Citizen Shrinks Down Super Popular Series 8; Norqain Updates The Adventure; Great Looking New De Rijke; An Aventurine Lebois Heritage Chrono; The Mauron Musy Architect Duo Are Very Special Watches

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Norqain is just a few steps away from making a watch that I will really, really like. There’s 12 more hours left to join the It’s About Time F1 fantasy league.

In this issue

• Citizen Takes Their Already Super Popular Series 8 Collection And Shrinks It Down

• Norqain Updates The Adventure With New Case, Size, Dials And Colors

• De Rijke & Co. Teams Up With Illustrator Guy Allen For A Trio Of Adventure Watches

• Lebois & Co. Add A Sector Aventurine Dial To Their Heritage Chronograph

• The New Mauron Musy Architect Golden Cosmos & Golden Oasis Are Very Special Watches

👂What’s new

1/

Citizen Takes Their Already Super Popular Series 8 Collection And Shrinks It Down

I’m getting repetitive, but Citizen is currently on a generational run of success. They have cleverly identified the space left open by Seiko moving upmarket and are filling it fast and hard, with often spectacular watches. The Tsuyosa dominates the low-budget watch market. But I’m partial to the Series 8 collection, which takes a lot of inspiration from legendary integrated bracelet sports watches. And while I can easily wear a Series 8 with my gorilla wrists, many people have complained that they are just too large. The smallest Series 8 watch starts at 40mm wide and 11mm thick. Well, that’s changing now with the release of the NB608 Collection, a smaller and thinner Series 8.

The main attraction here will be the case, or rather, its size. The new NB608 watches measure 39.3mm wide and 10.4mm thick. That doesn’t sound like a huge shrinkage, but thanks to the integrated bracelet, the watch already wears a bit smaller than the numbers would suggest. But other than the new size, you still get the sharp edges of the Series 8, with an octagonal bezel that has a circular flat brushed top. You still get a sapphire crystal, a transparent caseback and 100 meters of water resistance.

There are four variants of the new collection, three permanent additions and one limited. Starting with my favorite, the one pictured above, the NB6080-51W comes in a steel case with a green dial. The NB6084-50A gets a yellow gold colored bezel and crown guard, paired with the steel case, and a silver dial. The NB6085-57W gets a fully yellow gold colored case with a brown dial. Last, there’s the limited edition NB6086-54E which is the most bold of them all, with a dark grey coating on the case, paired with gold bezel and crown guards and a forged carbon dial. It’s quite something. Apart from that carbon dial, the rest of the dials have a central part featuring a pattern that’s supposed to mimic Tokyo’s night-time skyline. That’s surrounded by a sunray-brushed chapter ring and a snailed minute track.

Inside the watch is the Cal. 9051 automatic movement, which is based on the Miyota 9015. It beats at 4Hz and has a power reserve of 42 hours. Accuracy is rated at -10 to +20 seconds per day. All of the watches come on H-shaped integrated bracelets closed with a folding clasp.

The new Citizen Series 8 NB608 Collection goes on sale in March, with three watches joining the regular collection and the NB6086-54E being limited to 1,200 pieces. Pricing varies based on finishing. The NB6080-51W goes for $1,300, the NB6084-50A for $1,350, the NB6085-57W for $1,450, and the limited NB6086-54E for $1,600. See more on the Citizen website.

2/

Norqain Updates The Adventure With New Case, Size, Dials And Colors

I’ve really been trying to get into Norqain, but it’s not working for me. Something about them just rubs me the wrong day. But hey, I might be changing my mind pretty soon. And the watch that could make me change my mind is the new Norqain Adventure, which gets a new, smaller case, a simpler look and some great colors.

