The Breitling Watch Blog

Tonight is Daylight savings time for those of you in regions that have it. Don’t forget to turn your clocks back 1 hour at 2am or 3am, depending on your location and custom!

The Patek Philippe Caliber 89 is going on sale on Antiquorum. This unique watch only has 4 peices in existence: One in white gold, one in yellow gold, one in a rose gold, and one in platinum. There are 33 different complications on this watch… Patek Philippe Caliber 89, stuff that dreams are made of. Hit up Antiquorum if you have the scratch Estimated 4,500,000 to 5,500,000 Swiss Francs selling price. Auction is Novemenber 14-15th, 2009.

More info on the Patek Caliber 89

My first Solid Rose Gold watch, a 18K Rose Gold Louis Erard 1931 manual winding watch. I really like this one, and its about 40mm in diameter, with a Peseaux/ETA 7001 movement, a manual winding workhorse like the Unitas 6497, albeit quite a bit smaller. This movement is used by many brands out there and some that modify movements such as Nomos, Blancpain and Chronoswiss.

Louis Erard is a more affordable brand out there, that still makes some beautiful watches more in the dressy/classy line-up. The 1931 series is a very sensibly sized line with refined dials and solid build quality, especially the precious metal versions.

The 18k Rose Gold case is beautifully crafted, but simple. The lettering on the back is laser etched presumably to save money, and has a sapphire crystal display back. The gold markings are stamped, not etched.

The dial is an interesting matte/bead blasted black, with Rose Gold indices. The subdial uses a large chapter ring in order to give the dial balance due to the small size of the movement. The 12 o’clock index is the only one in arabics.

As you can see, the small seconds subdial is sunken with light guioche pattern. I put the watch on an aftermarket Gucci strap made by Camille Fournet in France. It is one of the many that are available on Ebay at discount prices. I feel the Gucci straps are the best bang for buck straps available if you have the right size with Crocodile and Ostrich straps made by Camille Fournet in France for around $30 a peice.

There is the Peseaux movement with geneva striping. It is niceley finished, and shows well. The movement is signed as well, and as you can see, is quite small compared with the size of the watch.

The requisite wrist shot. The 40mm size actually measures closer to 41mm, and works great for my wrist size (6 3/4″). I love this watch for wearing with suits or any other dress-up occasion. The standard Louis Erard watches are very nice looking watches for the money, and these Gold models can be found for a song on the secondary Market, making them a great choice for an affordable modern gold watch.

While Harry Winston is primarily a luxury Jewelry company, known for his diamonds and precious metal designs as opposed to horological superiority, their complex movements combined with tasteful design cues make their watches very appealing to me. If I had the money, I would consider a Harry Winston peice for myself.

This new piece is limited to 80 pieces, with a minute repeater, and partially exposed movement. Circular Geneva Stripes, and double sapphire crystals. The de-centralized dial and visible minute repeater mechanism is too cool. Encased in solid 18k rose gold or white gold, this timepiece screams class and style all at the same time.

So, Sly Stalone wins this award for “Glory to the Filmaker” in September, which is some sort of visionary filmaker award. Stalone has admittedly been putting out some damn good films lately, and the Upcoming movie “The Expendables” looks awesome… but an award with a JLC Reverso? Not that I have anything against those Ugly-gotta-have watches, but Sylvester is a dyed-in-the-wool Panerai Loyalist… Will he ever wear this?

At any rate, it is a huge honor for Sly to be awarded this at the Venice Film Festival awards, especially given that most people thought he was a one-dimensional actor with little talent. The last Rambo movie was an excellent film, and most of his recent stuff has been as well.

Eterna has always been a watch brand that I’ve liked, and I have owned several over the years, hoping that one day they would again create something as innovate as the ball bearing rotor and again revolutionalize the watchmaking world. They have just announced their new Spherodrive movement, the in-house Caliber 3505, which uses a brand new ball-bearing mounted spring barrel. While Eterna has begun manufacturing and designing their own movements in-house, they have not hung back and simply re-invented the wheel, with many of their new designs they are incorporating new ideas and new ways of helping us tell time. Eterna is poised to be another Watchmaking powerhouse – at least I think so.. but I’m biased since I’ve always had a soft spot for the brand.

The New Eterna Madison with Spherodrive uses a modified 3500 movement with the new ball-bearing mounted barrel, and measures 35x 38mm. The watch has a Sapphire crystal front and back, and is water resistant to 50m.

First time this has ever been compiled. I have been working on this on and off for the past year because I have been busy, but its finally done. I’ve compiled all the Breitling models from 1996 until now with their MRSP in US Dollars only. This will allow you to track when a model was released in the pricelist/chronolog and what the US MSRP was during the entire model run. The pricelist includes Strap and Bracelet prices, and lists watch MSRP according to the value of the Head Only.

Download it here:
Complete Breitling Pricelist Grid 1996-2009

Don’t really want to get into an extensive review of this Omega Seamaster GMT, as there are plenty out there. Just wanted to make a few notes regarding the watch, as I have reviewed the other Seamasters in the past, both in videos and in writing.

The Omega Seamaster GMT is a very nice watch, which uses the same 41.5mm case design as all the other Seamaster 300m Divers. The GMT hand is unique compared with most other GMT watches in that when you adjust the hour the main hour hand moves, not the GMT hand. This makes the watch much easier to adjust for Local Time than other GMT watches. You simply keep your GMT hand on Home Time permanently, and adjust the main hour hand in the 1-hour increments to adjust for local time.

The watch has a day/night two-tone bezel which many peopel don’t like, including myself. It can be relatively easily changed to a standard black or silver bezel if you wish however.

Basic Specs:
Diameter: 41.5mm
Movement: Omega 1128 (Base ETA2892)
Water Resistance: 300m
Crystal: Sapphire