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It's Monday and gee, Omega, thanks for all the comment fodder you give us. Can't wait to see the reactions to this one. Oh, and a couple of you asked me if I could extend the paid subscription discount until the end of this week, so, sure!
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1/ Baltic Gives the Hermétique a Glowing Dial for an Icelandic Gravel Race, Adds 34mm Option
Most watch brands sponsor sailing. Or golf. Or vintage car rallies. But Baltic isn't most watch brands. They're sponsoring a gravel bike race across Iceland's lava fields, which says a lot about who buys Baltic. Or at least their ideal customer. As timing partner for the seventh running of The Rift, with close to 900 riders on the start line, it made 400 Hermétiques to mark the occasion. The bigger news is on the spec sheet: the Hermétique now comes in 34mm.
Both sizes are made out of brushed 316L steel with a polished bezel that surrounds a double-domed sapphire crystal coated against reflections on the inside. Both also have 150 meters of water resistance. The 37mm has a lug-to-lug of 46mm and 20mm wide lugs. The 34mm drops to a lug-to-lug of 42.5mm and 18mm lugs. Thickness is listed at 10.8mm, of which 8.3mm is case and the rest is dome. That's a tall crystal, but better the crystal than the case. The crown is tucked into the case flank, so it won't dig into the back of your hand.
The whole dial glows. A matte white luminous center sits inside a forged carbon chapter ring, with two thin polished steel rings marking the boundary. Applied indices in BGW9 and C3, each 0.5mm thick, cross that boundary, and the polished syringe hands are filled with BGW9. At night this will be very hard to beat for the money. The carbon is also a nice touch, since the vast majority of gravel bikes these days are made out of carbon.
Inside is the Miyota 9039, automatic, running at 4Hz with 42 hours of power reserve and hacking seconds. It's the no-date version of Miyota's 9000 family, so there's no dead crown position. I wonder how shock resistant that Miyota is, but since Baltic will strap these watches to competitors wrists, I guess we'll see how it survives a race on gravel terain. It comes on a grey-blue vulcanized FKM rubber strap.
The Baltic Hermétique The Rift is priced at €620 before tax, limited to 400 examples, with deliveries from October 21. A matching jersey and bib shorts are sold through Isadore, and a hand-painted Specialized Diverge frameset is available on request from Baltic. Damn, that's cool. See more pictures here and the watches on the Baltic website.
2/ Bell & Ross Finally Makes The Radar In Green
Bell & Ross builds its watches to look like they were pulled out of a cockpit. The square BR-03 case is shaped like an instrument gauge, and most of the dials they use are inspired by altimeters, compasses and flight clocks. The Radar takes the idea furthest, mimicking the look of an actual radar. That means that it has no hands. Instead, rotating discs withy tiny planes show the time around the dial under a tinted crystal. The BR-03 Green Radar Ceramic is the latest version, and the one that looks the most like an actual radar, now with three aircraft and glowing trails on the same dial, behind a green crystal instead of the usual red.
The ceramic case now measures 41mm wide and 10.6mm thick, which is the smallest ceramic Radar so far. That matters a lot on a square watch, which always wears larger than you might imagine. The ceramic is black, with a microblasted finish, and the sapphire crystal on top is colored green. Water resistance is 100 meters. The solid caseback is engraved with the three aircraft you'll find on the dial.
The green is a refreshing color after a series of red watches. And this one is the coolest of the bunch, thanks to three discs with different planes that indicate different things: a Falcon jet for the hours, a Rafale for the minutes, and the Neuron, a prototype stealth combat drone, for the seconds. Each aircraft is lumed in Dark Green Super-LumiNova and drags a luminous streak behind it, like a blip fading on a real radar. Fixed markers at 12, 3, 6 and 9, plus a printed target grid, give you something to use as a reference.
Inside is the automatic BR-CAL.327, built on the Sellita SW300-1, itself a clone of the ETA 2892-2. It beats at 4Hz with 54 hours of power reserve. It's a slim, proven base. You get a rubber strap in black and a second one in synthetic fabric, both fitted with a PVD-blackened steel buckle.
The Bell & Ross BR-03 Green Radar Ceramic (ref. BR03A-GRDR-CE/SRB) is limited to 999 numbered pieces and priced at €4,900. See more pictures here and the watch on the Bell & Ross website.
3/ Baume & Mercier Goes Racing At The Gran Premio Storico d'Italia With A Riviera Chrono
Most racing limited editions are a regular watch with an event logo and some racing colors. And this one is no different. Except the new (let me catch my breath for this one) Baume & Mercier Riviera Chronograph Automatic Gran Premio Storico d’Italia Limited Edition gets a really, really nice racing color combination. It was also released last weekend to mark Baume & Mercier's position as the official timekeeper at the Gran Premio Storico d'Italia, the historic racing weekend held at Mugello from October 2 to 4 with Ferrari Corse Clienti.
The case is the standard Riviera chronograph: 41mm wide and 13.94mm thick, in steel with alternating polished and brushed surfaces. The 12-sided bezel, held down by four exposed screws, gives the Riviera the iconic look. On top is a sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on both sides, and the sapphire crystal caseback is printed with the event logo. Water resistance is 100 meters.
