Christopher Ward Introduces True GMT In-House Movement; Delma's New 41mm Shell Star; Micromilspec Keeps It Simple; Marathon Expands Anthracite SAR Collection; Dominique Renaud's One-Hertz Pulse60

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I’m certainly not a Christopher Ward fan. In fact, quite the opposite. But I can’t say I’m not intrigued with this. I really can’t wait to see how well it sells and what it does on the secondary market.

In this issue

• Christopher Ward Introduces The C63 Sealander True GMT With New In-House Movement

• Delma Releases Whole New Shell Star Collection In 41mm With Both Automatic And Quartz Movements

• Micromilspec Keeps Things Simple With The New Milgraph T5 With A New Titanium Bracelet

• Marathon Expands the Anthracite SAR Collection With New 36 and 46mm Variants

• Dominique Renaud Launches Eponymous New Brand With The Wild One-Hertz Pulse60

👂What’s new

1/

Christopher Ward Introduces The C63 Sealander True GMT With New In-House Movement

A caller GMT, sometimes called an office GMT, is the most common type of dual-time complication: the main hands show local time, and a separate 24-hour hand tracks home time, with the 24-hour hand being the only one you adjust independently when you change time zones. A true GMT, or traveler GMT, does the opposite: the main hour hand adjusts independently for local time, leaving the minute, second, and 24-hour home-time hands alone . The traveler mechanism is far rarer because it requires more complex engineering, and the ones that exist outside the affordable Miyota 9075 are typically very expensive. Christopher Ward has just introduced their entry into the traveler-style GMT lineup. However, this one sits closer to Tudor and Grand Seiko offerings than those you might get with the 9075. This is the new Christopher Ward C63 Sealander True GMT.

The case is Christopher Ward’s Light-Catcher design in steel, 40.5mm wide and 14.15mm. While that sounds huge, it appears that it wears much better than the numbers might suggest — the case is actually just 9.75mm thick without the top and bottom box-shaped crystals. Those chunky crystals do give it a great look. Surrounding the top crystal is a very thin bezel and the case has brushed main surfaces, and thin polished bevels. Water resistance is 100 m.

The dial is available in black with light blue accents or silver with orange accents. The surface is deeply grained, with multiple layers to separate the indications: small seconds at 6 o’clock, power reserve indicator at 9 o’clock, and at 3 o’clock the fully exposed GMT bridge with linear brushing, sandblasting, hand-polished facets, and a circular brushed GMT wheel. The hour chapter ring has applied markers with generous lume, framed by diamond-polished rhodium surrounds. A colour-matched, and highlighted in the same accent color, date wheel sits at 3 o’clock.

The calibre CW-002 is Christopher Ward’s first in-house true GMT, developed since 2023 under technical director Frank Stelzer using the CW-001 (formerly SH21) as a base. It adds 23 components without increasing movement height, thanks to a new plate supporting the GMT wheel. The twin-barrel construction delivers a fantastic 120-hour power reserve. It runs at 4 Hz and is COSC-certified. Finishing includes rhodium-plated bridges and plates, circular Geneva stripes, cut-outs revealing the barrels, diamond-polished edges, and a tungsten rotor with sunray-polished and sandblasted surfaces. The watches come on a steel bracelet with brushed surfaces, polished edges, and a clasp with push-button micro-adjustment, or a rubber strap with folding clasp color-matched to the accent color on the dial.

The C63 Sealander True GMT is part of Christopher Ward’s permanent collection, and it’s available now. The most controversial aspect will certainly be the price — €3,775 on rubber and €3,905 on the bracelet. At that price range, you’re easily looking at Tudor and Grand Seiko traveler style GMT watches. But there’s no denying that this is a great looking watch, with a very cool movement and finishing that looks like it delivers. I don’t doubt this will be a hit for them. See more on the Christopher Ward website.

