pieces, on which several qualified workers would successively intervene. And you have to know that the slightest mistake often meant the item would need to be melted down and the process would have to be started all over, which definitely gives one a new appreciation for teamwork. This side of Gay Frères revealed a world where minutia was as important as it is for traditional watchmaking. 

This jewelry appears much less at auction, at least with the Gay Frères provenance highlighted, probably because it is less distinctive than the bracelets with their striking GF markings (the other known mark is the number 32 drawn in a key). Yet, in our opinion they would be as interesting a catch as any rare watch bracelet, because they tell so much about how Gay Frères became the preeminent maker of watch bracelets in the 20th century, highlighting again a link between jewelry and watches that it is too often ignored. After all, wasn't the first wrist watch engineered as a portable jeweled piece for the Elisabeth 1st, Queen of England, in 1571? 

If you are familiar with HODINKEE or early wristwatches, you have likely heard of the "Radium Girls," the young women employed by the United States Radium Corporation in the early 20th century to paint the dials of wristwatches and clocks with luminous material. Back then, the hazards of radioactivity, and the dangers of radiation exposure, weren't well understood. And the "girls" were encouraged to even put the paint brushes in their mouths for finer hand-work. That is until many of the radium girls began to grow ill, and eventually a group of them filed suit against their employer. The suit eventually led to considerable advances in workers rights and set the stage for many labor safety standards.

Though today the dangers of radiation are universally recognized, in 1917 (when the U.S. Radium Corporation went into business) there was still far from a general understanding that with radiation came health hazards. Henri Becquerel had discovered radiation as a phenomenon relating to radioactive substances in 1896, and the term "radioactivity" was coined by his then-doctoral student, Marie Curie. These early researchers treated their radium samples with what today would be considered horrendous carelessness but an understanding of the broader dangers of radiation came relatively slowly. (Marie Curie would eventually die of aplastic anemia, related to her handling of radioactive materials, and even today many of her papers are so radioactive that they require anyone handling them to wear radiation shielding.) 

The "Radium Girls" actually ingested considerable amounts of radium thanks to the practice of putting a fine point on their paint brushes by licking them. Accidental ingestion was so severe that many of the workers literally glowed in the dark. Though the management of U.S. Radium by then suspected radium was a health hazard, and took steps to protect themselves, they did nothing to discourage the practice and even when their workers began to show severe symptoms of radiation poisoning – including disfiguring cancers of the jaw – they continued to attempt to deny the dangers of radium.

Kate Moore, who just published a new book titled The Radium Girls, was interviewed this weekend by NPR, and goes into a lot of detail on how the undeniably horrible fate of the US Radium Corporation workers led not only to a better understanding of the dangers of radiation, but also to better safety in the workplace in general. 

Read the full story and listen to the interview right here. 

Think Ulysse Nardin, and generally the first thing you think of is the Freak. Behind the Freak, however, is the fact that Ulysse Nardin was the very first company to introduce a watch with silicon components, and since the Freak debuted nearly 20 years ago, UN has been introducing silicon components in a wider and wider range of watches. The in-house caliber UN-320 uses a silicon lever and escape wheel – both in a proprietary configuration – as well as a silicon balance spring. 

The SBDX014, which was shown to us under embargo at the SIHH in January, represents the first use by Ulysse Nardin of its in-house UN-320 caliber in a diver's watch. Ulysse Nardin says that the design is based on a diver's watch made by UN in 1964 and this certainly looks like a classic mid-20th century diver's watch – right down to the segmented minute hand, although some of the design decisions have a bit more of a postmodern flavor, including the round cyclops over the date, and the use of a running seconds sub-dial rather than a center second. The use of the latter is likely dictated by the layout of the UN-320 caliber which is set up as a seconds sub-dial movement.

The use of a seconds subdial is also consistent with the rest of Ulysse Nardin's dive watch collection, which uses this configuration across the entire family of watches. This is by far the most straightforward dive watch Ulysse Nardin currently offers, as well. It's 100m water resistant, with the unidirectional bezel required by ISO 6425. With the silicon components, it's going to be basically immune to the effects of any magnetic fields you're likely to encounter outside a medical or lab setting, which is a nice feature to find in any tool watch. The stainless steel case is 42.2mm in diameter, with an engraving on the back of a spear-fishing diver wearing an old-fashioned looking double tank open-circuit scuba set – along with the requisite cloud of bubbles characteristic of open circuit regulators.

Typically, a watch brand will get a bit of grief for fielding a quote dive watch unquote, with only 100m water resistance, but it does bear mentioning that this is the minimum depth rating required by ISO 6425, and that recreational scuba diving generally happens at much shallower depths (30-40 meters, max) so 100 meters is more than enough for all practical purposes. However, if all that mattered in dive watches was "practical" there would a) be far fewer dive watches sold because 99% of us who buy them are never going to dive with them and b) certainly, far fewer dive watches would be sold with depth ratings that make them capable of tolerating pressures that would implode a military sub's pressure hull. It doesn't make a particle of difference in real terms whether a dive watch is 100m rated or 200m rated, but there's no doubt that 200m is a bit of a better look.

So here's the problem: this is a $9,600 watch. Now, it's got an in-house, technically forward-looking movement, and some appealing styling, yes. However, the under-$10,000 segment in dive watches is one of the most densely saturated product categories I can think of and consumers are absolutely spoiled for choice. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, a no-date Rolex Submariner on a bracelet – an excellent bracelet, on a watch with an in-house movement and in-house balance spring – is a $7,500 watch. Add a date and the price jumps to $8,550. A high-end Seiko diver, like the Tuna Can SBDX014 Marinemaster, which is 1,000m water resistant and which, while bulky, is cooler looking than James Dean in a leather jacket on a Saturday night, is $3,300 bucks – again, with an in-house automatic movement.

So is this watch going to struggle to stand out from its competitors in what's already the single most crowded category in watchmaking? Absolutely. Is there a case to be made for it as a viable option? Yes, but I think won't hurt if you're a Ulysse Nardin fan, and if the greater resistance to magnetic fields, and general technical qualities of the movement appeal to you. That this is a silicon-component dive watch – balance spring, lever, and escape wheel – should be taken into consideration as well; right now, few dive watches in this price range have that specific feature set. (An Omega Seamaster 300, antimagnetic to 15,000 gauss, with a co-axial escapement, and chronometer certification, lists for $6,600; the Breitling Superocean Heritage Chronoworks is $39,295, albeit it's a chronograph).

