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- Citizen's New Tsuyosa Colored And Guilloché Dials Are Fantastic, Sinn Releases Manual Wound 103 LE, Casio Brings Back The Casiotron, Vero Teams Up With The Forrest Service And New From Louis Moinet
Citizen's New Tsuyosa Colored And Guilloché Dials Are Fantastic, Sinn Releases Manual Wound 103 LE, Casio Brings Back The Casiotron, Vero Teams Up With The Forrest Service And New From Louis Moinet
An issue full of fantastic and affordable watches that will make everybody happy
It's About Time
February 19, 2024
Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. The one consistent request I get from readers of this newsletter is: give us more affordable watches. It’s also the most frequently posed question - people looking for an affordable good looking watch. Well, here you go, Citizen has just released one of the best looking affordable watches of the past several years. But don’t sleep on the Vero, as well
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In this issue:
Citizen Refreshes Their Super-Popular Tsuyosa Line With New Colors And Fantastic Textured Small-Seconds Dial
Sinn Releases The 103 St Ty Hd, A Hand Wound Limited Edition Of Their Classic Chronograph
Casio Celebrates 50th-Anniversary Of Their First Digital Calendar Watch With A Remake Of The Casiotron
Vero Teams Up With The U.S. Forrest Service For A Quartet Of Colorfuly Cerakoated Watches
Louis Moinet Is Pretty Mind Blowing With Its Silicon Wafer Dial And Two Tourbillons
Today’s reading time: 9 minutes and 6 seconds
👂What’s new
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Rolex is very secretive when it comes to their numbers. Technically, they don’t even release the number of watches they build a year, let alone how many of each model they sell. There are, of course, estimates. Most people believe Rolex makes about a million watches per year, and anecdotal stories from several ADs, it’s pretty sure that the Submariner is their best selling model. But right at it’s heels are the very classic Datejust and the somewhat affordable and approachable Oyster Perpetual. These last two watches combined are supremely popular - the watches are simple in shape, come in a wide range of colors and offer something different to the otherwise serious Rolex brand. So, it’s no wonder that a a very similar watch from a Japanes manufacturer that sells for a fraction of the price would be even more popular. That’s the Citizen Tsuyosa. While it already comes in a range of colors, Citizen is now updating the regular Automatic range with four new colors, but also introducing a brand new line called the Citizen Tsuyosa Small Second which looks fantastic.
Starting off with the regular Tsuyosa Automatic, the only change comes with the new dial colors, but the case remains the same. It’s a simple watch that resembles the Oyster Perpetual with its smooth bezel, but then departs from the look with a barrel-shaped that has square integrated lugs. It measures 40mm wide and 11.7mm thick, made out of steel, with a sapphire crystal on top, a see-through caseback and a 50m water-resistance.
The dials have baton hands and baton hour markers, both covered in lume, and a date window at 3 o’clock that has a cyclops on two of the four new colorways. The two with the cyclops will be available globally and are an orange colorway and oak,a champagne with gold-coloured hands and markers, both with sunray-brushed dials. The two without the cyclops are Europe exclusives with fantastic dials - a deeply brushed salmon dial and textured camouflage dial that, on first glance, looks a lot like that one jungle-themed Rolex.
The four new models of the Citizen Tsuyosa Automatic are all powered by the calibre 8210 automatic which beats at 21,600vph and has a 40 hour power reserve. They come on a 3-link bracelet with rounded links and a folding clasp.
The two Europe-exclusive models are available now, while the two global releases will go on sale in April, with all four carrying an unbeatable price of €299.
Then there’s a brand new model that comes in the exact same case called the Citizen Tsuyosa Small Second Automatic. Among the tinier changes are a new bracelet with larger centre polished links, a quick-release system and a concealed butterfly clasp. But the big change can be seen of the dial.