The new Norqain Adventure is a bit of a middle ground. It slots in between the current Adventure Sports at 42mm and the Adventure at 37mm, by measuring 40mm wide. OK, it also seems that the 42mm version is exiting the collection. The new case measures 40mm wide, 12.5mm thick, with a 48.3mm lug-to-lug. New for this case are the more pronounced crown guards, with a crown that has a colored ring matched to the dial. On top of the case is a domed sapphire case surrounded by a unidirectional bezel with a knurled edge. The insert is made out of aluminium instead of ceramic, which is right up my alley, and it’s color matched to the dial. What remains the same is the brushed finish with polished details, the plaque on the left side of the case and the water resistance of 200 meters.

More changes can be found on the dial, where the base gets an embossed mountain pattern. Very cool. The two colors available are grey and dark green. There’s also a lumed ring under the sapphire crystal, matching the light blue or light grey lumed inserts on the faceted and rhodium plated hands and markers. The hands are partially openworked and the date is moved to 6 o’clock and it now has a circular aperture.

Inside, no major change. It’s still the Norqain Calibre N08, which is just a rebadged Sellita SW200, beating at 4Hz with a 41 hour power reserve. It is COSC certified, however, which I think is a novelty for the model. The watches can be had on either a stainless steel bracelet with a folding clasp or on a very cool rubber strap with the same mountain pattern and color matched to the dial.

The new Norqain Adventure 40mm is available now, but with a pretty significant price increase over the previous model. While the 42mm version was priced at €2,270, this new one comes in at a whopping €3,200 on rubber and €3,450 on steel. See more on the Norqain website.

3/

De Rijke & Co. Teams Up With Illustrator Guy Allen For A Trio Of Adventure Watches

There’s a couple of very interesting independent watchmakers in the Netherlands. Grönefeld makes some eye watering beautiful stuff, Christiaan van der Klaauw is as classic as it gets and Bataavi is an extremely strong entry into the microbrand space. But my favorite? Without a doubt De Rijke & Co. This small indie has made a name for itself with an incredibly cool rotating case and a prolific collaboration with Miffy, the cartoon character I remember from my childhood. But their hidden gem has been the Amalfi Series which pairs their driver’s watch with jaw-dropping illustrations rendered in champlevé enamel. They’ve done them twice so far, and now we’re getting a spiritual successor to those watches, made in partnership with Guy Allen who did the original Amalfi illustrations. And these are my favorites of the bunch for a very personal reason — when I was a kid, outside the school where I went for French classes, someone parked and practically abandoned a Land Rover Defender Camel Trophy edition. And that’s the exact car we get on the Amazon. Ooof!

In most watches, I just ramble on the case details as quickly as I can just to get to the more interesting stuff, the dial. But here, the case deserves a kudos. De Rijke has been using a similar case for a while, but now it gets small updates. It measures 38.2mm wide and 11mm thick, but the most impressive part is the two-part ceramic case construction. It allows you to rotate the internal part of the case, the one which houses the movement and the dial/crystal by 90 degrees opposed to the outer case that is attached to your wrist. This allows the watch face to rotate to face you while you are driving. Pretty cool. The case has sapphire crystal and the lugs have been modified from the original Amalfi watch to allow for regular spring bars and straps. Two come with untreated cases, while the Amazon model gets a black ceramic case.

The dials are continuations of the Amalfi watches and the land, sea and air style, once again illustrated by Allen. These dials are made using the traditional champlevé technique, with solid 925 silver dials etched and then filled with grand feu enamel by hand and fired at high temperature by a craftsman in the UK. The lower half of each solid silver dial features engraved detail with subtle variations in depth, encased in a polished layer of transparent grand feu enamel. The Amazon model features shades of green for the background, and a Land Rover in the top part, the Sahara has deep reds and yellows, as it depicts the Porsche 911 racing in the desert, and the Turini comes in shades of blue, featuring a beautiful Lancia Stratos.

Inside is nothing special, but also not a bad movement. It’s the reliable and sturdy automatic Sellita SW300 high-grade. It beats at 28,000vph and has a 42 hour power reserve. Each of the watches gets its own shade of rubber strap closed with a steel pin buckle.

