Similarities between a Rolex Daytona and a Nintendo Wii?

Probably one of the best marketing tricks is unavailability. I am not a marketeer, so I don’t know how this works exactly, but I think Rolex paved the way for other branches as well. The Daytona cult is almost impossible to copy, because it was initiated by accident. In short: Italians spotted Paul Newman (Winning) on a cover of a magazine with a Rolex Daytona and immediately ran off to get one. Just before that publication, the Daytona was the so-so watch by Rolex, cheaper than their divers or multiple time zone watch. Rolex thankfully accepted this fact and up to this day, it does everything it can to keep the distribution of the stainless steel Daytona as poor as possible. Other brands tried it with Limited Editions. Getting a watch that only has been produced a 100 times, or even less, is of course a ‘must-have’ for the collector with deep pockets. However, that marketing trick has died when brands started to create even more Limited Edition watches than regular models. Omega comes to mind, with their 007 Seamaster Professional LE and Speedmaster tributes.

Although I spotted more stainless steel BNIB Daytonas on watch fairs and watch shops (grey import) last year than in all years before, it still seems to work. As customers are still willing to pay a premium over the catalogue / list price.

The stainless steel Patek Philippe Nautilus Jumbo has currently a waiting list as well and people seem to be willing to pay the full price with a little premium as well. Perhaps the same goes for a few hard-to-get Panerai models.

Anyway, it occurred to me that not only the watch industry uses the Daytona distribution trick. Try to get a Nintendo Wii or some of its popular games like Mario Kart or Wii Fit. The advertizing machine makes overhours, but the availability of Nintendo’s latest and its games is lacking big time. People are paying premium for the console and its games on the online auction and market places. The production of the Nintendo Wii and the production of a few ten or even hundreds of thousands copies of popular games should be easy and Nintendo has experience with its popular game consoles since 1985 (two years earlier in Japan). It seems that Nintendo copied this cult creating marketing trick perfectly from Rolex with its stainless steel Daytona. You know it is product for which the demand is high, but you do not deliver or produce (in time). Part of the fun of owning a Rolex Daytona or Nintendo Wii is probably the fact that not everyone owns one or can own one. If one could easily do, the demand was probably lower.

As per the 1st of May, I opened a Dutch Panerai forum. I noticed how popular other Dutch speaking watch forums are, or German, or Spanish… although English is the accepted language for everybody, the native language forums do well I think.

So for the Dutch and Vlamish, please visit the Paneraiforum.nl website:

Enjoy!

The official launch will be on the 5th of May, but we have been invited by mr Lehmann to have a sneak preview of the beta version website.

The website includes the whole range of products of Chopard, but the main focus remains watches and jewelery ofcourse. In the accessoiries section you’ll find all leather goods, ties, pens, glasses and parfums. The ladies section covers the Happy Diamonds, Happy Sports, Classic, Two o Ten and a number of jewelery collections. The Gents section covers the famous Mille Miglia, L.U.C and (new to me) Grand Prix de Monaco Historique series of watches.

The Chopard section covers what watch fans and Chopard die-hards want to see I think. A nice history overview of the brand, background information on Chopard’s watchmaking history and the innovative L.U.C movements. It also has all the details inside on the L.U.Ceum, Chopard’s own museum.

As a reader from this blog, you are invited to take a look at the beta website of Chopard. The login details are below:

http://beta.chopard.ch
username: addict
password: preview

The website is still in ‘test’-phase, so if you encounter any problems, it would be great if you could send your findings/issues to beta@chopard.com.

Tennis star Maria Sharapova just turned 21 years old on the 23rd of April. TAG Heuer organized a big birthday party for their ambassador of sports watches. The press release states that TAG Heuer was honored to do so. Yeah

I understand the whole ambassador concept, it seems to attract potential buyers. But why giving a birthday party AND brag about it in press releases? Anyway, it does produces some nice pictures

Well, so far I haven’t been the biggest poster on Fratello. Being busy with a lot of other stuff I found it hard to come up with a nice subject for a new post..

But now I found a interesting watch.. The Ingenieur Climate Action. Let’s start with a pic (posted on ThePurists):

Mm.. I actually kinda like the looks. It reminds me a bit of the white Millgauss-funk.