The first thing you’ll notice is the sub dial at 6 o’clock that displays the small seconds, but even more important is the brand new texture that the dial gets, a stamped guilloché-like pattern. It looks incredible and matches well with the three colorways it comes in - grey, blue or salmon, with the small seconds display always in silver and with color-matched seconds hands.
To drive the small-seconds subdial the Tsuyosa gets a new movement called the calibre 8322. It beats at 21,600vph and has a 60 hour power reserve. The blue and salmon versions come on the new steel bracelet, while the grey comes on a black leather strap.
The Citizen Tsuyosa Small Second also launches in April of this year, selling for €359 on the strap and €379 on the bracelet. I love these new pieces! Keep an eye out on the European citizen website to see when the brand puts them up, as they’re still missing.
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Imagine having a model in continuous production since the 1960s. This is only something the biggest brands can say, companies like Omega and Rolex. But it’s also true of Sinn, who has been making the Sinn 103 in various configurations for 60 years. But the watch has changed a bit since its inception and the biggest change is it being powered by an automatic movement. Sinn is now rectifying that, even if for a short while, with the limited edition 103 St Ty Hd which brings back a hand-wound movement.
The 103 is a significant watch. It measures 41mm wide and 14.8mm thick in this new(ish) hand-wound configuration, which is an improvement from a whopping 15.9mm. The case is made out of steel, there’s a double-domed acrylic crystal on top and despite it using a push-in crown it can still get 200 meters of water resistance. Sinn is best at these crazy tech innovations - they call this system of gaskets the D3-System which allows them to not have a screw down crown, to make it easier to wind, and still make it very capable. On top is a bidirectional black-coated bezel with a fully graduated 60-minute scale.
Instead of the regular 6-9-12 sub-dial layout the 103 has become known for, this limited edition gets a more traditional 3-6-9 layout. It also gets a brand new, beautiful color. It’s a take on the reverse panda dial, with a black base and champagne colored subdials and the internal flange. There are red details on the hour markers and the central seconds chrono hand, as well as roulette-wheel styling on one-third of the minute counter. Sinn forgoes their famous syringe hands and opts for pencil hands.
Inside is the familiar, robust and easily servicable Sellita SW510 M, which beats at 28,800vph and has a decent power reserve of 58 hours. The watch comes on a beautiful deep olive strap with red stitching, but you also get a black strap with white stitching.
The Sinn 103 St Ty Hd is limited to 1,000 pieces and priced pretty nicely - €2,590. See more on the Sinn website.
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A couple of months ago, Tissot released a digital version of the PRX. It wasn’t really met with a great response, with most people criticising Tissot for milking the PRX brand too much, the watch not looking particlarly good and it being too-much of a Casiotron rip off. If you haven’t looked up the Casiotron before, now Casio is showing you what it looked like with a direct homage to their 1974 Casio Casiotron QW02 called the, shocker, Casiotron TRN-50. Of course, it’s a limited edition.
The original Casiotron was not only known for it’s great looking digital display, but also for being first digital watch to feature an annual calendar function, meaning it displayed the month, date, and day of the week, adjusting the days of the month for every year, except for leap years. This new version is continuing this look and functionality. It comes in a stainless steel case that’s a combination of a round shape with strong facets on the sides and a fluted bezel on top. The width is fine at 39.1mm, as is the lug-to-lug of 42.7mm, but it’s curiously thick at 12.3mm. Water resistance is 50 meters.
The dial is interesting. There is an actual blue dial, which houses the solar cells that charge the batter, with a large cutout for the squarcicle display. The display has a range of fuctions, many more than the original. Sure, it has the same annual instead of perpetual calendar function, but it also comes with Bluetooth phone connectivity for automatic time changes, radio time-signal reception in different time zones, alarms, a stopwatch, countdown timer and an LED backlight.
The watch comes on a stainless steel bracelet that looks to be a very close recreation of the bracelet of the QW02. It’s very square, very 70s and has polished segments on the outside and polished and raised central segments.
