Another Saturday, and it’s time for another edition of Watching the Web. In this series, we bring to your attention interesting articles from around the web, as well as posts from our own site that were popular over the last week or so. Today, I have an watchmaker from days gone by, a top 10 list of watch icons, and an interview with a guy teaching a class on identifying fakes. From our own site, the most popular recent posts were some EDC pocket dumps, the recent Steinhart release, and some hands-on time with Sinn divers. Read on for all the details!
First up from the wider world of watches, we have a discussion about a watchmaker of days gone by that you may not be aware of – Ferdinand Berthoud. Born in the early 1700s, Berthoud became a master clockmaker by 1753, and was a pioneer in the world of chronometers, which were becoming more and more important at the time for accurate marine navigation. He is also the man that is responsible for making the use of jewels in a movement acceptable and (now) commonplace. He also had one other rather important development that he was responsible for. For the details on that, as well as why Elizabeth Doerr is talking about a watchmaker from over 200 years ago, you’ll need to check out this article over at Quill & Pad.
Next up, we have a list of the top 10 watch icons. Now, this is one person’s take on it, so of course it will slant to their tastes, but I did not find anything personally amiss with what was called out. To narrow the field a bit, Robert-Jan Broer limits himself to those watches that are still in production today, and find themselves situated in the luxury end of the market. While there are no surprises in what shows up here, this is a compact list – or at least a starting point – for someone wanting to survey watches that are instantly recognizable. You can see the full run-down over at Chrono24.
Finally, we have have an interview with the man behind a new NAWCC course, Adam Harris. The course is on a subject that is on the mind of every person who has gone hunting for a used watch – whether or not a watch is fake. Cleverly titled “Luxury or Lie”, Harris shares some of his knowledge on how to spot things that call a fake watch out. Of course, if you are hunting for a specific model or reference, being intimately familiar with the looks of a genuine one helps, but I digress. In the interview over at NAWCC, they talk with him about how long it takes him to spot a fake (of note, it is all done without opening the watch up), as well as some tips a buyer can keep in mind. You can check out the interview (along with an anecdote about some photoshop fakery) right here.
Now, let us turn our attention to our own pages. First up, we had Matt covering our EDC cross-post this week, and he found a nice pair of pocket dumps from users of the site that had some rather nice watches, an Orient Bambino and a Sinn 566i. You can see those right here.
Next up, we have Matt’s take on the new Steinhart Ocean Titanium 500. Like him, I have never seen a Steinhart in person, but they are rather highly regarded in the online communities, and this latest model is a tidy take on the classic dive watch. When you realize you’re getting titanium, a ceramic bezel, and a Soprod movement, the sub-1k price is all the more surprising (and tempting). Check out the full writeup here.
Finally, we have (once again) Matt with his writeup on some Sinn watches that he saw at a recent WatchBuys roadshow (you can read more about that here). Like him, I agree that the blue dials are rather nicely done, and that the bezel lock is cleverly done. Given how large the minute hand is, though, the hour hand seems a bit on the stunted side, in my books. Then again, the price tag on these means I won’t need to worry about that. Still, a fun watch to see, and some rather nice innovations. See Matt’s take on it here.
Did you know that John Biggs’ latest book, Marie Antionette’s Watch, is only 99 cents on the Kindle, or you can buy a paperback from Amazon. Oh, and even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can always read via their free apps or their cloud read (check those out here
).
Hopefully you have this figured out by now, but it is a new month, so we have a new giveaway. This month, we are sticking with Mr. Jones, but switching models to the Mr. Jones Chatterbox. Patrick managed to spend a bit of time with it in hand, and he thought that “as a more art-oriented piece, the $260 watch meets it’s goal.”
We also want to put the call out for wrist shots of our reader’s favorite (or at least favorite of the moment) watches. Put together an email of your wrist shot and tell us a little about the watch and why you love it. If you happened to be introduced to it through our site (or won it through a give-away), even better. Just make sure the image is a JPEG and at least 800 pixels wide. The last two weeks have had reader wrist shots, so keep it guys (and gals).
With that, I will wrap up this edition of Watching the Web. 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.
