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- Grand Seiko Celebrates Spring Drive With Pink Snowflake SBGA497, Victoria Beckham Reimagines Breitling Chronomat 36, Hodinkee Founder Ben Clymer Releases G-Shock Collab, New Ikepod And Hublot
Grand Seiko Celebrates Spring Drive With Pink Snowflake SBGA497, Victoria Beckham Reimagines Breitling Chronomat 36, Hodinkee Founder Ben Clymer Releases G-Shock Collab, New Ikepod And Hublot
Victoria Beckham's Breitling is a small watch done right. I dig it a lot.
It's About Time
February 05, 2024
Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I harp on Grand Seiko form time to time for them being boring. And they tend to be a bit repetitive. But I can’t complain that much when they make watches this beautiful.
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In this issue:
Grand Seiko Celebrates 20 Years Of Automatic Spring Drive Watches With Pink Snowflake SBGA497
Breitling Works With Victoria Beckham On A Great Looking New Breitling Chronomat 36 Collection
Hodinkee Founder Ben Clymer Works With G-Shock For Limited Edition Watch Curated By John Mayer
Ikepod Is Retiring The Gen3 Megapod With A Fitting Hourglass Limited Edition
Hublot Updates The Spirit of Big Bang 32mm Jewelry Line With Rainbow And Full Pavé
Today’s reading time: 7 minutes and 51 seconds
Number of dragon-themed watches this Year (so far, and including today): 19
👂What’s new
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Way back in the late seventies, Seiko engineers had an idea for a new type of movement. They believed that they could use a traditional mainspring to power a traditional gear train, but then instead of having a traditional escapement, the movement would use a unidirectional glide wheel, rotating eight times per second. This wheel would power an electrical circuit that would apply an electromagnetic brake to it based on the reference signal from a quartz crystal. It was a an ingenious way of marrying traditional mechanical watchmaking principles with modern developments in quartz technology, offering incredible precision while keeping the satisfying sweep.
Only, it wasn’t an easy task to accomplish. It wasn’t until 1998 that they showed off the prototype to the public, with very limited editions being released a year later, an unlimited, manual wound examples showing up in 2002. Only in 2004 did Grand Seiko release the first regular-production automatic Spring Drive watch, reference SBGA001 with caliber 9R65 and they are celebrating this 20th anniversary now. And they’re doing it with the new SBGA497 which pays homage to a bunch of significant Spring Drives in history.
The new Grand Seiko SBGA497 brings back the same case shape that the ‘04 original came in, made out of titanium and measuring 41mm wide, 12.5mm thick and with a lug-to-lug of 48.5mm. It has a largely brushed finish with the expected Zaratsu polish on the bezel and a few other key places. Water resistance is 100 meters, there’s a dual-curved sapphire crystal on top and a sapphire case back.
While the case is based on the original, the dial takes inspiration from perhaps the most popular Spring Drive watch of them all, the SBGA011 which is nicknamed the Snowflake. It got it’s name from it’s snow white dial that had a hammered pattern, making it look like it was covered by a fresh layer of snow. The new SBGA497 uses the exact same texture, but instead of white it gets an incredible shade of pink, one that looks a bit more saturated than the legendary Cherry Blossom. And it wouldn’t be GS if they weren’t inspired inspired by nature. From their website: “a limited edition with a dial capturing the beauty of sunrise against a snow-covered Hotaka mountain range”, with the Hotaka mountain range being where all Grand Seiko Spring Drive watches are made.
Inside is the 9R65 Spring Drive caliber which is accurate to +/- 15 seconds per month and has a pretty great 72 hour power reserve. It also has a date windo at 3 o’clock and a power reserve indicator that sits between 7 and 8 o’clock. The watch comes on a titanium bracelet with the familiar GS clasp that lacks any micro-adjustment.
The Grand Seiko SBGA497 is available from Grand Seiko boutiques and select authorized dealers now as a limited edition of 1,500 pieces and at a price of €6,800. See more on the Grand Seiko website.
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A true watch snob will laugh at the idea of Victoria Beckham working with Breitling to create the Chronomat 36 Victoria Beckham Collection. Such a person might call it a cashgrab, ask what a footballers wife is doing designing watches. But this watch snob would be royally wrong. Not only is Victoria, along with her husband David who is an ambassador for Tudor, a well documented collector of amazing watches, she obviously has a great eye for design. Because the Victoria Beckham Collection could easily be the best fashion collaboration in the watch world and, hopefully, a great entry point to get more people into collecting watches.