The Casio Casiotron TRN-50 is limited to 4,000 pieces and will retail for €499. While 4,000 is a lot of watches, at such a great price and with so much nostalgia attached to the pieces, it should go fast so a non-limited version would have been kind of… better? See more on the Casio website.
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Pop-culture collaborations can be a tough thing to pull off. While most brands can make it work with Snoopy, some have struggled when it comes creating, for example, Marvel-themed watches. The U.S. based indie watch brand Vero is very good at such collaborations, which they proved with their Smoky Bear collaboration last year. It could have been corny, but ended up very nice. Now they’re continuing their national-forests-theme with a great looking collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service.
The new Forest Service is based on the look of the Workhorse from Vero, which is their very interesting take on a field watch, but in a more manageable package. The Workorse was a beast at 44.5mm, but the Forrest Service measures a much more approachable 39mm wide, 12.5mm thick and with a 45.25mm lug-to-lug. The case is fully round with very thing lugs, but has a very rugged look with bull bars that look like they’re holding the watch firmly together.
The case is made out of stainless steel, but coated in Cerakote, a colored ceramic, giving it a unique look. Also unique are the pushers and crowns - there’s a pusher at 2 o’clock color-matched to the seconds hand (which activates the nifty power reserve indicator), a traditional crown at 3 o’clock to adjust the time and date, and an additional crown at 9 o’clock that operates the internal bezel which has a 60 minute scale. On top is a flat sapphire crystal.
The watch comes in four case colors, each an homage to one of the branches of the Forest Service. There’s the bright yellow which honors the Hotshot Crews fighting fires; the khaki case matches the khaki shirts of the Rangers; the bright red (this time dial, with a grey case) is in line with the Airtankers which bring water and fire retardants to remote places and finally, the most controversial, Service Green of the Forest Service utility trucks. It’s not an exact match to the color of the trucks, but if you look at the trucks long enough you’ll also see they don’t all match up in color, so it’s passable.
Despite the case being pretty widl in design, the dial is relatively simple, if you don’t take into account the numerous levels of the dial. There’s an outside bezel that’s talles, with a lower central portion of the dial with painted Arabic numerals. The colors are all finely matched and you get baton-style hour and minute hands.
Inside is the Seiko Epson PX82A caliber, a kinetic quartz movement with a six-month power reserve. It’s an interesting movement that ticks like a standard quartz movement but has a rotor that recharges the capacitor inside. Very cool.
The Vero Forest Service Edition is available now and it’s priced at $475. That’s a pretty nice deal for such a great looking watch. See more on the Vero website.
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Most watch enthusiast live and die over the “in house movement” argument. What an in house movement is will be a discussion that will be held just as the world comes to an end, and we’ll still have no answer. But on the other end of the spectrum, in the rarified air of six figure watches, it’s a point of pride if you don’t use an in house movement. Take, for example, Louis Moinet who teamed up with Concept, the makers of legendarily complex movements - especially those with tourbillons - to create the Astronef, a highly luxurious and equally as complicated watch. Now they’re bringing the Astronef back with a brand new, sci-fi-looking dial made out of silicon wafer and with those two famous tourbillons.
It’s a crazy case - there’s a 43.5mm wide titanium bottom part that’s topped with a sapphire container that allows you to see the internals from all sides. Well, you can’t see much of the movement, as it’s housed in the base, but you do see the rather large and prominent tourbillons. There are centrally mounted hour and minute hands, rendered in yellow and filled with lume.
Then there’s the dial, or the top of the titanium case. It’s made out of a silicon wafer adorned with intricately engraved microelectronic circuits. Go look up the watch, as it constantly changes color, reflecting the light in all directions. The two flying satellite tourbillons, positioned on different levels, rotate on their axes and circumnavigate the inner perimeter of the dial, intersecting 18 times per hour, equivalent to every 3 minutes and 20 seconds. Each tourbillon draws energy from its dedicated mainspring barrel.
