Casio Goes Back To The Future; Yema x Alpine Rallygraf; Hanhart's Pastel Dial Silva; Möels&Co Releases Second Gen 528; JLC's New Mid-Sized Reverso Small Seconds; Chronoswiss Opus Chronograph Dakar

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Do not skip the new Möels watches. I really love everything they do, and this is just a good example of design evolution.

In this issue

• Casio Transports Us Back To Our Childhood With The Back To The Future CA-500WEBF-1A

• Yema Teams Up With The Alpine Racin Series With The New Rallygraf Hand-Wound Chronograph

• Hanhart Brings Pastel Dials To Their Elegant And Simple Silva Collection

• Möels&Co Releases The Second Version Of The Very Cool, Very Retro, Very Futuristic, 528

• Jaeger-LeCoultre Introduces A Mid-Sized Reverso Classic Monoface Small Seconds

• Chronoswiss Continues Celebrating 30 Years Of The Opus With The Opus Chronograph Dakar Edition

• FOR WATCH CLUB MEMBERS Your Next Watch, Week 57: A Sensational Cartier Case; A 90s Ebel; More Ana-Digi Fun; And A Steal Of A Piaget

👂What’s new

1/

Casio Transports Us Back To Our Childhood With The Back To The Future CA-500WEBF-1A

The Casio calculator watch is certainly not a watch that would find its way at the very top of this newsletter. It’s a fine watch, but this spot is usually reserved for releases from major brands, with significant changes to models and stuff that will mean a lot to a lot of people. However, every once in a while, I let nostalgia get the better of me. Back To The Future is one of THE movies that shaped my childhood. So, how would I pass over a collaboration between Casio and one of my favorite watches of all time. This is the new Casio × Back To The Future CA-500WEBF-1A. And it’s heavy!

There is a good reason why this watch was used for the collaboration with BTTF, and that’s the fact that Marty McFly famously wears a Casio CA-53W, the original Casio calculator watch. The new watch features a resin case and stainless steel bracelet, with the case measuring 34.4mm wide, 8.2mm thick and has a 43.2mm length. The whole thing weighs just 53 grams, as you would expect.

The whole CA-500WEBF-1A is all about cramming as many BTTF references as possible. And I like it. Out back is a caseback with an engraving of the flux capacitor, there’s a Back to the Future logo on the buckle, but the main attraction is the watch face, which features details from the DeLorean’s taillights and the “OUTATIME” license plate, and colors from the time machine interface used for the calculator buttons. To round it all off, the watch comes in a box that looks like a VHS tape, which is just delightful.

While the look is groovy, the insides remain the same. Which means you get the classic CA-500 digital module, including an eight-digit calculator, dual time, daily alarm, hourly time signal, and a stopwatch with 1/100-second accuracy.

The new Casio CA-500WEBF-1A is available now, priced at €119. See more on the Casio website.

2/

Yema Teams Up With The Alpine Racing Series With The New Rallygraf Hand-Wound Chronograph

Yema has been really busy in the last few years. They ditched their old in-house movement that brought them a lot of troubles, replaced it with fantastic movements made in their brand-new factory and revamped the entire line to include also Sellita-sourced movements for a more affordable mechanical watch. But with all that, Yema also has a few cool partnerships. Like the one they have as the official timekeeper of the Alpine Elf Cup, a spec-series race based on the supremely cool Alpine A110. As such, they released a couple of Rallygraf meca-quartz watches in previous years. This year, however, we’re getting a different, limited, Rallygraf. One with a mechanical movement.

To fit said movement, the case of the Ralllygraf had to change and grow. The new case is made out of stainless steel and measures 41mm wide, a surprisingly slim 12.5mm thick, with a 47mm lug-to-lug. The thinness is achieved by ditching a traditional external tachymeter bezel, moving it within the case. The case has brushed surfaces and polished bevels and on top is a double-domed sapphire crystal. The solid caseback has the Alpine emblem, and individual numbering. Water resistance is 100 meters.

Moving to the dial, it’s surrounded by the internal tachymeter chapter ring and has a full white base. That’s paired with a bi-compax layout that has trapezoid blue sub-dials, with the blue matching the Alpine iconic color. A 30-minute chronograph counter sits at 3, while the small seconds is at 9 o’clock. The date window sits at 6 o’clock, right underneath the Alpine Cup Series logo. The hands and applied indices are filled with Super-LumiNova BGW9 Grade A, while the central chronograph seconds hand has a blue tip and an “A” counterweight.

Inside, you’ll find the Sellita SW510 M BH b, a hand-wound (helping with thinness) chronograph movement based on the Valjoux 7750 architecture. It beats at 4Hz and has a 60 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a perforated rally strap in Alpine blue leather.