The De Rijke & Co. x Guy Allen is limited to 50 pieces per dial and is priced at €4,495, without taxes. See more on the De Rijke website.

4/

Lebois & Co. Add A Sector Aventurine Dial To Their Heritage Chronograph

Tom van Wijlick is a Dutch entrepreneur with a seemingly simple idea that drives his business decisions - make incredibly cool, vintage-inspired, watches that sell for an accessible price and meet pretty much every demand the market has. And he’s doing good. One of the brands he owns, Airain, is developing new models in close collaboration with its fanbase and the other, Lebois & Co. is recreating some of the best designs of the past. Actually, that’s not true. Lebois has been making a wide range of watches, from modern to avant-garde, and only a couple of years ago did they launch their Heritage Chronograph which thrust them into the limelight of vintage-revival. The Heritage Chrono came with a bi-compax setup and a number of fantastic retro colors, including the coveted salmon. Most recently, the company made a step into the very high end of chronographs with a souscription sale model and an incredible coquille d’œuf dial. While this new variant is not as exclusive as the coquille d’œuf dial, at least not in price, it still brings an incredible amount of style to the already stylish chrono. This is the new Lebois & Co Heritage Sector Chronograph Aventurine.

The stainless steel case remains the same, which is a good thing. Because it’s a simple but beautiful case. Made out of stainless steel, with a mix of brushed and polished surfaces, with a thin beveled bezel. The pushers, which look amazing, and the angled lugs have a strong and pronounced bevel to them. The case measures 39mm wide and 13.9mm thick, but a lot of that thickness is used up by the hugely domed sapphire crystal on top. Without the crystal, the case drops down to a very svelte 10.5mm. Water resistance is 50 meters.

New is the dial. First, it’s made out of aventurine, the glass, not the stone. That means that it has the deep, deep blue base, with copper-colored metallic inclusions. The very cool thing is that this dial is assembled out of two aventurine layers, which means that the two sub-dials (30 minute counter at 3 o’clock and running seconds at 9) can be sunken into the aventurine dial. A subtle touch, but oh so good. On the dial you get white printing for sector-style dial that includes the tachymeter, the minute railroad track and hour markers with numerals on the even numbers.

Inside, and visible through the caseback, is the calibre LC-450, which is essentially a manual wound La Joux-Perret L100 series column wheel chronograph movement made for Lebois & Co. The movement beats at 28,800vph and has a great power reserve of 60 hours. Decorations are on point, as well - a blued column wheel with polished column tops and blued screws, perlage and Côtes de Genève. The watch comes on a blue leather strap.

The new Lebois & Co Heritage Sector Chronograph Aventurine goes on sale March 10, with deliveries starting in July. Price is set at €3,850. See more on the Lebois & Co. website.

5/

The New Mauron Musy Architect Golden Cosmos & Golden Oasis Are Very Special Watches

I had to double check if I was right and I was — I have never written about a Mauron Musy watch. And that’s an incredible shame. Sure, I, perhaps just like you, didn’t pay much mind to the brand, seeing them as an interesting but a bit puzzling brand. But that all changed in September in Geneva, when I met with them for the first time. What followed was the best presentation I have ever seen, with their PR rep not just mastering knowledge of every single detail of design and production, but also having one of the best props I have ever seen. On a thin wooden board with cutouts in the shape of case components, Mauron Musy laid out every single part of their case. In a brief but impressive demonstration, the rep then takes each piece of the case, assembling it before your eyes, demonstrating both its simplicity and complexity. And in a perfectly directed script, you are then asked the question: where are the gaskets of the case that guarantee the 300 meters of water resistance? There are no gaskets. Not a single one. You see, Mauron Musy aren’t just interesting looking watches. They are perhaps the best engineered watches in the entire industry, with finishing so precise and execution so smart, the steel pieces sit together in such a way that it’s just their flatness and orientation that keeps the water out. Incredibly cool.