As with any watch, ultimately you're going to be sold, or not, on the Ulysse Nardin Le Locle Diver, on the strength of the whole package. A solid watch, but one with a lot of very tough competition.

The Ulysse Nardin Diver Le Locle: 42.2mm case, with caliber UN-320 manufacture movement; silicon escapement and balance spring with 48-hour power reserve. 100m water resistant, with sapphire crystal; sailcloth bracelet with tang buckle. Available in May. See the Ulysse Nardin diver collection at ulysse-nardin.com.

After months of work, we couldn't be prouder to present the new-look HODINKEE. The changes are way more than skin-deep and we truly believe that now we'll be able to tell you better stories and show you more compelling images than ever before. Let's take a look at what's new.

The first thing you'll notice is the new homepage. We're now showing you a lot more content right when you arrive on HODINKEE. Our editors can curate top stories, thematic collections, and packages of stories, keeping the homepage fresh and always flush with exciting things for you to explore. You can also see the most read stories and the most discussed stories, letting you jump into the conversation. For the first time on HODINKEE you can browse and watch videos right on the homepage itself too.

Once you start clicking through to articles, you'll find even more new things. We now have dynamic layout tools that allow our writers and editors to offer varied experiences from article to article. There are slideshows, full bleed images, better galleries, and support for gifs so we can show you your favorite watches in action. To see everything we've added, you'll just have to explore the site for yourself. We know you're going to like what you find.

You'll also notice that advertisements are now placed right in the flow of stories instead of just sitting around the periphery. We thought long and hard about the best way to integrate advertisements into the HODINKEE experience, and doing things this way gives us a much bigger canvas for story telling, taking away those obtrusive borders. 

Things have changed behind the scenes too. We've made a number of back-end improvements to make the site even more reliable, to ensure that designs are responsive and function great on all devices, and to reduce load times so you can spend less time waiting and more time reading. Everything launched today will be rolling out to mobile over the coming weeks, so stay tuned for even more. As always, our goal is to make HODINKEE more enjoyable for you in any way we can.

We’d love your feedback, whether it’s to tell us ways to improve the site, to notify us of a bug, or simply to tell us what you like. You can let us know what you think in the comments below or email us at feedback@hodinkee.com.

Welcome back to Talking Watches. Today we're shaking things up a bit, as this is the first episode filmed on British shores. It's also my first go-around as host. But the series remains, as it has always been, focused on exceptional collectors and their watches. Today's guest is exactly that, and his watches certainly do not disappoint.

If ever you wanted to know what the most interesting chronographs of the modern era are, and many people do, Ahmed’s collection might provide some answers. Ahmed’s no snob when it comes to chronographs though, and his come in different shapes and sizes. They’re manufactured by various watch companies with divergent histories, and sometimes they feature other complications as well. Each one provides a snapshot of the complication’s most interesting recent developments though, and it's this kind of wide-angle/macro attitude that characterizes Ahmed's collecting.

Ahmed’s interests don't end at watches though. He's passionate about art and style as well, and from the cut of his lapels to the cocktail cuffs that partially conceal his timepieces, there's a certain casual elegance about him. In each of the non-chronograph pieces you see here, you'll find more than a hint of that as well. Today we are thrilled to present the official HODINKEE Talking Watches with Mr. Ahmed Rahman.

Patek Philippe Nautilus 5980/1A

The Nautilus 5980 is a lot of things. On the one hand, it represents one of the most significant shake-ups of the original Nautilus design. It's bigger, bolder, and much pricier than your standard three-hand Nautilus. On the other, it features one of the greatest in-house self-winding chronographs of the past decade. Period. And the co-axial 60-minute and 12-hour counters at six o’clock help it maintain that clean Nautilus look despite the bump in functionality.

Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar Squelette

Ahmed’s favorite thing about the Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar is that it’s a skeleton perpetual calendar that he can happily take for a swim. And while that isn’t why he purchased it (nor the reason you should) it doesn’t hurt its appeal. Ahmed’s model is solid platinum (case and bracelet), and it features a personalized rotor with his initials – an option offered by Audemars Piguet which many don’t know about. This is about as hardcore as a sports watch can get.

A. Lange & Söhne Datograph

Much has been said on this website about the Datograph, nearly all of it positive. And Ahmed happens to agree with us. Of all the modern chronographs he owns, and he owns quite a few, he says this one is the very best. Note, this is the original Datograph, not the later Up/Down, so it features a smaller but thicker 39mm platinum case.

Richard Mille RM035 'Baby Nadal'

The Baby Nadal is not a watch you'd expect to see sitting between a vintage Daytona ref. 6263 and a Patek Phillipe ref. 5070P. And yet, there it is. It has the upper hand on both those watches when it comes to lightness and contemporary design, and it's one that you have to pick up in your own two hands to properly appreciate. The RM035 Baby Nadal is a guilty pleasure watch, no doubt, but it’s hard not to love it.

Patek Philippe Aquanaut Travel Time

Ahmed travels a lot. And, more often than not, this is his chosen travel companion. It’s easy to wear, draws very little attention to itself, and can take a few bumps here and there. Oh, and this one’s co-signed by Tiffany & Co. just like John Mayer’s.

Rolex Daytona Ref. 6263

Ahmed does not focus on collecting vintage watches, and that speaks volumes of the Daytona ref. 6263 in his collection. It's a testament to the watch's historical importance and long term collectibility. I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn that Ahmed also owns the new stainless steel Daytona with ceramic bezel, a fitting partner for this older favorite.

Cartier Tortue Monopusher CPCP

The Tortue Monopusher has been produced in very limited numbers since its introduction by Cartier in 1998. Part of the Collection Privée, it’s a very, very difficult watch to get directly from Cartier. The shape of the case and design of the dial are quintessentially Cartier, but what makes this watch even more exciting is the movement, a monopusher chronograph designed by three of the greatest living watchmakers, Francois-Paul Journe, Denis Flageollet and Vianney Halter.