But something isn’t quite right here. Climate Action? Ok, a valid reason for a nice limited edition. With proceeds partially going to the Climate Action Fund, this is a really nice idea I guess. But it is somewhat weird when you’ve got a model in the same range in cooperation with Mercedes AMG in my opinion. Keep in mind AMG is famous for their nice roaring 5.5’s, 6.3’s, 7.3’s etc (that is considered a BIG engine over here, LOL)…

What are your thoughts? I think I could get over it.. the watch looks good .

Alon over at the Ace Jewelers Blog posts great pictorials on the Basel 2008 expo. Besides the brands he carries for his Ace shop, he also posts pictures of various other brands.

I liked the concept of the Hamilton Code Breaker for example (see picture below). And another cool watch he posted about is the Hamilton Electric with an automatic mechanical movement. Finally, the Elvis watch becomes ‘interesting’ again. I never dug the quartz version and the originals are way too expensive

Photo by Alon

Please visit the Ace Jewelers Blog to get a good idea about the Basel Expo and its novelties..

Update: Another excellent review of the Basel 2008 expo has been written by Jocke. Click here for his lengthy and colorful report.

As Evert wrote in the last blog, Rolex seems to be stealing the Basel show. According to TimeZone member Imrankhan, who visited the Basel 2008 show, the Rolex booth was flooded with impressive watches! He wrote an excellent report on Basel (including a lot of images) in the Basel Forum over at TimeZone.

Besides all the heavy weight of Rolex, also Omega had something to show. A nice looking white dial Speedmaster Professional wrist watch. Dedicated to the 1970 project called ‘ALASKA’. This project was initiated to develop an outer case for the Omega Speedmaster Professional to handle the extreme temperatures on the dark side of the Moon. A press release on this watch can be found here, posted by Jorge Merino.

Photo by Imrankhan @ TZ.

Another booth that seems to be impressive is the one of Patek Philippe. Probably the best brand out there, as you might know. I always favored the Patek Philippe World Time wrist watch in white gold. At Basel, the introduced the ref. 5131 model of this watch, featuring an enamel dial. It seems that enamel dials are ‘back in business’ again, as they were in the very early 1990s. Based on the copies of Chronos and Armband Uhren from that time.

And finally, Patek seems to care about people with decent wrists with this ref.5207. A 41mm wrist watch in platinum with a minute repeater, tourbillon and instant perpetual calendar with original windows, for which two patents are pending.

According to the press news by Jorge Merino on this wrist watch:

“The instant changing of all the date displays is a supplementary complication comprising 212 interacting components. This new exploit took more than five years to develop and is one of the brand’s most complicated wristwatches. Only a few will be produced each year.

Movement is the hand-wound Patek caliber RTO27PSQI, a minute repeater with tourbillon, COSC-certified as a chronometer and with the Geneva Seal mark. ”

Still curious what the last two days will bring us….

The 2008 Basel show is lovingly called “this time of year” around the Rolex boards. The rules of the game are that Rolex S.A. does it’s best to guard their news untill the start of the show, and the rest of the world seems to be hunting down every particle of information available. It starts in January with a wide variaty of wild rumours, and it always narrows down in March to some mixture of truth and nonsense. This years truths were a new and bigger Sea-Dweller and a red gold Daytona, secrets not really well kept. The nonsense turned out to be a Daytona with a date window and the rumours about anything on a rubber bracelet.

So, what does the horological land scape look like after Basel? For the broad trends in the whole industry I’m not informed well enough yet, but for the Rolex brand some initial conclusions can be drawn. The first and most significant one is that Rolex follows the big watch trend after all with a bonanza of 40 and 41 mm dress watches and a Sea-Dweller of 43 mm. An interpretation of this fact could be that their attempts to revive the 36 mm size for men were to no avail: the Turn-O-Graph, the new Datejusts and Day Dates just don’t work for todays men anymore in terms of sales. 40 mm is the new standard and even the stable and cautious design school of Rolex has to follow the market.

