Gear Patrol

Vintage watch buying is enjoying incredible popularity, thanks to a community of savvy collectors, great internet resources for both learning about and buying old watches, and a nostalgic yearning for quality products from an era before planned obsolescence. Old watches also represent great value, the chance to wear a piece of history and, if you’re lucky, a good investment. Not to mention, they just look cool. We explore just how you should go about buying one of these beauties.

The history of maritime exploration and discovery would read a lot differently without the advent of the marine chronometer. Prior to its development, ships hung close to familiar coastlines; when they ventured further out to sea, sailors had to rely on celestial navigation and plain dumb luck to get where they wanted without crashing on…

There’s a bit of dialogue in Casino Royale, the 2006 reboot of the James Bond movie franchise, when Vesper Lynd thinks she has Bond figured out, right down to his watch: “Rolex?” she asks. “Omega”, Bond replies. “Beautiful”, Lynd assesses. Those three words sum up 50 years of Bond and his wristwatches. They also have…

John Glenn strapped a Heuer stopwatch to his wrist; Scott Carpenter wore a Breitling chronograph; and everyone knows the story of Omega’s Moonwatch. Now it’s Zenith’s turn to join the list of legendary space watches. When Felix Baumgartner stepped off that skateboard-sized platform this week and plummeted to Earth while millions watched, you may have…

The primary goal in the manufacture of any watch is precision; there is scarcely a watchmaker, from Patek Philippe to Citizen, that would argue that fact. After all, the whole raison d’être of a watch is to tell the time — if it does that poorly, you might as well be wearing a charm bracelet….

When most people start getting interested in timepieces, the first thing that usually attracts them is the appearance. A distinctive dial, a unique case shape, even a nice strap can draw in the uninitiated. Then they notice watches whose hands sweep smoothly, driven by springs and gears versus the tick-tick that gives away battery driven…

The Panerai new Luminor Submersible 1950 Amagnetic 3 Days Automatic Titanio (PAM 389) is the watch to strap on the night before the Mayan calendar ends. Look past its encyclopedic name and you’ll find a mashup of features that make this piece perhaps the most capable timekeeper the venerable Italian instrument maker has produced. Let’s…

A man dressed in an all brown uniform just dropped off the “grail” watch on your “work” from home day. You feverishly tear the packaging open and hold up the culmination of your hope and dreams as if it were a cub named Simba. Spending two months of salary on this iconic piece of horological…

Introduced at the dawn of the jet age, the Rolex GMT-Master has become an enduring symbol of a time when travel was both more glamorous and more adventurous. This most colorful of Rolexes, transcended its aviation beginnings and has been worn by astronauts, test pilots, a famous TV detective, a Bond girl and a sports…

To say that the HMS Victory is a ship with history is akin to saying that the Dali Lama is a man with faith. Launched in 1765, she is the only remaining 18th Century ship left in the world, as well as the oldest commissioned warship. The Victory’s record at sea is the stuff of…

Just in time for their 120th anniversary, Hamilton has added a new flagship to the Aviation line of Khaki watches, the X-Patrol, and it represents a terrific value in fully-featured mechanical pilot’s watches. To this end, the X-Patrol features a functional computational bezel that allows would-be Lindberghs to calculate on-the-fly metric conversions for miles to…

Watchmaking is a traditional business and the big brands are fairly conservative. So when one of the biggest breaks new ground, it makes us sit up and take notice. Cartier, the venerable jewelry and timepiece giant of the Richemont Group, has given some journalists a sneak peek at their forthcoming ID Two Concept Watch and…

Two years ago, we were invited to visit the Glashütte, Germany workshops of A. Lange & Söhne, and ever since then, we’ve been a fan of the brand. Their understated elegance flies under the radar of all but the timepiece cognoscenti, most of whom shorten the tongue-twister name into simply, “Lange”. Since the brand emerged…

Someone once said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. But while I’m sure music critics have their own challenges, I suspect they have an easier time explaining what they do than we watch writers, who fetishize the arcane minutiae of an anachronistic art. But I’ve learned to respond to questions about my…

When the average Joe thinks of Swiss watchmakers he probably thinks of wizened old men with white hair and white coats, perennially hunched over workbenches assembling miniature mechanical masterpieces with impossibly small gears and screws. And you know something, he’d be right. Sort of. Yes, they wear white coats, and yes, they do spend an…

Nowadays, you can hardly throw a dead fish without hitting another new dive watch brand. The availability of Far East shops that will stamp out a few hundred watch cases based on a napkin sketch means that almost anyone with a little ambition and a small loan can start their own watch company. And there…

Earlier this year, Jaeger-LeCoultre introduced its retro-tastic Deep Sea Vintage Chronograph at the annual Salon International de Haute Horlogerie in Geneva. The watch made just about everyone’s “Best Of” list (including ours) with its creamy “aged” luminescent markers, textured dial and old-school pump-style chronograph pushers. The watch was homage to a watch JLC never produced…