Jaeger-LeCoultre Grande Reverso Tribute To 1931 'Magritte'

The trouble with Reversos is that there are so many to choose from. However, the decision was easy for Ahmed, who says that as a big fan of René Magritte he had to have this special edition. Part of the Tribute to 1931 collection, it's a rare and charming talking piece. Only five like this were made in white gold. Rumors of future Magritte limited editions aren’t hurting the collectibility of this first piece either.

Patek Philippe 5970G Salmon Dial

This one’s a bit special. Ahmed placed the order for his 5970G with a special salmon dial in the summer of 2015, following Patek Philippe’s London Exhibition, where it was unexpectedly presented to collectors. It marks the return of an icon, and is, without a doubt, the crown jewel in Ahmed's collection.

IWC Portuguese Rattrapante Chronograph

When a simple chronograph just doesn’t cut it, Ahmed turns to this split-seconds chronograph from IWC. Reference 3712 is a cult IWC watch despite it being very unlike IWC in a number of ways. It’s plain, it’s simple, but it happens to be powered by a very cool movement designed in 1992 by Richard Habring (before he went on to found Habring2).

IWC Ceramic Fliegerchronograph Ref. 3705

Casual as it may seem, even more so when it is presented as part of this particular collection, the ref. 3705 is actually one of the rarest and most interesting modern pilot’s watches. Ceramic was still a relatively new material when the Fliegerchronograph was released, and this is actually the first ever ceramic chronograph. It has aged very well indeed and is just such a charming watch from top to bottom.

Breguet Tourbillon Ref. 5357 Tourbillon

Ahmed’s love for chronographs is obvious, but it’s not the only complication he appreciates. The tourbillon is another of Ahmed’s favorites, and Breguet is a perfect choice here.

Abraham-Louis Breguet’s invention made its way into Breguet wristwatches quite late, in the 1980s, but it is once again considered Breguet’s speciality, typically becoming the focal point of the company’s high-end models, such as this 40mm platinum reference.

Sotheby’s set a new record for a George Daniels Millennium wristwatch this morning when a white gold model sold for £187,500 including buyer's premium (approximately $240,750 at time of publishing). The reason it did so well? For a start, George Daniels made only seven white gold Millennium wristwatches during his lifetime – and this particular watch, which Daniels delivered in 1999, is even more unusual since it features yellow gold chapter and calendar rings. 

According to Roger Smith, who worked on the Millennium series alongside Daniels, there are only two watches with this particular combination in the entire series. The present lot also comes with a letter written by Daniels documenting the request. Smith wasn't surprised by this morning's result. When I called him this afternoon, he had this to say:

It’s very encouraging to see a very steady increase both in the interest for and on the value of the Daniels Millennium.

The last time Sotheby's sold a Millennium was during the Horological Collection of George Daniels, a thematic auction held after Daniels's death by the British auction house on November 6, 2012. That day, Sotheby’s actually sold four Millennium watches in total, including a prototype, two yellow gold models, and one all white gold model. The white gold Millennium sold for £145,250 including buyer’s premium (approximately $232,285 at the time), the record for a Millennium until Bonhams sold this white gold version (notice the theme developing here) for £157,250 inc. premium in 2012.

The new record tops the old one by about 20%, which is certainly nothing to scoff at.

Photo: @thewatchphotographer

Imagine two of the greatest Rolex dealers and experts in the United States (if not the world), Andrew Shear (seen here) and Eric Ku (seen here), being asked by a room full of collectors "If you could only own one Rolex, what would it be?" and them both answering the same thing. This actually happened, and I was there for it. Their joint response was not some gilt exclamation mark underline Submariner, or some super-duper rare Oyster Paul Newman, but rather, a small 36mm yellow gold watch that in fact has the same case as as your average Datejust. But that's where the similarities end between the apple of both these experts' eyes and a typical Rolex.

The so-called "Bao Dai" reference 6062 is something of a legend. It's a yellow gold triple calendar moonphase, the rare reference 6062. But it has a black dial. And a few diamond indices. But it's the name by which it's known to collectors that gives away the amazing provenance that makes this watch unique: it was once owned by Bao Dai, the final emperor of Vietnam, and it's a legend amongst Rolex enthusiasts.

In fact, it might very well be the most legendary Rolex, period. As we told you last month, Phillips and Aurel Bacs have received it on consignment for the Geneva Watch Auction next month. When the "Bao Dai" Rolex 6062 was first announced, much of the attention was focused on its estimate, a very sobering "in excess of $1.5 million." There is indeed a chance that this special reference 6062 will again become the most expensive Rolex ever sold at auction (it went for a then record-setting $235,000 in 2002). To do so, it would need to break the $2.5 million result achieved by a split-seconds chronograph reference 4113, one year ago.

Record-setting discussion aside, the watch deserves a good look for what it is: an exceptional vintage Rolex with an extraordinary story, and this is exactly what we had a chance to do when we saw the watch in New York last week. But first, a little history.

Who Is Bao Dai And How Did This Watch Come To Be?

As mentioned, Bao Dai was the final emperor of Vietnam – the last member of the great Nguyen Dynasty, the last ruling family of the nation, which had reigned for 13 generations. From 1926 through 1945, Bao Dai (which means, "keeper of greatness" – he was born Nguyen Phuc Vinh Thuy) was the Emperor of Annam, then a part of French Indochina, which covered about two-thirds of what is Vietnam today. Though officially emperor beginning in 1926 at age 12, he did not take the throne until 1932.

Bao Dai spent most of his childhood in France for his education, and returned home to rule at the age of 18. By 20, he would marry and have both five children and five wives (three of whom he married while still married to his first wife). During World War II, when Japan invaded French Indochina, Bao Dai and his administration were persuaded by the occupying forces to declare independence from France. 

After the Japanese surrendered, Ho Chi Minh (the leader of the nationalist Viet Minh coalition) convinced Bao Dai to abdicate the throne, citing his connections to Japan. However, Dai was granted a role as "supreme advisor" to Ho's Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The role did not last long, as the late 1940s were marked by great conflict in the region. Dai spent most of these years living in Hong Kong and Europe. In 1949 he was convinced to retake power by the French but this time not as emperor but rather "head of state." 