This turned me into an instant fan. I just didn’t have watches of theirs to write about. Well, now I do. Back in 2025, Mauron Musy teamed up with architect Arturo Tedeschi to create the Architect, a 10 piece limited edition. That watch disappeared in minutes, and the two decided to give more people to own similar creations. These are the new Architect Golden Cosmos & Golden Oasis and they’re fantastic.

Both watches share the wild case we’ve seen on previous Mauron Musy models, including the Architect. As shown on that model, it’s a complicated case made out of 29 pieces that slot together before they are clamped down with eight screws. Again, no gaskets, just their registered nO-Ring mechanical water resistance system that gives you 300 meters of water resistance. The case is made out of grade 5 titanium, with two different finishes — Golden Cosmos has an overall microblasted finish and select polished details, while the Golden Oasis has polished, finely microblasted and satin finishes. It’s not a small watch, measuring 44mm wide and 13mm thick. Front and back are sapphire crystals.

While there are slight color differences in the dials, they share the same basic setup as the original Architect. The dial is less a platform to convey information and more an architectural sculpture. It’s made out of two layers, with a bottom part made out of either meteorite on the Golden Cosmos or a sunray brushed blue dial on the Golden Oasis. However, even that bottom part is not a full dial, with partial skeletonizations on various parts. But more impressive than the lower parts are the hand-cast 18K gold sculptures placed above them and designed by Tedeschi. Around the perimeter is a flange in grey for the Cosmos and blue for the Oasis. To play agains this complexity of the dial, the display is relatively simple, with openworked white centrally mounted hands and a small seconds at 9 o’clock.

Inside, you’ll find the Caliber MM01-SK, an automatic movement equipped with a Swiss lever escapement, beating at 4Hz, with a 55 hour power reserve. Interestingly, Mauron Musy says they are not a Swiss Made watch, but rather Swiss Crafted. The Swiss Made label has been perverted with brands using the value threshold to make components in Asia and then finishing them in Switzerland. The Swiss Crafted guarantees that 100 % of each component of the watch is designed, developed, and manufactured in Switzerland. The watches come with two rubber straps closed with deployant clasps.

The new Mauron Musy Golden Cosmos and Golden Oasis are limited editions — 27 for the Cosmos and 10 for the Oasis. Price is set at CHF 32,000 for either. See more on the Mauron Musy 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

• With apologies to the novel, It, Andy Hageman removes the ventilation grille and takes us deep into the Stephen Edwin King Archive for Los Angeles Review of Books. There, as a part of his close reading of the original manuscript of The Dark Half, complete with the author’s handwritten notes and marginalia, Hagemen tries to piece together the perspective King used while writing. Was it King? Was it his alter ego, Richard Bachman, or a combination of those two identities?

• Are we ready for iPod nostalgia already? Why yes, yes we are. For Dirt, Molly Mary O’Brien fondly recounts purchasing a fourth generation iPod at the age of 14, and the joy of being able to create a music collection that you could take anywhere. “Maybe this is the essential blessing of the iPod: the software gives you the potential for an unlimited musical library, but the hardware’s limits still lock you into a committed relationship with the songs you choose,” she writes. “Developing my expansive taste was obsession; tending my library was devotion; actually listening to it was true love.”

• In 2019, over several months, Alexander Friedmann repeatedly disguised himself and entered a maximum-security jail, where he hid an arsenal of weapons within cinder-block walls around the facility. Friedmann, who spent years in jail for an armed robbery conviction before becoming a vocal advocate for criminal-justice reform, was caught, and convicted on a vandalism charge. “Friedmann’s plot, extraordinary in its audacity, had the trappings of a major criminal undertaking,” writes James Verini. And yet the plot itself—as well as the mind behind it—is more complicated, and confounding, than it first appears.

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Thanks for reading,
Vuk