Welcome back to our weekly installment, Watching the Web, where we have a quick look at some interesting watches and articles that have popped up over the last week, as well as taking a second look at what some of our more popular articles this week were. Today, we’ve got the big Rolex news of the week, and some vintage Seiko love. After those, we’ll highlight (as usual) some of our more popular posts from the last week. Read on to see what we’ve got in store for you.
The big news this week from Rolex was that they were introducing a new model – quite out of the norm for them, of course, as they normally introduce new models during BaselWorld. However, this release coincides with James Cameron’s newest film, the Deepsea Challenge 3D. The new watch isn’t actually anything all that new – they took their existing Deepsea, and changed up the dial a bit. This is a gradient dial (blue into black) that is supposed to evoke the travel into deeper water; there’s also a splash of color with the bright green ink for the Deepsea name. For me, it’s not doing a whole lot, but I suppose there are others who will be lining up for it. For more on the watch, check out the writeups over at aBlogtoWatch and Rolex Passion Report.
For the next article, I purposely wanted to get into something that was a bit more in the realm of possibility (as the Deepsea above is firmly in five-figure territory). For many collectors, the Grand Seiko series is a bit of a revelation. While many of us are familiar with the everyday sort of quality we can expect from the brand, it can be a surprise to learn that they’ve got some very high-end (and high-beat) mechanical watches in the form of the Grand Seiko. While these are alluring, they can be out of the reach of many budgets. This is where the vintage market can be your friend, with well-maintained examples running from $800-$1500. If that sounds attractive, see what else the team at Worn & Wound had to say about vintage Grand Seiko’s right here.
Now, let’s turn our attention back to our own pages. First up, we’ve got the Smith & Bradley Ambush Kickstarter project. As you know, we’re fans of the local company (well, local to me, at least) and their latest is a departure from what they’ve built before. This time, they’ve gone in a Breitling-esque ana-digi direction, and one I like. Why is that, you say? Well, my thoughts are that if you’re going to go quartz, it better be doing something that mechanical can’t be doing to grab my interest. In that light, the Ambush certainly delivers. Check out our writeup right here. Also of note? The project is completely (actually, over-) funded with a month still left to go in the campaign.
Next up, we’ve got the Rumba Time Brooklyn. Astute readers noted the similarity to the AVI-8 Flyboy (which, funnily enough, is one of the watches in our current giveaway – see below), and it’s an honest one – AVI-8 and Rumba Time are actually sister brands. In some ways, you can think of this as the more affordable little brother of the Flyboy. Is it worth picking up? Check out what Matt had to say in his hands-on review, and form your own opinion.
Don’t forget that we’re now in a new month, so we’ve started up a new giveaway. August marks my three-year anniversary with the site, so we’ve got a three-watch giveaway for you this time around. Head on over here to get your entries in.
With that, we’ll wrap things up. As always, if there’s something you think we should be covering, feel free to drop us a line. If you bring something up that we end up writing about, we’ll be sure to tip our hats (electronically, if not literally) in your general direction.
Pictures courtesy of the source site