The cases of the collection remain largely unchanged, meaning they come in stainless steel and 18k yellow gold, all measuring 36mm wide, 10.01mm thick and with a lug-to-lug of 43.4mm. So, they are perfect for smaller wrists, bot male and female, and the great thing about the collection is that they did a great job of avoiding the “shrink and pink” method of creating female watches by making them overly “feminine” with pink colors and shiny stones. All six versions have a case matching uni-directional timing bezel and push crown which will get you an impressive 100 meters of water resistance. Remaining the same are the applied hour indices and the hours and minutes hand, just like the COSC-certified automatic Breitling 10 calibre with 42 hours of power reserve inside.
What’s brand new are the colors, which Victoria Beckam obviously has an eye for. The stainless steel models come with a midnight blue dial, a peppermint dial or a gray dial with lab-grown diamond hour markers. The 18k yellow gold models also get the midnight blue and peppermint dials, with the third coming in a sand colored dial. All the dials lack the sunburst brushing that the regular Chronomat 36 version has , instead choosing to go for a solid, almost pastel, finish. Another addition is Victoria Beckham’s initials VB that are used as a counterweight on the seconds hand, which is also the only Beckham branding on the watch other than the solid caseback engraving. Which is great.
All six versions come in a metal-matching Rouleaux bracelets which look incredible. The stainless steel versions are limited to 400 pieces each while the gold ones are limited to 100 each, meaning a total of 1,500 will be made. All of them also come with a $500 premium over the regular versions, meaning that the stainless steel versions are priced at $5,600, the steel versions with diamonds on the dial at $5,950 and the gold versions are priced at $29,500. See more on the Breitling website.
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Regardless of what you might think of them today, regardless of what’s happening in the company at the moment, there’s no denying that Hodinkee is a groundbreaking watch publication that introduced a completely new discourse among watch collectors, bringing together the fragmented talks one would have to hunt down on forums into a neatly packaged website. Hodinkee is now more than 15 years old and over the past several months they have tasked watch collector and musician John Mayer with curating Hodinkee’s three-part collaborative series with G-SHOCK. The latest watch in the collection is the limited-edition Ref. 5600 designed by Ben Clymer, Hodinkee’s founder and chairman. It’s also the first watch to bear Clymer’s name, despite the hundreds of Hodinkee collaborations.
The watch is based on the legendary DW-5600, with this version coming in a beautiful shade of grey that looks almost green. This is mostly because of the olive green on the dial that gives the drab grey a green shine. The watch comes on a dark gray strap with the same olive green keepers.
On the dial, instead of the CASIO logo that’s usually on top, you will find the letters “NYC TYO ATL”. The three initials symbolize the three homes of the brands: NYC and ATL nodding to Hodinkee’s New York and Atlanta offices, while TYO stands for G-SHOCK’s headquarters in Tokyo. The caseback has an engraving that reads “BEN CLYMER” and “HODINKEE,” alongside a thank you note and the slightly corny Latin phrase “Esse Quam Videri” which translates to “To be, rather than to seem.”
The watch is a limited edition, but I couldn’t find to how many it’s limited, but you can still get one at a price of $185. With every purchase, $5 USD will be donated to support the Horological Society of New York. See more on Hodinkee.
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I have a love-hate relationship with Ikepod. This watch brand was started by briliant designed Marc Newson and entrepreneur Oliver Ike and it came to mark the age of pre-Y2K design, leaving a strong imprint on the likes of Jony Ive and all the work he has done with Apple. I loved their iconic pebble-like design. What I hate about them is the fact that they constantly go out of business. Now, on their third iteration, they seem to be doing good and I hope they live a long and healthy life. Now they’re preparing to retire their legendary gen3 Megapod and they are doing so with a Hourglass limited edition.
The modern Megapod was designed by Alexander Peraldi, former artistic director at Baume & Mercier, and it was a funky looking piece that had quite the presence. The Hourglass limited edition is an appropriate sendoff as it directly references the iconic Marc Newson Hourglass Ikepod creations.
The Medapod Hourglass comes in a hefty 46mm wide stainless steel case with a sapphire crystal that forms a continuous curve with the brushed case. There are no lugs as the strap attaches directly to the case. Despite the crazy look, you still get 50 meters of water resistance and inside is the automatic Miyota 9039 movement which you can see through the caseback.