In the spring of 1954, Bao Dai would attend the Geneva Convention to settle remaining issues from the conflicts of the Korean War and discuss further actions to be taken in Indochina. While little was done in regards to Korea, the Geneva Accord established two separate Vietnamese states: the northern zone governed by Viet Minh and the southern governed by the State of Vietnam, then led by Bao Dai. However, a referendum to establish a republic and remove him passed in 1955, and he would spend the remainder of his life abroad (mostly in France).

But before the Geneva Accord was established, Bao Dai did a little shopping. Seriously. While in Geneva for the negotiations that would eventually split his country in two, he stepped out of the Hotel des Bergues (now the Four Seasons, home of several important watch auctions) across the street to Chronometrie Philippe Beguin, a Rolex dealer. His request to the staff was simple.

"He wants the rarest and most precious Rolex ever made." 

He was offered a handful of exceptional watches, none of which pleased him. Eventually, the retailer called Rolex, which was (and is) located just outside of town, and they were able to source a reference 6062 in yellow gold with black dial and diamond indexes – the very watch you see here.

Bao Dai died in 1997, at the age of 83. The New York Times wrote, "He finally left Vietnam in the mid-1950s, when he was deposed in a rigged referendum that abolished the monarchy. He played almost no role in his homeland thereafter, choosing instead a hedonistic life in Paris and along the Riviera that centered around golf, bridge tournaments, and women." The Rolex he purchased in Geneva, in the spring of 1954, would be consigned for auction by his surviving relatives in 2002.

Why Is This Watch So Special, From A Watch Guy's Perspective?

The first and most important rule of collecting vintage watches is of course that condition is king. The best scenario is that a watch is in original condition in every respect, and that it has aged gracefully. This is exactly why a clean but redone dial would be much less desirable than a dial with uniform aging. This principle applies across the entire price range of collectible watches, and for many collectors top notch condition is trumped only by outstanding rarity or provenance. Fortunately, the "Bao Dai" offers all three at once, which is the reason for its breathtaking valuation.

When you first hold the “Bao Dai,” you cannot fail to be impressed by its dial, and not solely because it's the only known example of a black 6062 dial with diamond indexes placed at even hours. There are simply no noticeable imperfections, and the black glossy finish is still intact. However, it does not mean that the watch is mint, unworn, or new old stock. On the contrary, the case shows that it was worn regularly, something attested to by the Bao Dai's own entourage, so you can easily imagine this watch being spotted at Cannes on the French Riviera (a favorite spot of the Emperor) throughout the 1950s and 1960s. 

What the flawless dial truly highlights is the impressive job done by Rolex in designing the reference 6062 in the early 1950s. There is indeed a good reason the dial was so well preserved: the waterproof case, with screw-down crown and caseback, makes any damage to the dial unlikely (but not impossible, especially if the watch was not serviced for a while). The celebrated Oyster case makes the reference 6062 much more Rolex in character than the reference 8171, the only other vintage Rolex to display a moonphase and a triple calendar. In that regard, the reference 6062 might be the ultimate iteration of the Rolex founder's vision: this watch is waterproof, it relies on a chronometer-certified automatic movement, and it offers amazing legibility, even with the added complications.

On the wrist, the wearability of the “Bao Dai” impresses, as any 6062 always does. There is something intrinsically perfect about the 36mm Oyster case, and this is exactly what you get with any 6062 (or any vintage Datejust, for that matter). It feels neither too dandyish, nor too big, and the yellow gold Jubilee bracelet also adds tremendously to the overall impact of the watch. Much like the record-breaking steel Patek Philippe 1518, it is not hard to imagine the “Bao Dai” as an excellent everyday wear wristwatch (albeit one on the very, very expensive side). The fact that it retains a vintage plexiglass crystal matters a lot, since its pronounced curvature really defines the profile of the 6062.

Meet The "Baby Bao Dai"

In the very same sale, Phillips will offer another exceedingly rare yellow gold, black dial Rolex. The reference 6088 was produced in the same period as the Bao Dai and among an elite group of "Stelline" or "star-dial" Rolex watches.  The estimate is 200,000 to 400,000 CHF.

My first reaction to the diamond markers eventually proved wrong: I thought, before actually seeing and handling the watch, that I'd shrug, "cool, but not for me." Yet, in the metal, they brought some wonderful sparkle to the watch (and after all this was a watch sold to an emperor). This particular 6062 also offers what I think is perfect placement for the chronometer certification, which on most 6062s is crammed between the date apertures and the pivots for the hour and minute hands. In some rarer configurations such as the present one (also some of the 6062s with stelline dials, for instance) the "Officially Certified Chronometer" lives in the seconds sub-dial, just below the moonphase aperture, where it brings just the right balance to the dial. In this model, the placement of a diamond on the dial at 12:00 is generally recognized as the reason for moving the chronometer certification lettering to a different position.

I'm very smitten with this watch, just on the basis of its condition, look, and feel. The fact that it formerly belonged to the last Emperor of Vietnam, however, definitely explains why this watch moves into the small circle of the most collectible watches ever made. It should also be noted this watch has remained in arguably the finest private collection in the world since its sale in 2002, which means whoever purchases this watch in May will be just its third owner in some six decades.

A Former Champion Returns

The "Bao Dai" originally sold at auction in November of 2002 for approximately $235,000. At the time, it was the most expensive Rolex ever sold at auction. My, how times have changed.

Among the bigger collectors, there is already chatter that this watch has the potential to regain its position as the most expensive Rolex in the world. Considering that there is only one "Bao Dai" and just three 6062s with black dials and diamond markers while there are 12 ref. 4113s, a new record is a real possibility. But rarity isn't the only factor at play here, and remember, this watch is yellow gold, not the more currently en vogue rose or steel. Also, the watch is on the small side for modern tastes, but to counter that, it may just be the ultimate expression of what Rolex was in the 1950s, and what the "Bao Dai" means to the collecting world (for more on that, read this wonderful story by Le Monde Edmond here).

Does the "Bao Dai" deserve to be the most expensive Rolex in history? The only people that are in a position to answer that question are those willing to bid.

Now we just need to wait until the Phillips Geneva Watch Auction Five, to see how well the incredible lot 93 will do. Potential record aside, there is one thing for sure: I will dearly remember the few minutes that this unique 6062 spent on my wrist, when I felt like an Emperor partying in his glamorous villa in Cannes some 50 years ago – a young French Jay Gatsby if you will.