2/

Delma Releases Whole New Shell Star Collection In 41mm With Both Automatic And Quartz Movements

Delma’s Shell Star collection has been part of the brand’s lineup for years, and the new 41 mm version is the first real update to the sizing in a while. It’s exactly the size that they needed, as it drops the diameter by 3 mm from previous models, brings the thickness down to 12.8 mm, and adds a fresh colour palette to the mix — all while keeping the core diver DNA intact. If you wanted an even more utilitarian dive watch, the 41mm Shell Star is also available in quartz, with an even thinner case.

The case is made out of 316L stainless steel, 41mm wide, 12.8 mm thick, and with a 47.5mm lug-to-lug, with satin-brushed surfaces and polished/bevelled edges. If you opt for the quartz movement inside, that thickness drops down to a very nice 11.7mm. On top is a sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on both sides, and that’s surrounded by a stainless steel bezel that has a 60 minute graduated scale engraved into it. All colorways of the watches have the same stainless bezel, with a Super-LumiNova BGW9 marker at 12 o’clock. The protected crown screws down and gives you 200 meters of water resistance.

The dials now run five colours: black, white, orange, yellow, and light blue. Applied indices, hour/minute hands, and central seconds hand are all finished with Super-LumiNova BGW9 for legibility. All versions also have a framed date window at 3 o’clock. Chunky hands and markers carry on the 1970s dive watch inspiration that defines the Shell Star line.

The automatic version runs the Sellita SW200-1 with date, self-winding, beating at 4Hz, with a 41-hour power reserve. A quartz models are equipped with the ETA F06.115 option that has 68 months of battery life. The watches come on either a stainless steel three-link bracelet with brushed outer/polished inner links and deployant clasp with pushers, or a rubber strap with colour-matched stitching and stainless steel buckle. Lug width is 22 mm.

The new 41mm Shell Star from Delma is available now, priced at €700 on rubber and €750 on steel for the quartz versions and €1,250 on rubber and €1,300 on steel for the automatic versions. See more on the Delma website.

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Micromilspec Keeps Things Simple With The New Milgraph T5 With A New Titanium Bracelet

Micromilspec has been steadily building out its Milgraph range as the backbone of its professional line, and the new T5 is the piece that ties the story back to the brand’s very first watch, the Field Testing Unit. The FTU started life as a prototype for military trials before later being offered to civilians, and the T5 essentially merges that original, stripped-back tool brief with the more complex Milgraph chronograph. The result is a left-hand chrono with a full Grade 5 titanium build and a great spec sheet.

The case is made out of satin-brushed Grade 5 titanium measuring 42mm wide and 15mm thick. On top is a sapphire crystal, surrounded by a unidirectional bezel carrying a full minute scale and Micromilspec’s QuadGrip profile — four deep cut-outs that make it easy to turn even with gloves on. The whole thing is tone-on-tone in anthracite titanium, including the new Grade 5 bracelet, which gives the watch a coherent, low-key presence despite the hardware. A black, white or red rubber strap is also available. Lug width is 20 mm and water resistance is 200 meters.

Dial-side, this is very much a Milgraph. The layout is a three-register chronograph with each sub-dial clearly labelled for hours, minutes, and seconds, which sounds obvious but then you realize that hardly anyone is using that setup. The dial itself is a sunray finish with a chrome effect that picks up light, and the indices and hands are applied and filled with Super-LumiNova X1. A red-tipped GMT hand adds a second time zone on top of the chrono functionality. You can get it with either a black or silver color.

Inside is the La Joux-Perret L121 automatic calibre, running at 4 Hz (28,800 vph) with a 60-hour power reserve. Functions include hours, minutes, small seconds, chronograph, and GMT.

The Micromilspec Milgraph T5 is limited to 35 pieces per dial color. Price is set at €3,500 on rubber and €4,000 on the titanium bracelet. See more on the MIcromilspec website.

