Watch Dandy

Baselworld, as we know it, is dead. But has it been offered a resurrection lifeline by James Murdoch, the son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch? The owner of Baselworld, MCH Group, has announced the investment of 104.5mCHF from the Murdoch-owned Lupa Systems for what is anticipated to be around one-third of the shares in MCH Group. This development does beg the question:  why would James Murdoch invest in a failing show such as Baselworld? If you’re a regular reader of Time+Tide, you will have closely followed our coverage of the demise of the world’s biggest watch fair over recent months. Participation by brands at the fair had been dropping for half a decade, with 1500 exhibitors in 2016 down to just 520 in 2019, a decrease that was also reflected in the number of visitors to the show. In 2018 the entirety of Swatch Group (including brands such as Omega, Breguet, Blancpain, Longines and more) pulled out of the show, followed by Seiko, Grand Seiko and Breitling in 2019. These devastating withdrawals paved the way for the death blow in late February 2020. COVID-19 was still in its early stages of spreading across the globe, but after the second-largest watch…

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Editor’s note: There’s the simple fact that Seiko are turning up the heat on the Swiss watch industry, and then there’s the way they’re doing it. Both are 100% worth taking note of. For example, let’s re-examine the Seiko Prospex LX SNR035J, a high-spec Spring Drive GMT at a shade under $8000AUD, that carries with it a murdered out vibe. In the metal, it borders on menacing. It is sleeker than your average Seiko diver, with muscular shoulders. It is pared back of anything that is not absolutely necessary for it to do its job to an elite level. It is awesome. Seeing this one in the archive took me back to the day we first discovered it. We had to take our collective breath then at the boldness of the aesthetics, and let’s just say it, the brazen nature of the price jump. A year and a few months later, it’s no less noteworthy, and it seems almost quaint that we would question the strategy, as the LX range has been wildly popular. It’s really not hard to see why. The force is strong – and the force is dark – with this collection.     Prospex is Seiko-speak for “Professional Specification”, a family…

The post The Seiko Prospex LX SNR035J looks like it’s been sent to put a hit on anyone that questions its (high) price point appeared first on Time and Tide Watches.

As a person who writes about and reviews timepieces all day every day, and as an avid enthusiast of horology since my mid-teens, there really isn’t too much that surprises me anymore in the watch world. Very few watches have the ability to stop me in my tracks, or, for lack of a better word, leave me feeling shook. This Longines Heritage Military Marine Nationale did exactly that. First impressions Ask anyone in the office who was there at the time … I completely lost it when I pulled this watch out of a plain cardboard box filled with Longines’ novelties for 2020. Sure, there were other nice watches in this box of horological goodies, but I just didn’t care. My eyes locked onto the Marine Nationale, and everything else faded into the background. A faithful re-creation of a mil-spec timepiece made almost 80 years ago for the French Navy (hence the name), this latest release is yet another exemplar of just how good Longines was in the first half of the 20th century. Now the watch I got Hands-On with was an early pre-production piece made specifically for the press, mainly for the purposes of taking very pretty photos…

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