The new Yema Rallygraf Alpine Cup Series Chronograph is limited to 100 pieces and the Yema website says that there are only eight pieces left. So go get one if you want it. Price is set at €2,190. See more on the Yema website.

3/

Hanhart Brings Pastel Dials To Their Elegant And Simple Silva Collection

For decades, Hanhart has focused on perfecting the pilot’s watch, and perfected it they have. The German watch brand with Swiss roots, has been producing Flieger chronographs and stopwatches since 1938. In the past decade or so, however, they’ve expanded their collection, like the 2011-launched Pioneer collection focusing on vintage-inspired pieces, and the more recent Aquasphere, their first diver. Back in 2023, I noted in my writeup of the then new Silva collection that it was easily one of the more reported on releases in months. And for good reason, as it was an interesting looking, relatively simple, watch. Now, Silva is getting two new dials and keeps all the charm of the original.

On the outside, nothing has changed, so you still get a stainless steel case that measures 39.5mm wide, 10mm thick and has a 44mm lug-to-lug. The case has a polished finish, on top is a smooth bezel, surroundeidng a convex sapphire crystal. They are a pretty straightforward three-hander, that borrow certain design features from a model in its museum, reinterpreted in a more modern style. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The dial is as basic as they come, but with a ton of charm. Punctuating the Arabic numerals at 12, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 o’clock are six applied dots. A bold minutes track, narrow pencil-style hands and the brand’s historical logo, all rendered in black, complete the picture. The two new colors are wonderful pastels, a soft pink and a beautiful pistachio.

The watch is powered by the simple but affordable Sellita SW 200 automatic which has a 38h power reserve and a customised black rotor. The watches can be ordered with a black or brown leather strap.

The new Hanhart Silva models are available now, priced at €890. See more on the Hanhart website.

4/

Möels&Co Releases The Second Version Of The Very Cool, Very Retro, Very Futuristic, 528

Möels&Co is not a particularly old brand — they’ve been around since 2019 — but even so, they give off an air of history. Their watches are delightfully quirky, retro-futuristic, and with a very obvious mastery of design and color. And it’s not just me saying that. In 2022, their Möels 528 earned its designer Betina Menescal a bunch of awards, including the coveted European Product Design Award. The 528 was a huge hit for the brand. Now, the time has come for the 528 S2, a thoroughly updated version 2 of the cool watch which still keeps the same vibe, while making subtle adjustments to make it as close to perfect as possible.

On paper, the 528 always sounded large. But thanks to its elongated construction, it wore surprisingly well. Here’s what I mean: the old case measured 45mm wide, 11.1mm thick and with a length of 33mm. So, yeah, the 45mm sounds huge, but with the short 33mm lug-to-lug, it fits even on the smallest of wrists. Despite that, the new case is smaller, measuring 43mm wide, a svelte 8.7mm thick and has a 32mm lug-to-lug. Speaking of the lugs, they are super stubby and are now 20mm wide (instead of the 22mm of the previous version), which makes it more practical for strap changes. The caseback gets chamfered and mirror polished edges and a very cool opening to show off the movement. Because the case has slimmed down so much, they ditched the screw-down crown in favor of a push-pull crown, but you still get 50 meters of water resistance.

The dials are made from aluminium with a satin-brushed finish, hand-painted with a metallic shine and coated with lacquer. The skeletonised, diamond-cut hour and minute hands follow the same design as the Möels 369 but are shorter and thicker due to the absence of a seconds hand. The applied numerals are slightly larger and bolder, and the line-up is available with silver rhodium-plated, gold-plated, or luminous hands. At launch, five colors are available: Desert Mirage, Solo Argento, Hexara, Lunera, and Vistamare.

Inside, the Sellita SW200 series has been replaced with the hand-wound La Joux-Perret D101 which gets you a 50 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a strap from Delugs, either a cut-to-size FKM rubber or an epsom leather, both with Leaf-Spring Deployant clasps, and for an extra £50, you van get a German-made mesh bands from Staib.

The new Möels&Co 528 S2 is on pre-order right now, with shipping starting in March 2026. If you get it in the pre-order window you’ll get a 20% discount, making the price £1,350, instead of the full retail £1,650. See more on the Möels&Co website.

5/

Jaeger-LeCoultre Introduces A Mid-Sized Reverso Classic Monoface Small Seconds

At one point in the 2000s, I remember Jaeger-LeCoultre doing the wildest things with the Reverso. Chronographs, dozens of functions, crazy colors and all kinds of complications that shouldn’t be found in a watch as compact as the Reverso. That said, cramming all of that into one watch made it less compact, so they quickly turned into little bricks on your wrist. It was a weird time, but I kind of miss it. In the 2020s, however, JLC has toned things down a bit, and is taking inspiration from the early days of the Reverso and its Art Deco heritage, applying it across the board. The latest to get the this vintage-inspired treatment is the new mid-size Reverso Classic Monoface Small Seconds.

