Grand Seiko Updates Their Two Classiest Watches, Bremont Releases Dark Tactical MBIII Stealth, Farer Proves They Are Masters Of Color With Durham Pullman, New From Montford And Hautlence

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. As prices are increasing everywhere, it might just be me, but that Grand Seiko SBGW301 is starting to look like a decent deal.

If you like this newsletter, you might consider supporting it. You can do so in two ways. Forward it to someone you know loves watches and ask them to subscribe, or you can directly support it through Patreon.

In this issue:

• Grand Seiko Closes 2023 In The Classiest Of Ways With New Additions To The Elegance Collection

• Bremont Releases Very Dark, Very Tactical, MBIII Stealth Limited Edition

• Farer Once Again Proves They Are Masters Of Color With The Very Unfortunately Named Durham Pullman

• Montford Watch Co. Launches A New Field Watch Called The Rubus With A Significant Donation To Charity

• The New Hautlence Vagabonde Tourbillon Series 3 Is Really Something You Don’t See Every Day

Today’s reading time: 9 minutes and 27 seconds

👂What’s new

1/

Grand Seiko Closes 2023 In The Classiest Of Ways With New Additions To The Elegance Collection

Grand Seiko is not one to stun with their extravagant designs. They like to keep it simple and understated. When they do depart from this recipe, they tend to get a lot of attention - some positive and many more negative - like was the case last week with a trio of LEs for Watches of Switzerland which included an amazing acid-green guilloche dial. While this was a nice excursion to the wild side, GS is now firmly back on the conservative side with a duo of new additions to their Elegance collection. These are the SBGW301 and SBGW305, ‘the Calatravas of Japan.’

The watches come in a stainless steel case that measures 37.7mm wide and is 11.7mm thick. As you would expect from a GS watch, especially one from their Elegance collection, it gets a whole bunch of mirror-like Zaratsu polishes. If these watches look familiar, it’s because they are. Not only have you possibly seen this variation often since 2001, when the SBGW001 was first introduced and on which this duo is based on. But sometimes tiny changes are the best changes.

Since both watches share a case, the reference difference comes from the difference of the dials. The SBGW301 comes with a smooth ivory dial with faceted hour markers and diamond cut hands. The SBGW305 is a bit colder and also has a smooth dial, but colored a very light silver. It has the same hour makers and hands, so it’s a matter of personal choice which one works for you.

Inside the watch is the Grand Seiko 9S64 manual movement. With it you get a 72-hour power reserve and it’s accurate to +5/-3 seconds per day. You can see it through the exhibition caseback, where the finishing is just as quietly refined as the dial with a three-quarters plate and striped finish. The SBGW301 is comes on a leather strap while the SBGW305 is on a five-link steel bracelet.

I know we are all hungry for more exciting offerings from Grand Seiko - a new case, a wild dial, maybe even something more complicated. But then the Japanese bring 2023 to a close with their most basic and elegant dress watch and you see why they are some of the best in the business. The SBGW301 is priced at $4,800, while the SBGW305 will set you back $5,500. See more on the Grand Seiko website.

2/

Bremont Releases Very Dark, Very Tactical, MBIII Stealth Limited Edition

Since 1946, Martin-Baker has been making one of the coolest systems to ever be installed on any vehicle - the ejection seat. Here’s one number that won’t shock you: their seats are used on more than 80 aircraft types. Here’s one number that will drop your jaw: their seats have saved more than 7,600 lives. That seems like a huge number, doesn’t it? Well, if you’re one of the 7,600 people whose life was saved by a Martin-Baker seat, you get to mark this special occasion with something truly unique. Well, it’s not unique, as 7,600 of you can buy it, but you know what I mean. If you’ve ejected from a plane with a Martin-Baker, you can go to Bremont, and purchase the MBI watch which is reserved just for people who have had this experience.

Even though I never really understood Bremont watches, I always thought this was supremely cool. Bremont alway seemed to be a bit overpriced, a bit too diversified, a bit too ethereal, and I never got into them. In the past several months, as I’ve been digging deeper into their catalogue, I’ll say mu mind is completely changed - I dig them. While the MBI is reserved only for the few, Bremont has made the MBII and the MBIII, which are available to the general public. Their latest release is the MBIII Stealth, a limited edition that’s, unfortunately, all sold out. But it’s still worth mentioning.

The Bremont MBIII Stealth comes in a 43mm wide black DLC treated stainless steel case that has Bremont’s Trip-Tick construction. The watch is 14.5mm thick (a lot for just a GMT) and a lug-to-lug of 50mm. On the inside, the case is fitted with an elastomer anti-shock dampener, to be able to survive ejections from an aeroplane, and a Faraday cage to provide magnetic resistance.

The dial is super simple, black with white numerals and a date aperture at 3 o’clock. On the very edge of the dial is a tiny 24 hour scale, which is used in conjunction with a thin and elegant GMT hand that has a red tip and lumed dot, while the counterweight of that hand is shaped like the ejection lever on a Martin-Baker seat. The regular hands are sword shaped and filled with generous amount of lume.

