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  • Christopher Ward Adds A GMT To The Very Cool C65 Dune White Sand; Certina Releases New DS Action GMT Powermatic 80; Imperial Watch Co. Remakes A Cool Diver; And Blancpain Has A New Green Dial

Christopher Ward Adds A GMT To The Very Cool C65 Dune White Sand; Certina Releases New DS Action GMT Powermatic 80; Imperial Watch Co. Remakes A Cool Diver; And Blancpain Has A New Green Dial

It took me way to long to realised that 75% of the watches I wrote about today are GMTs. neat

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It's About Time
March 04, 2024

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. The watch news drought continues, but get read for a major release in the next day or two. It is something that hard-core nerds have been waiting for a while.

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In this issue:

  • Christopher Ward Expands The C65 Dune Range With A New GMT Option

  • Is The New Certina DS Action GMT Powermatic 80 The Affordable(ish) GMT People Have Been Waiting For?

  • Imperial Watch Company Is Back With Another Homage To A Very Specific Eberhard Model

  • Blancpain Takes Inspiration From The Forests Surrounding Their Manufacture For The Villeret Quantième Perpétuel Green Dial

Today’s reading time: 6 minutes and 40 seconds

👂What’s new

1/

The meteoric rise of Christopher Ward from an ambitious microbrand into one of the most important watch brands in the UK has been a sight to behold. It wasn’t an overnight success, of course, as the brand has been around since 2004, perfecting their designs over the years. Now, they have an incredibly diverse range that includes watches like The Twelve, the C63 and unique pieces like the Bel Canto. But their bread and butter have got to be divers and field watches. And now Christopher Ward is updating their field watch line with a dual-time zone model, the C65 Dune GMT White Sand.

The GMT is the big change here, along with the dial, meaning you get the same familiar C65 case. This is a stainless steel watch with brushed and polished surfaces, a smooth fixed bezel on top, a domed crystal and measurements that read 38mm wide, 11.9mm thick and a very comfortable 43.7mm lug-to-lug, thanks to the stubby lugs. An oversized crown on the right side screws down and gives you 150 meters of water resistance. It’s a very attractive, very wearable and comfortable package.

The dial keeps some of the main aspects of the Dune White Sands collection from CW, which include a cream dial, slightly darker khaki applied Super-LumiNova hour markers and hands of the same khaki shade, both of which get a diamond polish finish. New is the green-tipped 24-hour hand and the really nice shade of green on the peripheral 24-hour scale. This is not an internal bezel, as it might look at first, but rather a fixed ring, allowing you to track one additional time zone.

Inside is the Sellita SW 330-2 automatic GMT movement which beats at 28,800vph, has a power reserve of 56 hours and is rated to +/- 20 sec per day. The movement has slaboré ‘Colimaçoné’ finish, which is fine as it can be seen through the caseback. The SW 330-2 is a caller-type GMT, meaning you independently adjust the GMT hand instead of your local time. One slight disadvantage of the SW 330-2 movement when compared to the other movements that the Dune watches get is that you lose COSC chronometer certification. The watch comes on a beige canvas webbing strap or you can spend a little more to get it on CWs steel bracelet.

The Christopher Ward C65 Dune GMT White Sand joins the regular lineup of CW watches and is available for purchase now. On the strap the price is €1,250, while the bracelet option will run you €1,465. See more on the Christopher Ward website.

2/

In my prediction for 2024 in the world of watches, I said some pretty unsurprising things. Like, for example, that the proliferation of GMT movements in watches is not over and will continue for quite some time, especially with the advent of affordable flyer GMT movements. But even when it’s not a flyer GMT, brands like Seiko, Citizen, RZE, Traska, Lorier, Bulova, Baltic and Yema are all cranking out great looking multi-time-zone watches in the $500-$1,500 price range which is becoming increasingly competitive. Now, the Swatch Group is entering the same market with the new Certina DS Action GMT Powermatic 80 in three new colors.

The three new watches are actually not the first DS Action GMT Powermatic 80 watches. Certina already makes versions of this watch in a 43.1mm wide case and with the 24-hour scale on the inside of the crystal, on the fixed rehaut. The new watches, unfortunately, also don’t come in the very cool 38mm titanium case that Certina uses for some DS Action watches. They do, however, come in a stainless steel case that measures 41mm wide, 13.8mm thick and has a 49.3mm lug-to-lug. Being a sports watch, water resistance of 200 meters is not surprising. On top is a sapphire crystal, surrounded by a stainless steel bi-directional bezel with a colored sapphire crystal inlay that has the 24-hour scale, allowing you to track three time zones.

The main differences in the three watches come in the form of colors. First up is a black dial version with a black and green bezel with a green 24-hour hand, a colorway which fans of a certain watch brand have nicknamed Sprite. Next is the Pepsi, with a blue dial, a blue-red bezel and a red GMT hand. And lastly, there’s a ‘Root Beer’ with a black dial, black and brown bezel and white GMT hand, with the addition of gold coloured metal around the crown and bezel.

Inside is the Powermatic 80.661, a more upscale and GMT enabled version of Swatch Group’s Powermatic 80, famous for their 80 hour power reserve and relative low cost of production. The movement beats at 21,600vph and it’s a flyer-style GMT, meaning that you independently adjust the 12 hour hand to shift your local time, while the GMT hand can remain stationary on your home time zone. Swatch has used this movement in watches from Mido, Tissot and Certina before, and it’s great to see more affordable flyer-style movements make their way to customers. The Pepsi and the Sprite versions come on a stainless steel Oyster-style bracelet, while the Root Beer comes on a brown leather strap.