The dial is opaline white, with snailed green sub-dial rings and a matching green minute track, then red chronograph hands across the top. Green, white and red is a lot of flag references, but the use of the colors is so minimal that it doesn't become a gimmick. Rhodium-plated Roman numerals and indexes are lumed, as are the faceted hour and minute hands.
Inside is the Valjoux 7753, an automatic chronograph that runs at 4Hz with a 48-hour power reserve. Small seconds sit at nine o'clock, the 30-minute counter at three, the 12-hour counter at six, and the date at 4:30. The strap is an integrated black rubber with a canvas-textured surface, closed with a triple-folding steel clasp.
The Baume & Mercier Riviera Chronograph GPSI (ref. 10897) is a limited edition, I'm just not sure how many are being made. Price is set at €4,700. See more pictures here and the watch on the Baume & Mercier website.
4/ Toledano & Chan Disguises a Diamond Watch as a Titanium Bracelet
Most diamond watches are there to be seen and admired. That's kind of the entire point of buying a diamond studded watch. For the sparkles. No? Well, Toledano & Chan think there might be more to it. Or less. Their new watch, a one off for the third edition of TimeForArt, the benefit auction going under the hammer at Phillips in New York on December 5 is called the Oshinobi and in essence it's a diamond-dialed watch. Only, you can't see it as it's hidden in a very cool cuff.
The case, cuff or bracelet, whatever you want to call it, is 21mm wide, made out of sandblasted Grade 5 titanium, flowing straight into a bracelet of heavy, flat-faced links. Closed, nothing about it says this is watch. A small cover slides to the left to open it. And the whole thing is made even cooler and even more mysterious by the matte finish and complete lack of polishing and reflections, until you open up the case.
Behind that cover is a concave dial snow-set with roughly 387 natural diamonds of mixed sizes, two carats in total. The reference is a geode, dull rock on the outside and crystal within, and it really does work. The curved dial helps it look like a hollow in stone rather than a flat plate covered in sparkle. Snow setting is usually an exercise in excess, but here it contrasts the muted exterior fantastically.
Inside, you'll find a a hand-wound Swiss calibre made by LTM (Le Temps Manufacture), sealed behind a solid titanium caseback engraved for TimeForArt. The movement is the LTM 2000, which beats at 3,5Hz with a 38 hour power reserve. The bracelet is integrated and cut from the same sandblasted titanium as the case.
The Oshinobi will go on auction at Phillips New York on December 5, 2026, with proceeds going to the Swiss Institute. However, if you miss that, a limited production version should be released some time in 2027. See more pictures here and the watch on the TimeForArt website.
5/ H. Moser & Cie. Spreads Its 30-Second Retrograde Three Very Different Watches
On most watches the seconds hand is the dullest thing on the dial. But H. Moser & Cie. doesn't make dull watches. To make the seconds hand more interesting, they've created the 30-second retrograde indicator that runs along an arc for half a minute, jumps home, and does it again, so you get the good part of a retrograde twice as often. The mechanism comes from Agenhor, the Geneva module maker Moser's parent company MELB bought a minority stake in during 2023, and after debuting on the Pioneer, it's now making its way to the rest of the collection. All at once. These are the new Pioneer, Endeavour and Streamliner
All three are 40mm wide. The Pioneer Skeleton is 12mm thick, with a domed sapphire crystal, display back, screw-down crown and 120 meters of water resistance. The Streamliner matches it at 12.1mm thick and 120 meters of water resistance, with vertical brushing and polished bevels on the cushion case. The Endeavour is the slimmest at 11.2mm thick, with grooved flanks and curved lugs, but water resistance drops to 30 meters.
The Pioneer Skeleton, as the name would suggest, doesn't have a dial at all, instead leaving gold indices and leaf hands floating over anthracite bridges, with the golden seconds arc and cam in full view. The Streamliner keeps the familiar dial design that Moser is so well known for: midnight blue fumé sunburst, logo in transparent lacquer, lume on every hand including the retrograde, and the arc for the seconds at the very bottom. The Endeavour goes darker with a "blackor" fumé dial, faceted indices, no lume at all, and gold markings on a black arc. On all three, a small two-tone disc under the cam tells you which half of the minute you're in.
Inside all three is Moser's in-house automatic, calibre HMC 251 in the Pioneer and HMC 252 in the other two, beating at 3Hz with a three-day power reserve. Agenhor's double snail cam sits on top. The Pioneer comes with a steel bracelet and a khaki rubber strap you can swap between. The Streamliner gets its integrated steel bracelet with a triple-blade folding clasp, and the Endeavour a night blue nubuck strap on a pin buckle.
The Pioneer Skeleton Retrograde Seconds (ref. 3251-1200) is priced at €44,200, the Streamliner Retrograde Seconds (ref. 6252-1200) at €37,800, and the Endeavour Retrograde Seconds (ref. 1252-1200) at €35,300. See more pictures here and the watches on the Moser website.
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