James' 5 favourite stories of 2019
2019 was a full-on year here at Time+Tide — we launched Australia’s premier watch club, the second edition of our magazine, NOW Issue 2, became the official distributor for DOXA watches in Australia and New Zealand and launched our very own online store, the Time+Tide marketplace. We also, rather obviously, wrote a shedload of stories for what was a very important year in watchmaking. And now I’ve got to whittle down the 1000+ posts and give you my five favourites … so here they are: MY WEEK WITH: The Girard-Perregaux Laureato Chronograph, and how I got completely turned around to loving it Andrew’s weeklong review of his personal Girard-Perregaux Laureato Chronograph was one of my favourite horological reads of 2019. In a past life, I worked for an Authorised Dealer of GP as a salesperson, and it used to confound me how ignorant people were to both the Laureato and Girard-Perregaux itself. Here is a watch that was conceived in the golden age of luxury steel sports watches with an integrated bracelet and, crucially, released a full year before the aristocratic Patek Philippe Nautilus. And Girard-Perregaux has been around since 1791, making it one of the oldest watchmakers on the planet.…
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Weekends in Melbourne can mean several things: overpriced brunches with mates after a boozy night out on the town, hikes up the Dandenong Ranges’ unendingly popular “1000 steps”, day trips to the Peninsula Hot Springs and, if you’re a watch enthusiast, donning that special timepiece in your collection that wouldn’t dare see the light of day between Monday and Friday. For this Saturday and Sunday, I wore my ’66 Rolex GMT-Master ref.1675 “Pepsi” and went out in search of what other like-minded individuals had decided to attach to their wrist, and this is what I found out in the wild: Riley’s Rolex GMT-Master II Ref. 116710LN Riley always had his eyes set on Rolex’s gorgeous GMT-Master II Ref. 116710LN, and much like our fictitious “Clairvoyant Collector”, he had an inkling at the beginning of 2019 that Rolex may well discontinue the “Green Arrow”, as it housed the older Calibre 3186 movement, which had since been superseded by the Calibre 3285, first released in the Rolex GMT-Master Ref. 126710 BLRO “Pepsi” back in 2018. Riley frantically contacted Authorised Dealers across the country, keen on securing the Oystersteel Professional model before it was too late. But alas — much to the surprise of,…
Some watches take the world by storm the moment they are released. Some, however, take a little while longer to be appreciated. The true significance of the Universal Genève Polerouter, first released in 1954, and its subsequent offshoots are still in the process of being properly recognised. Not only was it the first really significant design to exit the pen of Gérald Genta (who would go on to design the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and the Patek Philippe Nautilus before overhauling Bulgari’s product offering and launching his own brand), it was a trailblazer upon its release. And still, to this day, the Polerouter is often cited as the inspiration for many modern watch designs. With so much going for it, it’s not hard to see why. The first thing that is likely to strike you about the Polerouter are those graceful bombé lugs that look like the slinkier, sexier cousin of the lugs you’d expect to find on an Omega Speedmaster (a watch that would not hit the shelves until the Universal Genève had been on the market for the best part of three years). What is less immediately apparent about those lugs, however, is the space between them. Although…
Making the right choice for your left wrist is never easy. But at least your options are generally curtailed by the size of your budget. That isn’t a problem for soccer deity Cristiano Ronaldo. That’s because the Juventus superstar is satanically rich. According to Forbes magazine, Ronaldo was soccer’s highest-earning player of the last decade, pocketing a colossal 548 million pounds ($A1.033 billion) during the 2010s. How do you tackle the stern challenge of spending all this loot? Well, Ronaldo was recently spotted at the 14th Dubai International Sports Conference wearing the Rolex GMT-Master II Ice (ref. 116769TBR), a timepiece made with 18k white gold and 30 carats of diamonds. It’s the most expensive watch that Rolex has ever offered to the public. The price tag: a cool $US485,350 (a touch under $700,000 Aussie dollars). The reason for the hefty price is largely due to the fact that every square inch is smothered with a shit-ton of diamonds. The 18k white gold case and lugs are festooned with 79 round diamonds. The bezel (18k white gold too) is studded with baguette-cut diamonds, while the dial gleams with ripples of smaller honeycomb-set diamonds. More — yep, you guessed it — diamonds are…
Nothing says versatility and breadth of ability like a two-tone watch, and while the steel and gold aesthetic has been considered more than a touch dull over the last decade, the blended material timepiece well and truly made a comeback in 2019, with myriad watchmakers embracing the semi-formal aesthetic. With that in mind, we thought we’d take a look at three of our favourite examples of two-tone timepieces released last year. Here they are (in no particular order): ROLEX SEA-DWELLER The Sea-Dweller is a serious dive tool, but it’s just as comfortable on the red carpet. The bi-colour version released this year at Baselworld hammers home the collection’s luxury credentials. While the Rolesor (two-tone) model pictured here is incredibly current, the vintage appeal of the full steel reference 126603, with its flash of red text on the dial, harks back to the earliest iteration from 1967 and will satisfy those who aren’t yet ready to embrace the return of yellow gold. Ref No: 126603 / Case size: 43mm / Case material: Oyster Steel and Yellow Gold / Movement: 3235 / Price: $23,400 TUDOR BLACK BAY CHRONO S&G The Black Bay Chrono gets the two-tone treatment with the introduction of the…