4/

Marathon Expands the Anthracite SAR Collection With New 36 and 46mm Variants

There is a noticeable gap in the Anthracite SAR lineup that Marathon just filled. The 41 mm GSAR has been the blacked-out professional diver in the range for a while, but nothing smaller or larger existed in the same specification. The new 36 mm MSAR Auto and 46 mm Jumbo Day/Date close that gap, giving the Anthracite family a proper size run across three case sizes without changing anything about the core brief: 300 m water resistance, IP-coated 316L steel throughout, and zero reflective surfaces.

All three cases share the same construction logic: 316L stainless steel with matte black IP coating that reduces reflections and adds scratch resistance, screw-down crown, unidirectional IP-coated dive bezel with timing markings, sapphire crystal, and 300 m water resistance. Dimensions are 36mm x 13mm x 43.5mm for the MSAR, 41mm x 14mm x 48mm for the GSAR, and 46mm x 18mm x 55mm for the Jumbo Day/Date. The 41mm GSAR is also available on a steel bracelet; the other two come on black rubber straps with anthracite-coated hardware.

The black dials are built for legibility first. Bold numerals and clearly shaped hands handle time-reading at a glance, and illumination comes from a dual system: self-powered tritium gas tubes that glow constantly without requiring a light charge, and Marathon’s MaraGlo luminous material that charges with light exposure. The 46 mm Jumbo Day/Date adds day and date windows to the layout at 3 o’clock, the only model in the trio with both complications, while the smaller two discreetly integrate the date aperture at 4:30.

The 36 mm and 41 mm models run the Sellita SW200-1 automatic, 26 jewels, 4 Hz, 38-hour power reserve, with Incabloc shock protection. The movement also receives the anthracite finish treatment, keeping the tool-watch aesthetic consistent all the way through the caseback. The 46 mm Jumbo Day/Date gets the Sellita SW220 to handle the day/date complication at the same frequency and specification.

The expanded Anthracite SAR lineup is part of Marathon’s permanent collection, available now. Pricing runs from €1,900 for the 36 mm MSAR on rubber, €2,500 for the 41 mm GSAR on rubber, €3,000 for the 41 mm GSAR on steel bracelet, and €3,250 for the 46 mm Jumbo Day/Date on rubber. See more on the Marathon website.

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Dominique Renaud Launches Eponymous New Brand With The Wild One-Hertz Pulse60

Dominique Renaud is not a household name to casual watch buyers, but inside the industry his CV is essentially a map of modern haute horlogerie. He co-founded Renaud & Papi in 1986 with Giulio Papi after both came through the complications workshops of Audemars Piguet, and the firm went on to develop movements for AP, Richard Mille, IWC, Cartier, A. Lange & Söhne, and others, while also incubating talent that would go on to found or shape some of the most significant independent brands of the last three decades — Greubel Forsey, Grönefeld, Speake-Marin, and more. After Audemars Piguet took majority control and Renaud stepped back around 2000, he eventually returned through various projects, including the Renaud Tixier brand in 2023. Now, he’s launching a new brand, one that carries his name, and he’s doing so with the Pulse60, a watch built entirely around a single technical argument.

The case measures 40mm wide, a svelte 12mm thick, and with a compact 44mm lug-to-lug. It’s also available in two material combinations: full titanium, and a pink gold and titanium pairing. The case features soft, rounded curves and an integrated strap that flows directly from the case shape rather than sitting on conventional lugs. A push-button quick-release mechanism handles strap changes, and the watch ships with two options: a pin buckle strap and a triple-folding clasp strap. The front is protected by sapphire crystal, and the caseback is also sapphire, giving a clear view of the movement architecture from both sides. And you’ll want to see it

The dial is organised around the movement’s central feature — a 20 mm balance wheel oscillating at 1 Hz, held under an openworked full cock and positioned at the centre of the dial. Hours and minutes are indicated at 12 o’clock, small seconds at 9 o’clock, and a torque indicator at 3 o’clock. Because the balance beats at 1 Hz, the small seconds hand ticks exactly twice per second — what Dominique Renaud calls a “natural” dead half-second. There are three dial colors: silver grey and black dials in titanium, and a grey guilloché dial in the pink gold and titanium model.