Inside the watch is the Bremont branded 11 1/2”’ BE-93-2AV, which is in essence the ETA 2892-A2. This is a caller GMT (shame, at such a high price) that beats at 4Hz and has a 50 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a black Chalgrove rubber strap with DLC pin buckle.

The Bremont MBIII Stealth exists in only 50 pieces and all of them are, unfortunately, sold out. Had you had an opportunity to get one, you would have paid £4,750 for it. See more on the Bremont website.

3/

Farer Once Again Proves They Are Masters Of Color With The Very Unfortunately Named Durham Pullman

In the long line of horrible people in the United States, George Pullman was a particularly bad breed of human garbage. He’s most famous for his Pullman Company that made train cars, including the legendary Pullman sleeping car which became the IT mode of travel for rich Americans. He also forced his workers to live in the company town where he paid them very little and charged them huge amounts for rent, making it difficult for them to survive and nearly impossible to save up enough to get the hell out of the town to find other work, essentially turning them into slaves. He basically invented tipping culture, refusing to pay African-American porters and having them compensated only in tips. When his railway workers tried to go on strike and boycotted all trains that carried a Pullman car, a strike that at it’s peak included 250,000 people, Pullman called in a favor with President Grover Cleveland who ordered in the Army to stop the strikers from obstructing the trains. 70 people died in riots, the strike collapsed and the union that organized the strike was disbanded and it’s founder imprisoned. Go listen to The Dollop podcast about this very nasty man, it’s a fun one.

Now that we know that Pullman was a really bad guy, I find it kind of weird to see a watch named after his trains. Sure, his sleeper car is still admired today as the epitome of luxury, but come on. Well, the London-based watchmaker Farer did exactly that. Their latest release in the Cushion Case collection is the Durham Pullman. Despite naming their watch after a monster, it’s an incredible looking piece with a stunning green dial.

All of the Cushion Collection watches share a case that, as the name suggests, is cushion shaped. It measures 38.5mm wide and a relatively svelte 10.5mm thick with a 43.8mm lug-to-lug. The stainless steel case gets a polished treatment which makes the dial stand out even more.

And the dial is the main attraction of this watch. I sad it many times, and I’ll continue saying it - there is no other watchmaker in the world that deals with colors like Farer does. Whether it’s unexpected color combinations or, like we see here, it’s chosing the perfect share, they are competing with much, much , much more expensive watches. The dial has a sector construction achieved with a mix of levels and finishes. The deep green dial has a metallic brushed finish and a raised ring with a radial brushed finish on the perimeter. Down at 6 o’clock is the seconds sub-dial which has a sunken silver channel with an engine-turned finish. The markers are silver and polished, placed on the raised ring and are made up of batons and Roman numerals at every ecen hour.

Inside is the Elaboré-grade version of the Sellita SW216-1 manually wound movement which has a 45-hour power reserve. You can see the movement through the sapphire caseback and it’s been slightly decorated with blued screws and a custom engraving of the Farer logo across the bridge. The watch comes on a green St Venere leather strap, but it can also had with a myriad of other colors.

The Farer Durham Pullman is available now with a price tag starting at €995. Deliveries will start December 19th. See more on the Farer website.

4/

Montford Watch Co. Launches A New Field Watch Called The Rubus With A Significant Donation To Charity

The watch you see in this picture above is really weird. It is perhaps the first watch I will ever mention the price of in the first paragraph. The Montford Watch Company’s Rubus sells for £350, which is not such an unusual price for a small microbrand. What is unusual is that they are donating £154 of that price to charity. Watches, especially those from microbrands, love to donate proceeds to charity. But have you ever seen a brand giving away 44% of their entire revenue, including taxes? Especially at such a low price?

So, what is the Rubus? From it’s description it seems to be a microbrand take on a field watch. There are plenty of them out there, and instead of criticising Montford for making just another textured steel grey dial field watch with distinct straps, I say: kudos! The more options there are, the more people will find exactly what they are looking for. The brushed stainless steel case measures 40mm wide and it’s 11mm thick. The lug-to-lug is 48mm. Keep the price in mind when I tell you that on top you’ll find mineral glass, just like on the caseback, but you still get 100 meters of water resistance.

The dial has an etched finish with super-fine texture lines in a color they call Elephant Grey, which will make more sense in a second. The numerals are printed and Arabic, the hour and minute hands have luminous inserts and there are orange details on the perimeter. In fact, those orange marks, along with the double markers every 15 minutes and THE CHALLENGE printed between 6 and 7 o’clock are nods towards Tusk, the charity dedicated to the conservation of African wildlife. For more than 30 years, Tusk has worked in 20+ countries, on over 50 million hectares of land and has helped more than 40 threatened species, and they are the charity Montford is working with.