My second observation is that the design job of filling this bigger dials in some way seems to puzzle the Rolex company. A range of solutions has been chosen, from a wild carnival of colors for markers, hands and glass on last years Milgauss, to dials with more and more expressive writings and numerals even on this years new 36 mm watches. The new Day Dates got a more busy dial and the bigger Sea-Dweller Deep Sea gained an extra Power Ring under the glass and a lot more writing as well. Not to start again about last years new Yacht Master II that is filled with funny primary colors and complications. Somehow the designers seem to be afraid of simplicity or empty spaces. Although the new Day Date is a wonderfull new piece, in all the new dial layouts are far from perfect in my opinion.

Thirdly it is noticable that with the introduction of the DeepSea, Rolex continues their beautiful high end tool watch tradition. The fears of every model being turned into a polished dress watch did not become reality after all. But as pointed out in the text of their own press kitt: The deep seas are part of peoples dreams. And the depth rating of 3900 meters it will also stay there and will not come to life: there is not much use even for divers to have a watch with this qualities. Does that make this a silly invention? Bottom line: Yes. Does that make it a silly watch? No, not at all. The DeepSea is an impressive piece of innovation and an absolutely gorgeous tool watch I’d love to own. It is Non Plus Ultra, nothing superior seems to exist. That is what we all want and why we spend ridiculous amounts on luxury watches, right? On the other hand, in moving in this direction Rolex accepts that their wrist watches have nothing extra to add to modern day life anymore. Back in the ’50’s they did add usefull functionalities to watches when they invented Submariners for real divers and GMT Masters for real pilots. Without going into any suggestions for other concepts, this does feel like a missed opportunity to me.

In all the noise of the new innovations one should not forget to mention the gradual and flawless update of the Submariner. It moved in the same direction as the lovely new GMT II: maxi case, maxi hands and a new bezel. Although the color of blue of this first white gold model has been a turn off for many and the watch has been renamed The Smurf already, color is a matter of taste and the new Sub is a thing of beauty in the best Rolex tradition.

So, where does this leave the Rolex line up right now? With the new Day Dates and Datejusts Rolex covers the dress and jewelry watches segment just perfectly, both for women as well as for men again, there is space for innovations that go extreme and beyond with the DeepSea, and the main lines of Submariner and GMT II had their subtle but very strong updates. It is a job well done and worthy of the companies legendary name. Actually… I’m looking forward to Basel 2009 rumours already. - Evert ‘08

Credits for the picture go Elmar @ Oysterinfo.de

Authentic tool watches and military watches are getting more and more attention these days. Not only old military Rolexes and vintage Benrus watches for example,  but also the more modern pieces by brands like Marathon and CWC are popular. Many of these watches have a matte black finish to the steel. This color is created not by paint but by physical powder deposition (PVD). Part of this demand for rugged (looking) tool watches is the interest in the old stories and adventurous values behind them. It is the story of a watch being “issued” to the military, complying with certain “specs”, being used in combat or the choice of a certain commando unit for the watch. Many of these stories are genuine and interesting developments that stem from a “form follows function” design. Great examples are the watches Panerai developed for marine frogmen in the 1930’s with the protective lever or the Rolex Submariner in the 1950’s that soon qualified as the no. 1 choice for diving.

The demand for tool watches happens to be a very profitable business. And demand creates is own supply. The watch industry responds with a wide range of matte steel or PVD products from the oversized U-boats, over to square-headed Bell and Rosses, to limited edition blackened Rolex Sea-Dwellers: no matter what, anything seems to sell and get applause these days. There is nothing wrong with these products, but in my view only the watches that had or have a real functional purpose and a clear cut design will survive the test of time. They are recognized by a real history, a refreshing simplicity and a design that pleases the eye without being invented to please. The rest of the pack won’t survive in terms of lasting appreciation or a economic value. The merits of a watch are a matter of personal taste, but my advise would be: Don’t believe the PVD hype.

I just finalized a write-up for Watch Freaks, a blog hosted by Alon Ben-Joseph. It is about web 2.0 and horology and how this combines. Or should combine in my opinion

Click here to read the article ‘what did web 2.0 did for horology?’

An example of what it didn’t do for Ebel.

