HANDS-ON: Enamel excellence — the Seiko Presage SPB049J
Seiko drop a LOT of watches at Basel. It’s like a candy store, with everything from super-hot limited editions, to Prospex, to Presage. All there in front of you. And I’m sure I only see a fraction of what’s on offer. It can be overwhelming. But even so, a few watches stand out, and they’re not always the ones you expect. For me, one of those watches was the SPB049J, a sober time-and-date tonneau with a classical dial in enamel. Now, a tonneau, or barrel-shaped case, is relatively uncommon, and can be hard to get right. They tend to veer either to the very sporty, or, in this instance, the very traditional. But something about this watch just works. The dial is, as you’d expect from enamel, light and lustrous, the black printed Roman numerals and text is wonderfully crisp, the ideal backdrop for the leaf-shaped blued steel hands and that seconds hand, with its crescent-moon tipped counterweight. They’re hands I’d happily look at all day long. The only slight jarring note in the dial design is the printed square around the date aperture, which is quite roughly finished around the edges. I don’t mind the border per se, but…
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John, AKA @barnfindwatches, is a family man and a certifiable watchaholic. In his spare time, he runs the sales organisation for a small software company in Los Angeles, meaning he travels all around the US, meeting with customers and seeing places in the country that few would ever (voluntarily) go. How do you unwind? Although I like to play basketball or run with the dog (which I need to do far, far more), mostly I live and breathe watches in my free time. Nightly, I browse the internet researching watches, mostly scouring eBay and IG. It is a bit embarrassing to think about the hours I have spent throughout the years on the internet. In fact, eBay just thanked me for 20 years of customer loyalty (I originally joined AuctionWeb in ’97, which became eBay later that year)! I feel like I have earned my PhD in watches, having spent the last quarter of a century reading books from my library (I have hundreds of books, price guides, magazines, Japanese “mooks” and auction catalogues). I also (incompetently) tinker with watches as well. I find it relaxing to diagnose and do the most basic of repairs (changing dials, hands, crowns and…