See the full listing for the "Bao Dai" Rolex 6062 right here.

An all new HODINKEE website calls for a fresh release of vintage watches, and we are happy to oblige. The arrivals span the full spectrum of form and functionality. A simple Piaget dress watch belies a cool hard stone dial, a two-tone Rolex Oyster Date lends an air of casual elegance to your summer uniform, and a 1970s Heuer "Bundeswehr" with a flyback chronograph complication are just three of ten offerings available now. Read on below to check out some highlights. 

1978 Rolex Sea-Dweller Reference 1665 With Box And Guarantee Certificate

This "Great White" Sea-Dweller, complete with its original box and guarantee certificate, is quite the prize. The Sea-Dweller arose from a need for a "real" diving watch for the Compagnie Maritime d’Expertise (COMEX). Rolex modified the Submariner with a helium escape valve so that the gas present in diving bells wouldn’t shatter the Plexiglass crystal during decompression. This example is the last version of the 1665 with the bright white signature, and the coveted "rail dial." More about this watch here. 

1970s Piaget Reference 9742 In White Gold With Jasper Dial

The hard stone dials that Piaget produced in the 1960s and 1970s echoed the kaleidoscopic and bohemian fashion of the era. Onyx, turquoise, malachite, coral, and tiger's eye adorned the dials of many Piaget wristwatches, but this jasper example is a bit less flamboyant and more subtle than something like lapis lazuli. Depending on the light source, the opaque dark green with red flecks takes on different tones. On top of all this gemological wonder, there's an ultra-thin Piaget caliber 9P hidden inside the 18k white gold case. Check it out here. 

1960s Wittnauer Professional World-Time Chronograph Reference 7004B

Don’t let yourself rest until you’ve visited all 29 cities on this Wittnauer Professional World-Time Chronograph. It offers huge bang for your buck, so you can snap it up now and still have plenty of coin left over for that next vacation. With a 24 hour dial to boot, this can be the ideal companion, no matter where you choose to take it. You can see the full listing here. 

The Full Set

To round out the highlights above, we have a 1960s rose gold-plated Breitling Top-Time reference 2000, a 1960s Junghans Chronograph J88, a 1970s Heuer "Bundeswehr" Flyback Chronograph reference 1550 SG "3H," a 1970s Longines Admiral reference 8581-2, a two-tone 1987 Rolex Oyster Date reference 1500, a 1940s Alpina Chronograph with radium-filled numerals, and a 1960s Universal Genève Aerocompax reference 890100/01. 

Scroll through the slideshow to check out these watches, and head over to the HODINKEE Shop to see the full collection. 

It's time to say goodbye to the Legacy Machine 1. Sort of. This is the LM1 Final Edition, the last member of the LM1 family, first released back in 2011, kicking off the entire Legacy Machine project for MB&F. To close out the much-loved model, MB&F is introducing three major updates for this extremely limited piece.

The LM1 is a relatively straightforward watch, and one that gave people a totally different look at MB&F when it debuted. There are two totally separate time displays on white lacquer dials with blued hands, over which hangs a massive balance wheel on an arched bridge. Just below that is a unique vertical indicator for the 45-hour power reserve. The 44mm case is large by most standards, but extremely conservative and wearable by MB&F standards. Even for those who prefer smaller watches (such as me), it's comfortable and one heck of a fun watch to wear. In total, 435 LM1 have been produced over the years, with different metals for the cases and different colors for the dials (and a few unusual editions too).

There are three things that make the LM1 Final Edition special. The first is the stainless steel case and the second is that rich brown dial. You've seen these two before from MB&F, but only once – on the MB&F LM101 Limited Edition for HODINKEE. After our collaboration, the folks at MB&F liked the combo so much they decided to use it again for this special piece (and we're told that steel could find its way into future Final Editions too). You'll also notice that the balance bridge is different from what you'll typically find on the LM1. Instead, this watch uses the more rounded, brightly polished bridge found on the LM101 and Legacy Machine Perpetual.

Turn the watch over and you've got the same movement that's been in all the LM1 editions. It was developed by Chronode for MB&F and was created in partnership with both Jean-Francois Mojon and Kari Voutilainen. It has architecture reminiscent of super-traditional Swiss pocket watch movements and is a real watch lover's caliber. The finishing is top-notch too, as you'd expect with Mr. Voutilainen involved.

The LM1 Final Edition is limited to just 18 pieces, with a price of $79,000. For more, visit MB&F online.

In keeping with its usual practice of devoting each year to refreshing a particular product line, IWC brought out a totally redesigned Da Vinci family at this year's SIHH. Of all the IWC families, Da Vinci may be the hardest sell – unlike the brand's technical and aviation themed watches, Da Vinci is, and historically has always been (with one exception), a way of showing off IWC as a complications specialist. Stylistically, the Da Vinci family has much more to do with wristwatch design idioms that considerably pre-date the pioneering steel tool watches that became so popular after the end of World War II, and they also stand very much apart stylistically from every other IWC family.

Those differences are not so much polarizing as they simply are more specific, in terms of to whom they are going to appeal. However, I think the Da Vinci family comes by its individuality honestly. For one thing, the designs have importance and value in terms of what they represent about design history at IWC as a whole. For another, they have a strong connection to IWC's decades-long, avowed philosophy of exploring what it means to make "a pocket watch for the wrist."

The Origins Of The IWC Da Vinci Family, And Complicated Watchmaking At IWC

The very first Da Vinci watch from IWC was from 1969-70 and that model doesn't have a whole lot to do with what the Da Vinci line has become. The original Da Vinci was a quartz watch, made to show off the then-revolutionary Beta 21 quartz movement, and the lozenge-shaped case certainly made it stand out from the crowd. The quartz Da Vinci evolved, as quartz technology did, becoming thinner and more elegant – the one you see above is a Da Vinci SL quartz wristwatch from 1977 – but it wasn't a platform for high complications until some years later.