Hi, my name is Evert, I’m a WIS friend of mr. Fratello aka Robert-Jan. He kindly lends me his blog space to share my thoughts when and if worthwhile. Thanks to him and I hope you enjoy.

Since the beginning of my watch passion, I’m interested in Rolex. The internet turned out to be the place to be to fuel my passion, and it was through the internet, that I bought my first serious watch. It was an Omega Seamaster coming from a guy who was saving for a Rolex Sea-Dweller. Back then the prices of Rolex watches seemed to come from another planet in my view. Although I could already see the magic of the “SD”, I thought this guy was nuts to spent thousands of dollars on it. Later I did - of course - take the plunge myself and acquired a Submariner No Date, but still the idea of the price tag horrified me.

Years later, me and many WIS with me, have gotten used to ever increasing Rolex prices. The transparency in de the market is bigger than ever with sites like chrono24.com, and the sales corner of the German forum even showing charts with sales prices under the button “investor”. But all this information has done nothing in terms of creating heavy price competition. The public is simply too hungry for Sports Rolex.

Even more than the modern models, the prices of vintage Rolex are hitting the roof. They are praised for their uniqueness, character and their hour markers that turn from white to yellowish brown over time. No sapphire crystals that are so common nowadays on this pieces, but the characteristic plexi glass. A highly scratchable material, but still loved by many with the slogan “Plexi is Sexy”. The posts on the watch forums, countless watch-auctions and many unofficial Rolex information sites seem to put more oil to the fire every day. It supports the upward spiral of the Rolex Sports price tags.

In this madness, some opt out and don’t buy any vintage. I decided to participate just a little in the craze by buying a Submariner Date reference 1680 from the late ’70’s. Having done that, it is time for me to take a break from studying the hectic and complicated vintage market and take all the time necessary to contemplate the purchase of a modern Sports model again. Well, not really too much time: With the price increase adopted by Rolex just this March 2008 on almost all current models, also these are bound to go up again. If you love the Rolex brand, the spiral of price and praise is hard to escape!

Time for something completely different. I have been tagged by Alon Ben Joseph who renamed the original game ‘8 things you don’t know about me” to “The Blog Game: Tag! Your it!”. I’ll play of course.

The rules are:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules;
2. List EIGHT random facts about yourself;
3. Tag EIGHT people at the end of your post and list their names;
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged; and,
5. E-mail your tagger, the link to your post.

So, here are EIGHT random facts about myself:

1. I was born in Enschede (east part of The Netherlands) and I have lived there the first few months of my life, before moving to some other village in the area. Anyway, we lived above one of the band members of Teach In. Teach In won the Eurovision Song Festival in 1975 with the song ‘Ding a Dong’.

2. My middle name is Hendrik. Robert Jan Hendrik Broer. The first three of my names are all separate, however, I use Robert-Jan (with a dash) as my calling name. My father’s name is Hendrik, my grandfather’s name is Hendrik, my greatgrandfather’s name was.. you get it. However, biggest difference is that I am the first where Hendrik is my Christian name and not part of my ‘first name’. One of my forfathers, also a Hendrik Broer, was a painter in Giethoorn. In the Wikipedia page of Giethoorn, he is marked as a famous citizen of Giethoorn.

3. I love chesterfield chairs. I really do. However, our home is like a copy of the Riviera Maison stores, so it wouldn’t fit. And if it would fit our current interior, my girlfriend wouldn’t let me own one anyway.

4. Probably not a total surprise, but I would love to turn this watch thing into a profession. One can’t live from blogging about watches, so being a watch trader or doing work for auction houses comes to mind. It would be great to do something that you are really passionate about. Although I like my current job as an IT auditor, that can’t be someone’s passion

5. I love schnitzels. Especially those made by restaurant Bulten or those made by myself. Use good meat, enough flower, eggs and breadcrumbs. You can find a good receipe here.

6. Aah, finally. Watches. I am very happy with the ones I own right now and couldn’t imagine I would have this collection when I started about 10 years ago with this hobby/passion. My current dreamwatch is either a Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Jumbo 15202 or a Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711/1. Still in doubt. I changed through the years from liking complicated and/or vintage watches to very ’simple’ wrist watches. I still like a good moonphase or annual calendar, but nothing beats just three hands and a date window :). However, it will take a few years before I can buy one I’m afraid. Or actually not, because what would be next? Perhaps it will be the crown on my collection one day. One should slowly work to that. Another ‘complication’ I do like about watches, is a chronograph. I have my dreamwatch chronograph already, a vintage Speedmaster Professional with the old caliber 321. I don’t think there is a chronograph which has better readability and has a nicer history. Although certainly not the most expensive watch of my collection, I cherish my Speedmaster Pro!

7. Instead of Hendrik, my middlename should be ‘headache’. I have ‘normal’ headaches, but I also have the more seldomly form of headaches called a cluster headache. It’s very painful and comes in periods. My cluster headache periods vary from a year to a year and a half and then it stays with me for several weeks. There is medication, but unfortunately no cure.

8. I currently own a ‘neo-vintage’ BMW 525i (E34) in good condition. I love to drive this car, despite its age. It is packed with features and everything still works fine. Actually, not a single squeek when I drive it. Let’s see how a 2 year old Renault of Alfa is handling :). Anyway, despite the fact that my heart goes out to BMW and that my next car probably will be a newer 5-series (E39) with an automatic gearbox and leather interior, my ultimate car would be a Mercedes Benz Gullwing SL300.

And that’s the end of my 8 randomly picked facts. The next eight people I would like to tag are:

1. Chuck Maddox - long time watch friend and the uncrowned King of chronographs!

2. Gerard Nijenbrinks - owner of Horloge Platform Nederland and - in the mean time - friend from The Hague! I wonder if this English game fits his Dutch blog.

3. Frank Geelen - Frank is a passionate watch adept and also has his blog Monochrome! He is a contributor on many forums and blogs.

4. Elmar - Elmar is owner of the Oyster Info website, which also includes a blog.

5. John Biggs - This list shouldn’t exist without his name on it. Also a watch blogger of the first hour with his WristwatchReview.com website.

6. ‘Explorer Johan’ - Long time friend and since almost a year, finally owner of a nice time piece. He used to have a blog, but it died. Perhaps a reason to bring it back to life?

7. Velociphile - Velociphile has one of the best blogs on watches. Period.

8. Roger Ruegger - He has a great website on diver’s watches and runs a blog as well! Excellent place to start your diving watch experience.

Watch collector and seller Manbodh Watches in Den Haag reported the following watches as stolen:

Manbodh offers a high reward for returning these watches. If these watches are offered (see the serial numbers), please contact Manbodh Watches asap.

I really like the Audemars Piguet stainless steel bracelet on the Royal Oak models, although it tapers a bit too much to my taste. However, I can hardly imagine someone would want to replace this incredibly genius piece of art with a leather strap. VikenB over at the Audemars Piguet forum did. This customized strap makes it a ‘different’ watch, although I clearly prefer the classic all-stainless steel look of the Royal Oak.

Photograph by VikenB.

What can we expect? Will Rolex introduce a new Sea-Dweller or Submariner with ceramic bezel? Will Zenith produce more dreadful watches? Will more brands introduce their inhouse movements? What are the new brands? Is horology dead as Velociohile says or did the watch industry suddenly gained enough insight to make watch collecting fun & cool again?

Who knows..

Jorge Merino over at TimeZone keeps us posted with novelties and sneak previews of new watches and watch brands.

Bvlgari Assioma Limited Edition

Giuliano Mazzuoli Manometro S

Xemex Picadilly Chronograph

Aquanautic Super King Chronograph

Click here to be up-to-date till Basel starts!

The Dive (into) Watches blog did a nice write-up for a number of brands with novelties to present at Basel 2008. Click here.

To set the time correctly on your mechanical wrist watch, you definately need at least one quartz controlled wrist watch. Even better, you need a watch that keeps perfect track of time. You need a radio controlled wrist watch! In 1990, Junghans introduced the first radio controlled wrist watch, the Mega 1. An integrated antenna in the strap receives a long-wave radio signal every morning broadcasted on 77.5 KHz from Frankfurt. This broadcast carries time information from Germany’s national atomic clocks at Braunschweig. These radio transmissions automatically set the watch correctly.

Currently, Junghans still carries one radio controlled watch in their ‘Avantgarde’ collection. The Mega 1000 watch! Successor of the Mega 1 wrist watch. These watches are widely available for approximately 300 euros.

However, the original Mega 1 watch, as pictured above, is for sale on the German eBay for prices between 100 and 150 euro.

However, you can find radio controlled wall clocks and radio controlled Casio watches starting at 20 euro as well on the bay. I even found a cool looking Braun wall clock for 20 euro. Who is going to wear this Mega 1(000) anyways? To keep your watch collection ‘complete’, you might want to do an investment for an original Mega 1 though!

“To Manufacture or Not To Manufacture, That Is The Question!”, writes Alon Ben-Joseph on the WatchFreaksBlog today.

Read this interesting blog posting over at WatchFreaks, click:
Should watchmakers become a true Manufacture?

The Montblanc Collection Villeret 1858 is made by what was once the Minerva company.
Photographs by watchinghorology.com.

U-Boat seems to be taken seriously in the watch business these days, at least amongst certain people and magazines. At least since U-Boat is asking over 2000 euro for a mechanical watch. Next, there is TW Steel, making shameless copies of U-Boat watches. Yesterday, I received an e-mail from Kiber announcing their latest < 200 Euro wrist watch. Another copycat...

Sigh… I am getting tired of these fashion watches that ride along the +44mm wave initiated by Panerai. Nothing wrong with these watches as long as they are placed in perspective. The U-Boat costing 2700 euro is ridicilous.

Anyways, here are the specs of these watches:

Article 7100/1066 Fortezza chrono rose €. 169,00
Article 7100/1064 Fortezza chrono black €. 169,00

Movement : Quartz Japanese Miyota OS20

Case diameter: 45mm
Strap attachment : 22mm
Water resistance : 3ATM / 30 meters
Glass: mineral

I promised to get back on my new watch At first, I was looking at Rolex watches again, but couldn’t make up my mind. Although I like the new GMT-Master IIc and the Milgauss, it wouldn’t add much variation to my current collection. Then I was looking at the Royal Oak Jumbo, but I am not ready yet to spend over 8K Euro on one wrist watch.

However, as I have written before, I am a huge fan of the 1970s design of Gerald Genta. He designed the Nautilus, Overseas, Royak Oak and… the Ingenieur. The original ref.1832 Ingenieur SL is highly sought-after I believe, and the prices paid for those are unbelievable. So I decided to settle for a brand new one! To be honest, IWC isn’t my brand. Omega and Rolex are my brand, I like what they are doing and like most of their watches. However, there are some other brands that make one or two types of watches that I really like, and that’s it. I don’t care much for IWC in general. Not my cup of tea. I do like the Ingenieur and the Portugieser line of watches though.

Anyway, I’ve read some articles on the new ref.3227-01 Ingenieur, tried one on for a day (thanks G) and decided to order one. Last saturday, I bought my IWC Ingenieur at Ace & Dik in Amsterdam, official IWC dealer. It was a pleasure to meet Alon Ben-Joseph, owner of the store, in person and we had a nice chat about watches, watch blogging etc. He ordered a fresh model, so I could remove the plastic stickers myself What a treat!

Here are the first pictures of the Ingenieur:

The watch is quite heavy (heavier than my Yacht-Master or Panerai), 216 grams to be exact. The diameter of the case is 42.5mm and 14.5mm in height. The bracelet is wonderfully crafted and it is child’s play to add or remove links. The watch/movement is protected by a soft iron inner case up to 80,000 A/m (magnetic fields), so now I can cook in our induction kitchen again :). The movement itself is a self-winding IWC inhouse caliber 80110.

@Justin, your guess was spot-on!

Since a few days, I also joined the WatchFreaks blog, hosted by Alon Ben-Jospeh. Today, I added an article on vintage Rolex watches and why I do not collect them ;). Please give the WatchFreaks blog a visit and read my latest post!

Photo by Oysterinfo.de

Feel free to come back though