Since about the day it was first discovered, gold has been a coveted material. The metal’s shine and malleability lends itself for decorating and gilding treasured items, and incites an almost primal attraction to the stuff.

Given the material’s history, it’s no wonder that many of today’s luxury watches are offered in precious metals including all hues of gold, platinum, and plenty of alloys in-between. Some companies, such as A. Lange & Sohne go as far as to produce their pieces exclusively in precious metals, gold being their most popular case material.

A Lange 1 Moonphase in gold

It’s difficult to argue that such a type of watch looks anything but spectacular in gold. You might even go as far as to say that such a piece practically belongs in it, much in the same way that a Patek Perpetual Calendar 5270 and Breguet Tradition might. Sports watches, on the other hand - that’s...

A close friend of mine, during a discussion about my first article, mentioned he would love to learn more about watches, but also said the steep learning curve is a little difficult to get past. This idea is not without merit; once you start getting into the technical aspects of horology, there is enough information to keep you reading for months. Picking one’s first timepiece, for example, could be a difficult process considering all the research that the responsible buyer should do.

What, then, should the “crash-course” on what constitutes a fine watch include? A snob could go on for hours about how one should memorize the different finishes like guilloché and côtes de Genéve, but the truth of the matter is that there are just a few important things to learn and the rest can be picked up along the way.

The movement

The watch movement is, quite simply, the guts of the watch. This...

Watch enthusiasts are no stranger to the German town of Glashütte, which is home to many of the world’s finest watchmakers such as Glashütte Original and A. Lange & Söhne. These big names have dominated the German watch scene for some time with pieces such as their signature Panomatic and Lange 1, but in recent years Glashütte-based NOMOS has been steadily gaining its own following. The beauty of NOMOS lies in a few different places: the watches themselves, the engineering behind the movements, and perhaps most importantly the value.

The watches themselves

Inspired by the Bauhaus movement, all pieces by NOMOS embrace simplicity in design. The baseline model, the Tangente, is about as simplistic as they come. The serifed numerals and flame-blued hands provide just enough character to keep the watch from looking stale, while complimenting the clean dial and case perfectly.

If you’re...

The overview

ETA SA Manufacture Horlogère Suisse, owned by the Swatch group, is the world’s largest watch manufacture. For decades, ETA has provided many different watch companies with completed movements and movement ébauches (sets of parts for assembly) for use in their watches. Often, in the case of luxury watch companies, these movements and ébauches are finished by the companies before being assembled and sold.

Using premade ETA movements, such as the ubiquitous 2824, 2836, 2892, and 7750 has its benefits: rather than use valuable resources such as manpower and tools on manufacturing movements for entry-level models, companies can simply finish an ETA movement and use it in their watch. This allows the company to focus their efforts on making in-house movements for their high luxury pieces. At first glance, this system seems like it should work well, allowing luxury companies to...

Big-name manufactures such as Rolex and Omega stole much of the spotlight this year at Basel (the world’s largest horology convention) with their modernized reissues of past popular models. The new GMT-Master II in white gold by Rolex satisfied many fans’ call for a return of the famous “pepsi” bezel, so-called because of its half blue and half red coloring. Omega also appealed to their follower’s vintage tastes with a reissue of the Omega Seamaster 300, one of Omega’s most popular vintage pieces, this time around sporting Omega’s proprietary co-axial escapement. Further announcements such as the Tudor Heritage Ranger, the Lunar Dust Speedmaster and other extras did an excellent job of drowning out some of the very competent but less popular competition at the show this year.

A couple of these slightly overlooked pieces (coincidentally, mostly chronographs) announced at Basel caught my...