Jump forward to 1985, and Da Vinci has become a whole 'nother animal. Although the name Da Vinci was used for the first time for an IWC watch right at the beginning of the Quartz Crisis, the models that used the name next in the 1980s were so different as to basically constitute a re-boot of the entire Da Vinci line. The rather mod, very 1970s lozenge shaped case is gone and instead we have something that stylistically could easily have been made in the period, say, 1925-1935 and which, in terms of mechanics and complexity, is connected to not just the tradition of high complication wristwatches, but complicated pocket watches as well.

It's difficult now to appreciate just how revolutionary the 1985 Da Vinci was. This was a perpetual calendar chronograph, with a module designed by IWC's Kurt Klaus, built on a Valjoux 7750 chronograph base. However, the Valjoux movement was just a starting point. The perpetual calendar mechanism was the first ever made in which all the calendar indications, including the moonphase, were coordinated via the crown, so that in order to set the watch you only had to pull out the crown and advance the day indication – the day, month, leap year, and year indications, along with the moon, would all advance together. The only gotcha was that you couldn't set the calendar backwards, but it was still an unprecedented technical achievement, and in the mid-1980s, when complicated watchmaking was probably at its lowest ebb in the entire 20th century, it was a very powerful statement from IWC not only about its own capacities as a complications specialist – which, historically, had not been its specialization – but also a statement of faith and belief in the future of mechanical horology as a whole.

Stylistically? The barrel lugs, stepped bezel, mushroom shaped pushers, and general vibe were all designed in a way that vehemently recalls what, even in 1985, was already an extremely conservative and anachronistic style of watchmaking. However, this very much fit with the intentions of the watch and the renewed Da Vinci family – the conservative cosmetics were, like the mechanics, an avowal of faith in both the past and future of mechanical horology.

I wasn't yet interested in watches when the first run of mechanical Da Vincis came out in 1985, but ten years later, I'd gotten bitten by the bug and by the time I started reading about IWC, the Da Vinci Perpetual Chronograph and Kurt Klaus had become, respectively, legendary and celebrated in the watch enthusiast community. Complicated watchmaking at IWC in the late 20th and early 21st centuries had been legitimized by Klaus, and by the Da Vinci Perpetual Chrono, almost single handedly. I said earlier that complicated watchmaking had never been a particular specialty of IWC, but it is true that IWC had produced very complicated watches in the past – however, these were rare one-offs (though it's worth mentioning that there were both perpetual calendar and minute repeating complications in IWC pocket watches in the late 19th century.) 

The Secret History: A Complicated IWC Wristwatch From 1982

Although the IWC Da Vinci of 1985 was a major milestone, it wasn't the first complicated mechanical watch from IWC. In 1982, the firm released a watch never shown in any catalog: the reference 3710 full calendar, chronograph, and moonphase. Read IWC historian David Seyffer's article right here, at IWC.com.

The watch that really brought home the point that IWC was now a contender amongst complications specialists, is the one above: the first IWC Grande Complication wristwatch, reference 3770. The one above is a very rare platinum model on matching platinum bracelet (reference 927016, which I think the market still undervalues. If you can find one at auction it's one of the most interesting ways to get into a platinum-cased minute repeater, perpetual calendar with four-digit year indication, rattrapante chronograph that I can think of). The Grande Complication came out in 1990, and three years later, IWC debuted the watch known as "Il Destriero Scafusia" (roughly, "The Warhorse Of Schaffhausen") which added a flying tourbillon. Il Destriero Scafusia was also based on a Valjoux caliber – the hand-wound 7760, but one so heavily modified its own mother wouldn't have recognized it. 

The Grande Comps and Il Destriero Scafusia weren't part of the Da Vinci line per se, but they were very much in the same spirit: statement pieces, both for IWC and for anyone wearing them. At the time, they weren't considered an affordable way to get into grande complication wristwatches (is there such a thing?) but rather, an alternative to the very small group of other possible candidates for making one – which, it bears emphasizing, included at the time just a handful of makers, including Jaeger-LeCoultre, Audemars Piguet, and Patek. They were technically distinctive in a way that appealed strongly to connoisseurs and as much as anything else, really put IWC on the map in a way it had never been before.

Stylistically, they were also allied to the Da Vinci family – extremely traditional, rather more Baroque than not; which gave both them and the Da Vincis an extremely aristocratic air, and which was a major departure from the very restrained, even utilitarian flavor of virtually all other IWC watches from the second half of the 20th century.

The New Da Vinci Perpetual Chronograph (And Its New Siblings Too)

The reason for all the palaver about the roots of Da Vinci in IWC's aspirations to become a complications manufacture in the 1980s and '90s is because it has a lot to do (this is A Week On The Wrist, after all) with how I felt about the new Da Vinci Perpetual Chronographs when I first saw them earlier this year. I have to be honest, I understand why IWC made some modifications to the original design but I would have been perfectly happy to see those barrel lugs and mushroom pushers again – the Baroque is not an idiom that sells a ton of watches nowadays but I have an irresistible nostalgia for the original Da Vincis, and to see a return to the round case, onion-ish crown, stepped bezel, and overall aristocratic flavor sat very well with me; I thought it was a great way to connect the dots to IWC's past as a complications maker and to the history of the Da Vinci line.

The other thing I was very happy to see was the four-digit year indication – IWC had gotten out of the habit of using it in recent years and it's great to see it front and center again. It was a signature element of the original Da Vinci Perpetual Chronograph back in 1985, and a visual signature for the inventiveness of Kurt Klaus as well. Getting back in a round, slightly Baroque, rather formal Da Vinci case is pretty exciting, especially for those of us who've been following the evolution of complicated watchmaking at IWC for a couple of decades.

It's a fairly large watch – 43mm x 15.5mm, which is a hair larger than the the Portuguiser Automatic (42.3 mm x 14.5 mm; for a fairly ubiquitous standard for comparison, the Seiko Diver SKX 007 is 42.5mm x 13.25). Despite the diameter, it doesn't come across as a gratuitously large watch. As is the case with many perpetual calendars there is a lot of information being displayed, with the calendar indications sharing dial space with the chronograph sub-registers, so the available real estate is being put to good use and you actually end up having a more legible than usual perpetual chrono. 

This particular, somewhat maximalist approach to complicated watchmaking is a bit in contrast to some of the leaner ways of implementing a perpetual calendar and it's certainly not the only way to do things – the Patek Philippe 5270 perpetual calendar chronograph, for instance, has windows for the day of the week and the month, up at 12 o'clock; the moonphase and date share a sub-dial at six o'clock; two additional sub-dials show the running seconds and the chronograph 30-minute counter. 

