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Welcome to Dialed In, Esquire s column bringing you horological happenings and the most essential news from the watch world since March 2020. This week, we re working with the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie as Media Partner of Watches and Wonders Geneva. Visit Watches and Wonders website for news and video panels daily, and keep checking back here for all the updates you need to know about.
For fans of pilot watches, IWC, the Schaffhausen-based Swiss watchmaker, has long been a leading player. In the 1990s, the Pilot s Watch Chronograph was a popular choice among style nerds and watch lovers alike, who often referred to it simply as “the Flieger” (the German word for “pilot”) without even mentioning the brand. It was one of those “if you know, you know” things. The epitome of modern cool from a coveted tool-watch specialist, it formed the bedrock of the brand s offer.
Green Is the New Blue & Other Lessons From Watches and Wonders
Watches & Wonders 2021: Green Is the New Blue, Affordable Bangers & the Downright Outrageous
Patek Philippe
For watch enthusiasts, Watches & Wonders 2021 is the Super Bowl and Paris Fashion Week all rolled into one. Owed to the pandemic, the industry’s largest fair was rendered fully digital this week, meaning dozens of brands from Patek Philippe and Rolex to IWC and Vacheron Constantin trotted out their new timepieces with online announcements and press releases. That didn t stop us all from losing our collective minds over the hottest (and weirdest) releases on Instagram.
Luxury pre-owned timepieces in high demand, Swiss watchmakers warm up to the idea
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Last Updated: Apr 08, 2021, 03:41 PM IST
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Watch brands like Audemars Piguet and established retailers like Bucherer have already started selling pre-owned watches, while eBay recently launched an authenticity guarantee for luxury watches sold on its marketplace.
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ZURICH: Swiss luxury watch brands have long considered the market for second-hand watches as a potential threat to their business, but now their view is shifting as they see it can provide valuable insights into pricing and demand. Initially seen as cannibalising sales of new watches, the market for previously owned or pre-owned watches has become the best place to assess the value of a watch over time and provide liquidity to watch owners who want to trade in their watch for a new one.
The 16 best men s timepieces from Watches and Wonders 2021
Switzerland is gearing up for a prolific 2021 with a clutch of extremely high value timepieces that will make collectors swoon
8 April 2021 • 5:00am
When the pandemic hit last year, the Swiss watch industry’s annual round of glossy, high-budget trade fairs was already in crisis, with Baselworld, the star event, teetering on the brink. Covid-19 brought about a stuttering pivot to digital, while many launches were put on ice. By comparison, 2021 has seen the world’s luxury watchmakers come out swinging.
Watches & Wonders, entailing the majority of Switzerland’s biggest players, launched digitally yesterday with an avalanche of new watches from Rolex, Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, Cartier and TAG Heuer among 35 brands in total. Audemars Piguet, Breitling and many others are simultaneously in launch mode.
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Bulgari is back with another record-breaking feat of watchmaking, this time producing the world’s thinnest perpetual calendar.
The watch is the seventh member of Bulgari’s groundbreaking Octo Finissmo collection to arrive as a class leader, a programme of annual milestones that began in 2014 with the Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Manual, which became the world’s thinnest manually wound flying tourbillon watch.
Its Octo Finissimo Perpetual Calendar movement is just 2.75mm thick, despite containing 408 individual components and is housed in a case just 5.8mm deep, with microbead-blasted titanium and a polished and brushed platinum models available.
To achieve such a thin calibre, Bulgari integrated a micro-rotor into the movement itself while adjustments are made via three correctors on the caseband. Bulgari has also managed to build an impressive 60-hour power reserve into the movement, one of the many challenges when developing such thin calibres.