Inside is the slightly ancient but very robust Miyota 8215 automatic. It’s easily servicable and according to Miyota you can expect accuracy of -20/+40 seconds per day. The movement beats at 3Hz and has a 40 hour power reserve. Functions include central hours, minutes, hacking seconds and date. The watch comes on khaki vegan leather with white stitching or a woven safari green recycled ocean plastic strap with orange stitching.

The Montford Watch Company Rubus is limited to just 100 pieces and you can still get one on the brand’s website. Like I said, the watch sells for £350, which is a pretty great price, but £154 will be donated to Tusk. See more on the Montford Watch Company website.

5/

The New Hautlence Vagabonde Tourbillon Series 3 Is Really Something You Don’t See Every Day

Experimenting with new shapes and materials is nothing particularly new in the world of high-end watches. But when that is done by Hautlence, the avant-garde brand that is considered the sister brand of H. Moser & Cie, and lume man, material innovator and Arcanaut co-owner, James Thompson, aka Black Badger, you’re pretty sure that you’ll get something really different. And that different thing is the Vagabonde Tourbillon Series 3 with it’s characteristic TV-shaped case, jumping hours, a flying tourbillon and a dial made out of superconductor material.

The Vagabonde Series 3 uses the already familiar TV case that’s huge on wrist. It’s 50.8mm wide. But thanks to its relative tame 11.9mm thickness and 43mm lug-to-lug, it’s looks to be quite wearable. The watch comes in a midnight blue PVD coated stainless steel case and it’s quite capable with 100 meters of water resistance.

Like the familiar case, there’s also the familiar honeycomb that serves as the base of the dial. Created by Thompson, it uses a copper-niobium superconductor material, which is just bonkers. Consisting of copper with hexagonal niobium filaments, the silvery-grey superconductor material is cut across the grain at a specific angle and then soaked in an acid bath – which attacks the copper but leaves the niobium intact – to reveal a contrasting raw metal honeycomb lattice. The ripple-like pattern on the superconductor dial base is created by removing material. The jumping hours are situated on three stationary jumping hours disks and there’s a minute track on a transparent sapphire crystal with minute numerals in Globolight, a ceramic compound filled with Super-LumiNova, between them.

Inside is the automatic calibre B30 movement which beats at 21,600vph and has a 72 hour power reserve. The movement is based on the automatic HMC200 from the sister company Moser, which is then modified by Hautlence. Equipped with a flying tourbillon, the movement has a double hairspring produced by sister company Precision Engineering AG. The watch comes on a white rubber strap with a steel buckle with midnight blue PVD coating.

The Hautlence Vagabonde Tourbillon Series 3 is a limited edition of 28 pieces and do not expect it to be cheap. Because it’s not. It’s priced at CHF 65,000. See more on the Hautlence website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

1/

Hands on with the Revamped Breitling Avenger B01 Chronograph 44

2/

A review of Hublot’s Big Bang Integrated Time Only

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

The Lorier Hydra SIII And Hydra Zulu — Two Do-It-All Dive Watches

And then there is the fact that the designs are very cohesive and thoroughly considered. You can see that they were dreamed up by passionate people who know watches. So many microbrands in this segment look derivative or botched together. When picking a Lorier, you may not get endless features or the last word in build and finishing, but the design will be spot on. Moving up from here, you see the law of diminishing returns kicking in. You truly do get a lot for your money here. So that is why I like Lorier. Now that I have set the bar nice and high, let’s see if the Hydra SIII models can live up to it.

Read the whole review on Fratello.

⏲️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

• Peter Matthiessen was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer, zen teacher and CIA agent. He co-founded the legendary literary magazine The Paris Review and was the only writer to have won the National Book Award in both nonfiction and fiction. He was also completely convinced that he has seen Bigfoot and would tell every single person he came in contact with about his experience. If the Matthiessen-personal-search-for-Bigfoot angle doesn’t grab you, stick around for Wheelwright’s pocket survey of this remarkable man’s career.

• This is a pretty interesting excerpt from the memoir of Kim Ju-sŏng, a North Korean writer who spent years as an aspiring fiction writer in the hermit kingdom. He worked hard – but literary glory kept eluding him. It’s an incredible look at what it takes to make it as a writer in North Korea.

• One of the better concerts I’ve ever been to was an REM gig I wasn’t planning on going to. I got some free tickets last minute, so why not. I wasn’t expecting much, but they blew my mind. This was almost 20 years ago and I’ve wondered since what they are up to. Well, turns out the frontman Michael Stipe has been attempting to reinvent himself.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I was pretty sure that the Cybertruck, as it was shown all those years ago, would never see production. And yeah, they obviously had to change many things to make it less lethal to everyone around it. Silly truck aside, I’m posting this video to draw attention to Jason Cammisa. If you haven’t been watching his videos, you should be. The production value is absolutely incredible.

💵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 

• 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 let us know what you think about the newsletter? Go to our survey and fill it out.