At 41mm, it's worth pointing out, the 5270 is not dramatically smaller than the Da Vinci, although it's also true that Patek's first perpetual chronograph ever – reference 1518 – is just 35mm in diameter. On the Da Vinci's side, it does include both a minutes and hour register (in the sub-dial at 12 o'clock) so it's delivering a bit of extra data. Still, though, for the Da Vinci, I think the desire to make a watch that not only looks complicated, but also does so in a very old fashioned way, has given us a watch that has a bit more of a connection with the pocket watch tradition of complicated watchmaking, than the wristwatch tradition. 

The movement is IWC's in-house caliber 89630; it's self-winding, with a 68-hour power reserve, a moonphase accurate to one day's error every 577.5 years (a conventional moonphase complication accumulates a full day's error in two years, seven-and-a-half months, although much higher precision moonphase complications – one day in 144 years, or better – have become more or less de rigeur in high-end watchmaking).

IWC's in-house caliber 89630 looks handsome through the caseback; it doesn't give an impression of bleeding edge, obsessive craft as much as it does of a carefully constructed, more overbuilt-than-not, piece of precision machinery, which is to say, it fits the pocket watch-ish feel of the watch overall quite well. Of course you get the Kurt Klaus mechanism for the perpetual calendar; you also get a 68 hour power reserve, and flyback chronograph. Chronograph operation is crisp and clean, with just a little bit of a push to get through the detent, but in handling in general, the Da Vinci Perpetual Chrono gives the same impression it does visually – a sort of heirloom-quality sobriety. 

I found myself adjusting to the Da Vinci Perpetual Chronograph quite quickly; the articulated lugs go a long way towards muting the effect of its large and thick case, and in steel, it's easy to wear all day (this from a guy whose daily wear watch is usually under 40mm, sometimes by a lot). 

I did think, while I was wearing it, quite a lot about the fact that the design is somewhat narrow in its appeal, despite the careful updates IWC has given to the original design from 1985. I don't mind any of the changes; objectively, they make sense in terms of bringing the Da Vinci at least a bit into the 21st century, and the design of the new Da Vinci Perpetual Chronograph still has enough in common with the 1985 versions that you feel a sense of connection to the past right away. 

There's no denying that a lot of the reason I like the new piece so much, really does have to do with how much it reminds me of the original – and it's not just a question of the fact that understanding history and context makes the design more appealing. I'd be lying if I didn't say there isn't a pretty good helping of pleasant nostalgia mixed in there as well. Then, too, I think that when you spend a lot of time in a particular realm as an enthusiast – whether it's furniture design, or wine, or watches, or what have you – you can easily start to develop somewhat contrarian tastes and you can find yourself gravitating towards things just because you know a lot of people find them eccentric or weird.

The IWC Perpetual Calendar Chronograph, though, isn't a contrarian choice (at least, it doesn't feel that way to me, not even after some introspection). What makes it appealing is what made the very first Da Vinci Perpetual Chronograph so interesting back in 1985 – it's technically distinctive (the more so now, with the use of an in-house movement vs. the 7750 base in the model from the 80s) and its combination of slightly aristocratic and extremely traditional aesthetics, combined with the overbuilt and slightly massive feel of the movement, give it an elegant instrumentality. As cornball as it may sound, it feels, on the wrist, like a real gentleman's wristwatch – a watch of substance, serenity, and quietly self-sufficient style.

As shown, the IWC Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar Chronograph Ref. IW392101 in steel is 43mm x 15.5mm; 3 bar water resistance. Movement, IWC caliber 89630, self winding, with 68 hour power reserve; perpetual calendar with four-digit display of the year; chronograph with flyback function and hours/minutes combined in the sub-register at 12:00. Free sprung adjustable mass balance. Price, $29,900. See it online at iwc.com.

All of us probably know exactly which watch Buzz Aldrin was wearing on July 20, 1969, when he touched down on the surface of the Moon. Neil Armstrong left his NASA-issued Omega Speedmaster on board that day, but Buzz's was still strapped to the outside of his suit. Many consider it to be the most important wristwatch ever made. Too bad no one knows where it is.

So what does Buzz wear in its place today? A lot of people want to know. Thanks to Omega, which today celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Speedmaster in London, we have the answer. And it's not one watch actually, but rather three that adorn his wrists. All at once. On his right arm, he wore the new Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch (bear in mind his role as a brand ambassador), and, on his left, an unusual contraption that combines an 18k yellow gold De Ville Chronoscope with an X-33 and its titanium bracelet, modified to connect both watch heads. Calling this "unique" would be an understatement.

The watches weren't the only things on his wrists though. Buzz wears quite a few bracelets, including one that spells out his name, and he's also a bit of a ring man. Aldrin had a ring on nearly every finger, two of them being so-called "Moon Rings," his mission rings from the Apollo days, and his West Point class ring. Aldrin spoke to a small group of journalists about a few iconic photographs taken during Apollo 11, his expeditions to the North and South Poles, and his desire to see people go to Mars. And he's not ruling himself out of that mission either!

We were in communication with Earth all the time. We felt at home because we could talk to each other. But we wore the watches and we kept them set to the time of the shifts of the people back in mission control. They were on an eight-hour shift. So, there we were on the Moon...but we knew what time it was in Houston, Texas, all the time.

Bonus: James H. Ragan Wearing His Personal Speedmaster Ref. 145.022

James H. Ragan is the only non-Smithsonian employee authorized to carry historic watches out of the Museum – and that’s because he’s the reason the watches are there in the first place. Ragan was the man at NASA responsible for identifying the horological needs of the agency’s astronauts, and he performed the tests that would eventually lead to NASA picking the Speedmaster over other models for the Gemini and Apollo flight crews. And his influence ended up impacting the Speedmaster itself too – it’s because of him, for example, that Omega added crown guards.

For more information, visit Omega online.

