The Ciga Design Magician has a 3-in-1 trick up its sleeve

With a watch, you love the one you buy. Then, slowly, you want to refresh it with some new straps to change the look, or maybe something else with a completely different case shape catches your eye. Or what if you really dig the look of the dial on your watch, but wish it was in something different? Well, if any of those scenarios sound like you, you might just want to check out the Ciga Design Magician.

At the heart of the Ciga Design Magician is, well, it’s mechanical heart. What they’ve done is taken the movement, dial, crystal, and steel movement surround and turned it into a single unit. Then, with that central core, you can move it between one of three different cases – a classic round, a more angular tonneau style, or a B&R-inspired full square.

For the dial, well, there really isn’t a dial. You’ve got a full view of the movement – including the large “gear” around the outer edge – and all of the bits and bobs. The hands spinning over it are also hollowed out, but are lumed, so that should help legibility. The weird thing here is that the hands look to be very similar in length, so telling them apart might be a bit tricky until you’re used to it.

The mounting into the external cases is what’s going to be the big sticking point here. Obviously, these aren’t going to be as robust as the steel dive or sports watch you might have. Hopefully things mount in firmly enough that you don’t have things bouncing around, or have any concerns about the inner core slipping out of it’s case. And of course, you’ll have to see how that works over time, if things stay as tight as they were at the outset or not.

While skeleton watches aren’t really my thing these days, the Ciga Design Magician does have an interesting look, offsetting that delicate look of the open movement with the robustness of the external cases. And hey, who knows, maybe they’ll release more cases in the future, or some clever person with a 3D printer will start mocking up new ones. For what we have now, though, you’ve got some choices. The automatic version runs $629 in steel or $799 in titanium; if you want the manually-wound version in a DLC titanium case, that’s $969. cigadesign.com