This is a Reverso on first and second glance, which means that it’s made out of polished stainless steel, with the signature triple gardoons top and bottom, and it has the classic flip mechanism that allows you to expose the flat and blank steel backside of the watch. The dimensions are the mid-size of the available Reverso watches, measuring 24.4mm wide, 7.56mm thick, with a length of 40.1mm.

The dial also gets slight updates and now features a guilloché pattern in the centre of the dial, surrounded by a vertically brushed track that holds the Arabic numerals, pointed to with the classic blued faceted dauphine hands that the Reverso is known for. At 6 o’clock is a small seconds display, which mirrors the design of the larger dial, with a guilloché pattern in the centre and a brushed surround that holds the numerals.

Inside, you’ll find the super thin calibre 822, a hand wound movement beating at 21,600vph, with a power reserve of 42 hours. The watch comes on a black calfskin Casa Fagliano strap, closed with a steel pin buckle.

The new Reverso Classic Monoface Small Seconds is part of the permanent collection, priced at €8,000. See more on the Jager-LeCoultre website.

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Chronoswiss Continues Celebrating 30 Years Of The Opus With The Opus Chronograph Dakar Edition

While it wasn’t the start of the company, that happened a bit more than a decade prior, the introduction of the Opus, the first serially produced self-winding skeletonized chronograph, was a huge moment in the history of German-founded, Swiss-based Chronoswiss. From then, we got dozens of Opus models, including those in signature Chronoswiss colors. The launch of the Opus happened 30 years ago in 1995, and the company is now celebrating that milestone. A few months ago, we got the Opus Purple Rain. Now, we have the new Chronoswiss Opus Chronograph Dakar.

Like many other Chronoswiss watches, this one is also made out of Grade 5 titanium which offsets its significant size of 41mm wide and 14.8mm thick. However, it doesn’t have, like others have, a brightly colored finish. Instead, you get raw titanium, with brushed and polished finishes. On top is a knurled fixed bezel that holds down the domed sapphire crystal and on the side is an oversized onion crown. Water resistance is an unexpected 100 meters.

The dial is a direct homage to the original, keeping the classic Opus layout. That means that you get a small seconds at 9 o’clock, 30-minute counter at 12, 12-hour counter at 6, and date subdial at 3, all sitting over a completely openworked movement. All of the bridges over the movement have galvanic black bridges with an brown CVD-coated framework, and all of the dials sitting above the bridges are done in the same brown. You get Rhodium-plated Breguet-style hands and white printed scales to tell the time.

Inside, you’ll find the Chronoswiss calibre C.741S, which is actually a modified ETA Valjoux 7750. But when I say modified, I mean heavily modified. Obviously, the entire movement is skeletonized, has those galvanic black bridges, but then it also has a finished escape wheel and pallet lever, and a skeletonised purple CVD-coated rotor with Côtes de Genève. It keeps the 4Hz beat rate of the original movement and has a 46 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a sand-colored nubuck leather strap.

The new Chronoswiss Opus Chronograph Dakar is part of the regular collection, priced at €15,300. See more on the Chronoswiss website.

FOR WATCH CLUB MEMBERS Your Next Watch, Week 57: A Sensational Cartier Case; A 90s Ebel; More Ana-Digi Fun; And A Steal Of A Piaget

We continue with our exploration of watches we shouldn't spend our money on, but most likely will. Read it here. 

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Recently, Anthropic conducted a stress test on its AI model, Claude. When faced with a fictional scenario involving its own demise, Claude “broke bad,” immediately resorting to blackmail. What’s more, when Anthropic conducted the same test “on models from OpenAI, Google, DeepSeek, and xAI,” the results were exactly the same. The models went straight to blackmail, do not pass go. But why? For Wired, Steven Levy reports on why LLMs go rogue.

• What’s going on with National Parks in the US? Rumours and speculation have been rife following the staffing and funding reductions under the Trump administration. In the first reported piece for the new nonprofit newsroom RE:PUBLIC Lands Media, and in partnership with Outside, Gloria Liu goes beyond the state of park toilets to provide a definitive account of what is happening behind the “facade management.” The result is a harrowing warning.

• Across southern Africa, the Amitofo Care Centre, an NGO founded by a Taiwanese monk, has established a series of residential schools for orphans and at-risk children in the area. Over time, the school has become increasingly staffed by those from mainland China—and in Malawi, some of them have groomed students to help a vast ivory-and-animal smuggling operation. Rachel Nuwer is the perfect reporter for this feature, having written the literal book on wildlife trafficking; here, she blends solid sourcing and spare scenework for a fascinating story.

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The Iron Snail makes easily the best videos on the interenet.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk