Hot Take: The New Armin Strom Tribute 2 Copper Edition
Since visiting Armin Strom at Geneva Watch Days 2024, I’ve been keeping an eye out for the brand’s newest releases. Today, the Tribute 2 Copper Edition makes its debut, and it’s a gorgeous watch with a beautifully detailed dial and mainplate. Métiers d’Art are a popular trend, and this watch perfectly infuses them.
Handcrafted dials aren’t new, but there certainly seems to be an uptick in offerings. From affordable brands to the usual suspects, guilloché and marquetry dials are making headlines. Now the Armin Strom Tribute 2 Copper Edition comes to market with another manual form of decorative finishing. Grattage is the method responsible for the beautiful coppery shimmer, and it’s worth a closer look.
The Armin Strom Tribute 2 Copper Edition
The latest Armin Strom is a 38mm by 44.35mm stainless steel watch with a thickness of just 9mm. It shows off the brand’s characteristic lug design and sports a leather-backed gray Alcantara strap with a steel folding clasp. Sapphire crystals grace both case sides and include an antireflective coating. Thankfully, the modest size isn’t the only nod to wearability as the watch also has a water resistance rating of 5 ATM.
A gorgeous dial
The Tribute 2 has an off-center gray fumé dial with a hand-polished steel border. It displays hours, minutes, and seconds using 5N-gold-plated hands. The hand-finished skeletonized barrel, an Armin Strom hallmark, is visible on the front of the watch. Also, the click bridge and winding wheels are viewable and contain circular graining. For a watch that shows off its movement on both sides of the case, it looks highly refined. Frankly, it avoids the UFO look that plagues many pieces.
The centerpiece of this watch, however, is the copper-colored mainplate. Armin Strom explains that a grattage process was used and is a technique mastered by very few. The surface obtains its characteristic tiled look from scraping with a sharp tool. Understandably, it glistens in the light and shows off darker and lighter coppery tones.
The AMW21 caliber
The Tribute 2 Copper Edition is fitted with the in-house AMW21 hand-winding movement. The back of the movement shows a three-quarter plate with Geneva stripes and hand-finished anglage. The 137-component caliber has a frequency of 21,600vph and 100 hours of power reserve. It’s nice to see an attractive movement that’s also practical.
Takeaways
There are just 10 pieces of the Tribute 2 Copper Edition. Then, the price is CHF 25,000 from Armin Strom, which feels fair for a watch with this level of workmanship and finishing. Plus, the size makes it a strong contender for a very stylish (almost) daily watch. What are your thoughts on this latest release?