Spring has sprung and you know what that means – auction season! Last week we had the opportunity to take a look at the highlights from the Phillips auction taking place in Geneva on May 13 and 14, and they were no joke. There were plenty of watches to drool over, including the Rolex reference 6062 "Bao Dai," a yellow gold Rolex Paul Newman Daytona ref. 6265, a rare Patek Philippe reference 530 with Breguet numerals (and with the fattest case you have ever seen), and a Patek Philippe ref.2499 retailed by Tiffany & Co. with the original bracelet (swoon). 

But the watch I was drawn to the most was a stainless steel Rolex reference 6062 – what can I say, expensive taste is the cross that I must bear. This watch caught my attention for many reasons, but mostly because while I had heard of this good-looking reference, I didn't know a ton about it. So what is the 6062 all about? Let's find out. 

What Is The 6062?

We have talked about the reference 6062 before on HODINKEE, specifically the Bao Dai, these two rose gold "Stelline" dial versions that came up for auction a while back (including one untouched example that sold for $950,000), and one or two that have come up at Phillips previously. However, it is important to note that none of these examples are steel. Only a single watch like that has appeared on HODINKEE before, and it's owned by Jason Singer, as seen in his Talking Watches video. 

The stainless steel 6062 is one of the rarest examples of the reference. It is one of just three Rolex references that feature a moonphase – the vintage ref. 6062 and ref. 8171, and the brand new Cellini Moon-Phase released this year at Baselworld. Making its debut at Baselworld in 1950, the 6062 was the first automatic triple calendar moonphase watch in a waterproof Oyster case (the 8171 is not in a waterproof case). Considering the Datejust debuted in 1945, this was a pretty advanced watch for Rolex at the time. The 6062 managed to marry a high-end complication, usually reserved for more delicate watches, with a sporty, waterproof Oyster case all while maintaining the everyday wearability we associate with Rolex.

The 6062 was produced in yellow gold, rose gold, and stainless steel, with two-tone silvered dials and sometimes, in rare cases, black ones. The gold models featured a series of dial configurations ranging from the "Stelline" (with stars as hour markers), the "Pyramid" (with triangular indexes at the quarter hours), darts (with arrow-head like indexes), diamond indexes (like the Bao Dai), and the 3-9 configuration. The steel 6062s only featured two-tone silvered dials with the 3-9 Arabic numerals in steel or yellow gold and luminous alpha hands. 

Want To Compare?

This is another exemplary 6062 in steel, owned by Jason Singer (as seen in his Talking Watches episode). This is one of the best steel 6062s out there, so it is helpful to look at this one next to the one coming up at Phillips for context.

The complications consist of the moonphase, the date, which is indicated by the outer chapter ring, and the day and month which are displayed in twin apertures at 12 o'clock. The watch itself is chronometer certified and this is indicated underneath the day and at the month. In some cases, like the Bao Dai, the "Chronometer Certified" is located in the sub-dial at six o'clock. The case is your standard 36mm Oyster case with screw-down case back and inside is the automatic Rolex caliber 655.

Only about 200-300 6062s were made in stainless steel, all between the years 1950 and 1953. This is a crazy low number of production for Rolex, which nowadays makes upward of 800,000 watches per year. And, if that sounds like a lot for some reason, know that only about 40 steel 6062s are known to be in the market today, very few of them in really great condition.

Collectibility

The steel 6062 gained traction in the 1980s when Japanese collectors started scooping up the really good examples. These watches were later sold to European dealers and collectors in the late 1990s, which later still showed up at auctions over the past decade. It is really tough to find a good example that has maintained both its condition and originality (remember, condition is king with vintage Rolex).

With that in mind, the steel 6062 has only come up at auction a handful of times in the past 10 years, and the results range from $50,000 to $400,000. Now, this may seem like a large spread, because well, it is. In my opinion, the real reason for the pricing difference is again condition, originality, and the relative strength of the market at the time of the sale.

The vintage Rolex market has been incredibly strong for the past five years, with the cost of ultra-rare references and models with unique dials creating a buzz in the market. This applies to the the steel 6062 too, but personally I think the cost of this watch comes down to quality and rarity. It's the good ole' "find me another" situation – there are so few in really top condition that when a good example comes up for sale, a prospective buyer is going to have some serious competition and doesn't really have another option if they want the watch.

The 6062 coming up for auction at Phillips is estimated at CHF 600,000 to 1,200,000. The last steel 6062 that was sold at auction was at Christies in 2013, and it sold for $371,156 (all in) on an estimate of $242,000 - $352,000. This watch had a less attractive dial with more age spots and definitely isn't as nice as the example we have here. I also think the fact that is has been fours years since a really good steel 6062 has come to auction explains the stronger estimate. It will be interesting to see how the one at Phillips ends up doing.

The 6062 Steel At Phillips In The Metal

Like all Rolex watches, this watch was designed to be worn, not kept in a safe somewhere. This means it is even more difficult to find untouched, unpolished, unworn, and well-preserved vintage Rolex watches like the 6062. The steel 6062 that is coming up at Phillips is one of the nicest examples to surface in years.

Overall, the watch is well-preserved with no obvious alterations. The case has probably been very lightly polished, but the shape remains full and hasn't really lost any definition. And as you can see in the caseback images, the engravings are still visible, showing that it was not overly polished. Additionally, the steel Jubilee bracelet is period-correct (yay!).

The dial is exceptional, and has that indescribable glow (you know the one I'm talking about). The lume plots are no more, but this is to be expected, and the remnants have faded to a nice vanilla color. The blue date ring is still extremely vibrant, which really makes the dial sing, and the applied Arabic numerals don't show too much aging or wear.

On the wrist, it wears just like you want a $1 million vintage stainless steel Rolex to wear – simply awesome. Like most 36mm Oyster cases it sits well on the wrist and it just makes you feel cool. That might sound trite, but there's no better way to put it. With this one your wrist, you just feel special. This could easily be a daily wear watch for those who dare (and have $1 million to spend on something like that).

But after all is said and done, the steel 6062 embodies everything great about vintage Rolex. It is balanced, clean, simple, and sturdy, all while having little details that make it special (did you notice that the date ring reverses between 8 and 23?). And while this watch may go for over $1 million, it remains totally understated and can be desired by almost any vintage watch lover.

The Phillips Geneva Watch Auction: Five will take place on May 13-14. The stainless steel Rolex 6062 is lot number 172. You can read more about this lot and see the rest of the watches in the auction, on the Phillips watches website.