The case is wild, but this version of the Megapod gets an even wilder dial. Actually, the dial is relatively tame, with a number of colors, all of which have weirdly specific names: Walter (white dial with minute scale), Rob (grained grey dial with hour scale), Dieter (blue dial with minute scale), Gae (black dial with minute scale), Quazar (black dial with hour scale), Matti (silver dial with hour scale) and Joe (white dial with both minute and partial hour scale). All seven come with black silicone straps.
Where things get strange is the seconds hand - instead of a regular hand, this watch gets a bright-orange central seconds hand in the shape of an hourglass. According to the brand, during the design of the Megapod dials in 2020, Alexander Peraldi conceived this feature as a tribute to the iconic object d’art associated with the Ikepod brand – a design no longer in production.
The Farewell Megapod series is available now and priced at €1,350. See more on the Ikepod website.
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Last week was LVMH Watch Week 2024 and I was sure I covered everything. Looks like I missed one release that will have a very niche audience. Along with their very interesting ceramic, SAXEM and MP-10 releases, Hublot quietly updated their Hublot Spirit of Big Bang 32mm Jewelry watches, a bunch covered in diamonds and rainbow-colored gemstones.
The Hublot Spirit of Big Bang has a signature tonneau-shaped case, here in it’s smallest size that measures 32mm wide and 11.4m thick. The watches come in either steel or 18k King Gold and the updates can be found in six cariants.
The first four are the full diamond versions, set with 479 brilliant-cut diamonds on the case, lugs, bezel, and dial. The dial has applied hour markers and central hours, minutes, and seconds hands. They come on either white or black rubber straps, accompanied by color-matched ceramic details on their “sandwich” constructed cases.
The remaining two Spirit of Big Bang models are rainbow versions, featuring 493 gemstones consisting of rubies, amethysts, topazes, tsavorites, and sapphires in pink, yellow, orange, and blue. The bezel is set with 58 rectangular baguette-cut gemstones. Both the steel and King Gold rainbow models are fitted with black rubber-lined multicolored alligator straps, equipped with either full steel or King Gold/black plated steel deployant clasps to match the case metal.
Inside all seven watches is the Caliber HUB1120, a self-winding movement that beats at 28,800 vibrations per hour and supplies about 40 hours of power reserve. As expected, the movement is visible via the barrel-shaped sapphire window on the caseback.
If you want the diamond set watch, regardless of the color, it will set you back $34,600 in steel and $46,200 in gold, while the rainbow versions are priced at $72,600 in steel and $80,000 in gold. See more on the Hublot 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
The ART01 tourbillon exudes craftsmanship with its titanium and sapphire construction, showcasing a gold movement in all its glory. At first glance, the watch exudes a sense of super-integration, giving the impression of being a unified whole rather than a complex assembly of hundreds of components. However, this illusion quickly dissipates upon closer examination. The seamless integration of the case, dial, movement, and strap – we typically describe a watch in that order – makes it challenging to dissect these essential elements individually.
⏲️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
The recent Alaska Airlines Boeing rapid, mid-flight, decompression after a part of the fuselage fell off caused many people to ask: is it safe to fly. Interestingly, despite it looking like there’s a complete lack of repsosiblity from large companies, it turns out the US leads the world in airline safety, and this is mostly because of the way they assign blame when accidents do happen. An interesting read about post-accident investigations
Speaking of plane crashes, how about this story about a race to find four children who survived a plane crash deep in the Amazon?
Nicholson Baker, a novelist and essayist from Maine, claims aliens haven’t visited the earth. So why are so many smart people, both in popular culture and actual governments, insisting otherwise? He says that the entire movement is easily debunked by investigating Cold War history. At least he eviscerates your extraterrestrial dreams with good cheer and good writing.
👀Watch this
One video you have to watch today
I watched the Blues Brothers again the other day. Probably for the seventieth time. It’s a perfect movie full of perfectly quotable moments (“It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses”). This one I linked above might be one of my favorites. Just look at John Belushi’s incredible delivery. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a good thing he died young, so he didn’t spoil his incredible output, or if we could have gotten many, many more things like the Blues Brothers. Deep down I know it’s the latter.
Also, I assume you knew that the Blues Brothers started as an SNL skit. Look at them perform Soul Man and tell me if there were ever a cooler duo in the world.
💵Pre-loved precision
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-Vuk