The movement driving all of this is called the LM 105 and it’s hand wound. It beats at 21,600vph and has a 48 hour power reserve. The watch comes on an alligator strap with a Fleur de Lys folding clasp.
The The Louis Moinet Astronef Techno is a piece unique and it’s priced at CHF 330,000. Good luck to the buyer! See more on the Louis Moinet 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 likewatches
Zooming in on the Scubanaut 200, this comes in a refreshingly designed stainless steel case of 41mm in diameter and 12.5mm in height. Add to that a lug-to-lug dimension of a rather sensible 48mm, and you end up with a watch that feels right at home on most wrists. The unidirectional rotating bezel gives the Scubanaut 200 its first twist, as it has both countdown and count-up scales (similar to the Tudor FXD blue). The count-up scale is printed on a black ceramic insert, while the countdown scale is engraved into a steel ring. The screw-down crown has a red ring around the stem to indicate when the crown is unscrewed. Simple, but effective! The sapphire crystal has an anti-reflective coating, and the solid caseback is decorated with a scuba-diving bear. As its name suggests, the watch is water resistant to 200m.
⏲️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
Vanity Fair has access unlike almost any other publication in the world. Now they’re going deep inside Johnny Depp’s epic bromance with Saudi crown prince MBS. This is the stranger-than-fiction story of how Mohammed bin Salman welcomed the 60-year-old movie star into his kingdom—and his circle of trust.
Ever lost your way in the wilderness? In 2021, nearly 3,400 people got lost in a US national park. In the 2000s, a researcher named Robert Koester gathered and analyzed data on the behaviors of different types of people, from children to experienced hikers, who’ve wandered and gotten lost in the wild. In what direction do they go? How do geographic features and different terrains influence their movements? In this piece for Undark, Sarah Scoles reports on the growing science of “lost person behavior,” which in turn can inform the strategies of search-and-rescue missions.
Just about every website out there includes a page called simply robots.txt; on it you’ll find a list of any search engine crawlers that aren’t allowed on the site. For 30 years, this has been a gentleperson’s agreement, honored by all in hopes of building a civil internet. But over time, what these crawlers do has changed considerably—and now, the rise of artificial intelligence is forcing site owners between a bot and a hard place. For The Verge, David Pierce ably unpacks the dynamics behind a tumultuous, if hidden, sea change.
👀Watch this
One video you have to watch today
Type in Jan Lammers and Volvo into Google and I’m betting the first photo you see will be my top 10 favorite car photo of all time. While other kids had Lambos and Ferraris on their walls, I couldn’t stop thinking about a Volvo station wagon. Just look at how ridiculous it looks on two wheels, a family car, but kicking ass and taking names. A fantastic weirdo from somewhere in the US had the same obsession and build his own BTCC-inspired Volvo wagon. I love it and I want it!
💵Pre-loved precision
Buy and sell your watches. Think of this section like old school classifieds - i don’t guarantee anything except that a bunch of people will see your ad and I’ll put the buyer and seller in touch. Want to advertise your watch? Contact us
LOOKING TO BUY: Here’s a crazy request. One of you is looking to buy the Ōtsuka Lotēc No. 7.5. Sure, it’s a big ask, but if any of you have one and want to sell, reach out to and I’ll put you in touch
SOLD: Well, not really new. It’s a great looking mid-90s Tudor Submariner 75090, offered for sale by a member of the It’s About Time reader crew. I love the way it looks and seems to be in great condition. Check it out over on Chrono24.
LOOKING TO BUY: One of our readers is looking to purchase three very specific watches: an Islander ISL-133 Mother of Pearl, a Sinn 556 Mother of Pearl or a Zelos 300m GMT Mosaic Mother of Pearl. If you’re selling any of these, reach out to us and we’ll put you in touch
Want to sell your watch to a community of passionate horologists? Reach out to us and we’ll put your ad up.
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-Vuk