The new Certina DS Action GMT Powermatic 80 come in at two price points - €1,195 for the Pepsi or Sprite on stainless steel bracelet and €1,170 for the Root Beer on the leather strap. See more on the Certina website.

3/

Remakes of vintage divers are nothing new, and are mostly welcome in the watch enthusiast world. Who wouldn’t like vintage looking watches that have modern tech inside them? Well, when it comes to the remake of the Eberhard Scafograf 300, a popular and great looking watches from the 60s. The company Eberhard is still around and in 2016 they remade the vintage piece. It was such a success that it won the Sports Watch category of the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève 2016, beating out the likes of the Tudor Heritage Black Bay Dark, the Ressence 5B and the Heuer Monza. But Eberhard no longer makes this pieces. No worries, however, as the Hawaii-based Imperial Watch Co. has stepped up to the plate. First, last year, they released their homage to the Scafograf 300, in the form of the Royalguard 200 and, following the success of that, now they’re introducing a quartet of Oceanguard models, their vision of the Scafograf 300 with a GMT complication.

Using the same case as the Royalguard, the Oceanguard comes in a 38mm, 14mm thick stainless steel case that has a lug-to-lug of 47mm. The sharp flat lugs, along with a brushed finish and a domed sapphire crystal give the watch a vintage look. On top is a bi-directional GMT bezel with a 24-hour graduated aluminum insert.

The four models are differentiated through their color schemes. Three come with black dials and one comes with a white dial. One black and one white dial get a pepsi-style bezel, meaning blue and red, while the other two black dials come with a coral and turquoise bezel, and the other with a fuchsia and cyan bezel, both of which have a great faded-bezel look.

The dials look very much like the Royalguard with the addition of a very cool, but not functional detail - instead of a printed triangle marker at 12 o’clock, the Oceanguard gets a circle index that is divided in half horizontally, mimicking the water-ingress indicators on old mil-spec divers. On the black dial the cricle is white on top and black on the bottom and on the white dial it’s cream on top and white on the bottom. At 6 o’clock is a date window with a roulette date wheel.

Inside is Seiko’s affordable caller GMT movement, the NH34. It beats at 21,600vph and has a 41 hour power reserve. Accuracy is not great at +40 / -20 secs per day, but the movement is affordable and easily servicable. The watch comes on an updated bracelet that now has five links instead of three with a quick-adjust clasp.

All of this sounds really good, but now for some bad news. Imperial Watch Co. says they have made 25 pieces of each colorway, with the possibility of additional made depending on demand. I can’t see how these won’t sell out instantly, especially with a $499 introductory price for the first 48 hours that climbs to $599 after that period. The watches go on sale April 9 at 8:00 A.M. Pacific Time. See more on the Imperial Watch Co. website.

4/

Seeing as how Blancpain has been in the news these past year or two mostly for their Fifty Fathoms diving watch, the casual observer would be forgiven for maybe forgetting that Blancpain makes so much more than just divers. Well, it’s nice of them to remind us from time to time. Now they’re introducing a new color to their Villeret Quantième Perpétuel - a wonderful shade of green.

The watch comes in a really pretty, very simple, fully polished 18k red gold case that measures 40.3mm wide and 10.8mm thick. Sapphire crystals are on top and bottom, and holding down the top is an attractive stepped bezel that gives just a hint of pizzaz to the otherwise very classical watch.

The dial continues with Blancpain’s tradition of taking inspiration from nature that surrounds their headquarters at Le Brassus Manufacture in Switzerland, and the dark green for this dial, and it’s sunray finish, take inspiration from the forests that surround the manufacture. The dial gets applied red gold Roman numeral indices, a leaf handset, and three subcounters that make up the Gregorian calendar, alongside Blacnpain’s iconic moon phase at 6 o’clock.

Through the back you can see the 5954 self-winding movement, which is made up of 351 components, 32 jewels, complete with 72 hours of power reserve. Good thing you can see the movement, as you get a great view of the red gold honeycomb oscillating weight. The watch comes on a brown alligator leather strap with a red gold folding clasp.

The Blancpain Villeret Quantième Perpétuel is available now and priced at $50,600. See more on the Blancpain website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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⚙️Watch Worthy

A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like

The real standout feature on the Vaer D5 Pacific watches is their colorful multi-layer dials, which feature raised luminous hour markers that are set above a recessed ring separating the center section of the dial from its checkerboard-style minute track. Additionally, unlike the standard D5 models, Vaer’s D5 Pacific watches have trapezoid-shaped date windows at 6 o’clock that display the date with roulette-stye calendar discs. On the Vaer D5 Pacific Anacapa model featured here, the dial largely consists of two different shades of green punctuated by white text with bright orange and yellow accents for its minute track. One rather unusual detail is that instead of alternating colors every single day like a standard roulette calendar disc, the orange and green date wheel on the Vaer D5 Pacific Anacapa will display three orange values in a row before switching to a single green value, and then repeating the pattern once again.

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

The new F1 season is starting, the new season of Drive to Survive is out. That’s fine. But that also means that Rocket Powered Mohawk is back with more videos. If you don’t know RPM, who I have mentioned here many, many times, just watch the video. You will not get better commentary on any sport anywhere else on this planet. You don’t even have to like Formula 1. Or sports. It’s that good.

💵Pre-loved precision

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