The calibre is the hand-wound BUA2024, where BUA stands for Balancier Ultra Amplitude. The name is accurate: the 20 mm balance wheel swings over 360 degrees of arc — something that is impossible in a conventional movement without a complete redesign of the balance wheel, plate, and escape pin assembly. In a traditional movement, the geometry of these components imposes a hard limit on amplitude. Exceed it and you get over-swing: the balance travels too far, strikes the back of the anchor, and causes it to advance on the beat — a fault that disrupts timekeeping and accelerates wear. A conventional movement, in that sense, runs permanently close to its mechanical limit. The BUA2024’s redesigned geometry moves the balance far from that limit. Even when the watch is disturbed, the amplitude stays within a safe zone that protects the escapement and preserves regularity. The practical consequences extend beyond protection. At over 360 degrees of arc, the balance wheel remains free from escapement contact for longer and over a greater distance with each swing. During that extended free period, it follows its own dynamic laws rather than being influenced by the escapement mechanism, which produces a more stable and consistent rate. The number of disturbances the balance experiences is reduced to a minimum, and the result is behaviour that approaches what watchmakers call an ideal oscillator. The power reserve is 4 days, a direct benefit of the low-frequency, low-energy architecture. The caseback reveals the BUA2024’s two-bridge layout: the upper bridge shows the ratchet and crown wheel, while a cutout in the lower bridge exposes the escapement line.

The Dominique Renaud Pulse60 is goes on sale in April 2026 and while it’s certainly not cheap, I expected them to be more expensive. The titanium versions are priced at CHF 49,000, while the pink gold and titanium are priced at CHF 59,000, both of these are without taxes. See more on the Dominique Renaud website.

⏲️End links

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

• Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post to save it, then vanished into rockets and riches as losses topped $100 million. Now he’s back on the phone and in the boardroom, demanding data-driven austerity—halving the newsroom, killing endorsements, reshaping opinion in his own pro-market image. Can ruthless Amazon logic rescue a wounded paper, or hasten its decline?

• A devout Mormon dad sneaks DraftKings bets on his magazine's dime, chasing NFL glory amid America's $160 billion sports-gambling binge. From bishop's warnings to "tilt" meltdowns, harassment scandals, and rigged-game paranoia, his descent reveals a vice once quarantined now on every phone—rigged against dreamers, fueling addiction's slow bleed.

• Europe's migration chiefs land in Benghazi, desperate for Haftar's ear—only to be snubbed at the airport. The pretender general rules Libya's oil, militias, smuggling coasts without title or throne, his sons poised to inherit a fractured fiefdom built on silence, foreign arms, and enforced fictions. Post-Gaddafi chaos endures.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

OK, are you aware what’s happening with Afroman, the dude who we love from the “Because I Got High” masterpiece? A couple of years ago, a SWAT team broke down his door, they held his family at gunpoint, actually stole a bunch of money from him and suspiciously eyed a lemon pound cake, all based on a half-assed claim from a crackhead informant that he had a dungeon in his house where he kept women he was trafficking. Despite the pretty insane and uncorroborated claim, a judge signed a warrant and the horror story started.

I would have never learned about what happened had the corrupt police department not countersued Afroman for defamation, after he sued them to get his money back. They’re claiming defamation because this legend keeps putting out song after song in which he drags every single person involved through the mud in the most fun way possible. And had they not sued, we wouldn’t have the trial going on right now, which might be the most fun trial since the Depp-Heard showdown. I’m posting one of his videos up here, but YouTube should provide you with links to the trial. Watch a bit, it’s hilarious.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk