Doxa Bucks The Downsizing Trend With New SUB 200 II Collection; Snoopy Ditches Tennis For Pickleball On Timex Trio; Sternglas' Limited Blue Merion; Krayon Plays PAC-MAN; ArtyA's Moissanite Purity

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. A LOT of people on the internet want smaller watches. That seems to be the number one complaint about watches — they’re too large. However, when you talk to brands, you find out that this enthusiast corner we carved out for us doesn’t match up with reality. Brands tell me that they enthusiastically crank out smaller versions of their watches and then hardly anyone buys them. So, is Doxa making a mistake or just meeting the market where it wants to be?

In this issue

• Doxa Bucks The Downsizing Trend With The New SUB 200 II Collection

• Even Snoopy Ditches Tennis For Pickleball On The New Timex Trio

• Sternglas Releases A Very Nice, But Limited, Version Of Their Merion Diver

• Krayon Pairs Serious Watchmaking With A Fun Day At The Arcade With The PAC-MAN

• ArtyA Takes The Purity Concept Further With A Moissanite Tonneau And A Suspended Tourbillon

👂What’s new

1/

Doxa Bucks The Downsizing Trend With The New SUB 200 II Collection

The SUB 200 has been Doxa's accessible dive watch since 2019 — simpler than the helmet-cased SUB 300 line, without the double-signed bezel and oversized minute hand that make a Doxa instantly recognizable from across the room, but still a reliable and well-built dive watch at a reasonable price. Just two weeks ago we covered the SUB 200 Grande Roma, a retailer collaboration that used the original 42mm case. Now Doxa is replacing that case entirely with the new SUB 200 II Collection, and they've made a decision that runs directly counter to what the rest of the industry is doing right now. They made it bigger.

The new SUB 200 II comes in stainless steel, 44mm wide and 12.80mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 48mm. The case itself carries over the same general shape — lyre-shaped lugs, unidirectional rotating bezel, box-shaped sapphire crystal, solid caseback. Water resistance is 200 meters. The 2mm increase in diameter over the old model adds just 2mm to the lug-to-lug too. On the wrist it should still be manageable, but there's no getting around the fact that this goes against the trend we’ve been seeing. Does this tell the true story of what the market actually wants or is it a misstep?

The dials are also new, and I’m digging them. The entire collection debuts with fumé finishes — light centres darkening toward the edges — in black, grey, blue, and green. There have been individual fumé and sunray-brushed Doxas before, but this is the first time the look runs across an entire range. The applied hour markers have a black outline for contrast against the gradient background, the hands have beige Super-LumiNova inserts, and the bezel uses a circular-brushed aluminium insert. The date window at 3 o'clock gets a bevelled treatment and a beige outline that ties it into the lume. There's also a black DLC version with a red coral dial, white Super-LumiNova throughout and a white scale on the bezel insert. The DLC has existed before as a limited edition, but this marks its first permanent place in the catalogue.

Inside is the Sellita SW200-1, beating at 4Hz with 38 hours of power reserve. It's decorated to Doxa's spec and gets a signed rotor. The collection can be had on either a mesh Milanese bracelet or a Tropic-style FKM color matched to the dial.

The new Doxa SUB 200 II Collection is available now, priced at €1,590 on rubber, €1,650 on the Milanese bracelet or €1,690 for the DLC on rubber, and €1,790 for the DLC with the black-coated Milanese. See more on the Doxa website.

2/

Even Snoopy Ditches Tennis For Pickleball On The New Timex Trio

Tennis players have been complaining for years that pickleball is colonizing their courts. And you can’t exactly blame them. Because, apparently, it's gotten to the point where even Snoopy had to pick a side. Timex has updated their Peanuts collaboration, and where the beloved Snoopy-playing-tennis dial once lived, there's now Snoopy with a pickleball paddle. I, for one, am outraged. This terror must stop. But in the meantime, the collection covers three price points — Weekender, Marlin Quartz, and Marlin Automatic — so there's a version for everyone willing to accept that this sport is here to stay.

The Weekender runs 37mm wide and 9.5mm thick in low-lead brass with a silver finish, with a hardened mineral crystal, and 50 meters of water resistance. The Marlin Quartz steps up to 38mm wide and 12.5mm thick in stainless steel with a domed acrylic crystal and 30 meters of water resistance. The Marlin Automatic is the biggest of the three at 40mm wide and 13.5mm thick, stainless steel again, acrylic crystal with a display caseback, and 50 meters of water resistance. None of these are dive watches, but you knew that.

All three dials are white with Snoopy cartoon scenes, and this is where the collection earns its keep. The Weekender shows Snoopy mid-swing; the Marlin Automatic has him looking comically defeated, which feels appropriate given pickleball's reputation among tennis purists. The standout, though, is the Marlin Quartz: Snoopy is about to serve, and the seconds hand is replaced with a transparent disc that has a pickleball printed on it.

The Weekender and Marlin Quartz run on quartz movements. The Marlin Automatic gets a Miyota with 40 hours of power reserve and a date window at 3 o’clock. The Weekender ships on a recycled nylon slip-through strap in blue and white. The Marlin Quartz gets a sustainably tanned leather strap via the Leather Working Group. The Automatic comes on a dark blue leather one-piece strap.

The Weekender is $169, the Marlin Quartz is $249, and the Marlin Automatic is $349. All three are available now. See more on the Timex website.

3/

Sternglas Releases A Very Nice, But Limited, Version Of Their Merion Diver

Sternglas built their reputation on Bauhaus-styled dress watches, offered at pretty great prices, before pivoting into dive territory with the Merion in late 2024. The Marus 2.0 Edition Küste is the next step, the same setup but now with a new color and limited.

The case remains the same and is 42mm wide and 12mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 50mm. It's 316L stainless steel with a brushed-and-polished finish, with a double-domed, double-AR sapphire crystal on top. The unidirectional aluminum bezel runs 120 clicks in dark blue, with LumiNova-coated numerals. The screw-down crown has a red indicator ring that becomes visible if the crown isn't properly secured — a small detail that I love so much. I wish every watch would implement this. Water resistance is 200 meters.

The dial is also very familiar from previous versions, with elongated white lumed indices over a dark blue base. The only contrast comes from an orange seconds hand and orange dots every 5 minutes on the markers. A date aperture sits at 6 o’clock and Sternglas says it’s enlarged 20% over the standard NH35 display. Interesting.

So, inside, you’ll find the TMI NH35, a well known automatic from Seiko with a 42-hour power reserve and an accuracy spec of -20/+40 seconds per day. Three strap options ship with the watch, all on a 20mm quick-release: a dark blue rubber, an integrated metal bracelet with tool-free adjustment, and the debut of Sternglas's hybrid strap, which pairs water-repellent European calf leather on the outside with a silicone core.

The Marus 2.0 Edition Küste is available now and it’s limited. But at 1,999 pieces, it won’t sell out instantly. Price is set at €549, but the website is showing €519 for me, which is a good deal. See more on the Sternglas website.

4/

Krayon Pairs Serious Watchmaking With A Fun Day At The Arcade With The PAC-MAN

Krayon is a Geneva independent founded by Rémi Maillat, and since 2017 it has built one of the most coherent bodies of work in contemporary watchmaking. The Everywhere, the Anywhere, the Anyday, each one a different approach to the same core question: how do you make a watch that tells you something meaningful about your specific moment in time and place? The PAC-MAN series sounds, at first, like a departure. It isn't. You still get the exact same complication as the Anywhere, but with a heavy dose of nostalgia.

The case is 39mm wide, 9.5mm thick, and made entirely in platinum. Krayon keeps the finishing understated because the dial needs to do all the talking. On top is a sapphire crystal, and we don’t get a quoted water resistance, but who cares about that.

The dial base is polished onyx, and on it Fei Hou, Rémi Maillat's partner, has hand-painted the ghosts, fruit, and directional elements of the PAC-MAN maze. The maze itself is rendered in translucent tampography, only visible when light catches it at the right angle. Since each of the 15 dials is hand painted, which means no two are identical. Hours and minute hands come from central hands. PAC-MAN serves as the 24-hour indicator, traveling around the dial over the course of a day. Ghost eyes mark your location's sunrise time; the big cookie marks sunset. The date sits at 6 o'clock.

If you’re asking about that sunrise and sunset indicators, that’s the brand’s signature complication from the Anywhere model, which displays sunrise and sunset times for a specific location. That’s handled by the hand-wound calibre C030, with over 400 components and a 72-hour power reserve. Multiple superimposed discs handle the interaction between time, date, and the location-specific light cycle data. The strap is hand-stitched black alligator leather on a platinum pin buckle.

The new Krayon PAC-MAN is limited to 15 pieces and price is upon request, but seeing how the regular platinum Anywhere hovers in the CHF 150,000 range, don’t expect this one to be cheaper. See more on the Krayon website.

5/

ArtyA Takes The Purity Concept Further With A Moissanite Tonneau And A Suspended Tourbillon

ArtyA, the Geneva-based brand Yvan Arpa has been running since 2009, has built a very specific reputation over the past few years. We have covered them many times, so you might be familiar with their wild, full sapphire cases, some even color changing, carbon divers, minute repeaters and, most recently, the Purity Central Tourbillon, three unique pieces in a round sapphire case carrying an oversized flying tourbillon and a CHF 130,000 price tag. This new watch, the Purity Curvy Tourbillon, keeps the same movement and the same approach to the tourbillon, but places everything inside a tonneau case made not from sapphire, but from moissanite.

Moissanite is silicon carbide, originally discovered in a meteorite crater in Arizona in 1893. In nature it's vanishingly rare. However, the lab-grown version, which is chemically identical, is the one used here. As the second-hardest material known after diamond, it sits at 9.25 on the Mohs scale and has a melting point exceeding 2,700°C. Those numbers explain why working with it is so difficult: you need diamond-tipped tooling and even then it’s a pain. What moissanite does well, optically, is refract light at a dispersion index of 0.104, which is double that of diamond. ArtyA has added 65 facets to the champagne-colored case, so the prismatic effect is quite pronounced. The case measures 41mm wide, 42mm long, and 13mm thick, with a crown sitting at 12 o’clock, slightly recessed into the case.

There’s no dial to speak of, except for pink a openworked ring at noon floating above the double barrels and the tourbillon at 6 o'clock. The ring has 12 hour markers and faceted dauphine hands pointing out the time. But that’s about it.

Inside, you’ll find the manually wound skeletonized PUR-T3 Curvy Tourbillon movement, developed for ArtyA by Télôs SA, and thanks to the transparent case, it’s visible from every angle. At 6 o'clock sits a flying tourbillon that beats at 4Hz with a cage spanning 17mm, which the brand describes as roughly 50% larger than conventional tourbillons. Two parallel-mounted barrels handle power delivery, keeping torque stable throughout the 65-hour guaranteed reserve (with a potential max of 70 to 72 hours). The finishing includes sandblasted bridges and plates, shotblasted components including the tourbillon cage itself, and hand-beveled edges throughout. The watch comes on a light brown nubuck leather strap closed with a pin buckle.

The ArtyA Purity Curvy Tourbillon is limited to nine pieces and is priced at €189,000. See more on the ArtyA 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

• “A few years ago, in the waning hours of a summer barbecue, my elderly downstairs neighbor started to tell me a little bit about his life,” Jack Crosbie recently wrote. “Now, I get to tell all of you.” For a decade, Crosbie’s neighbor, Harvey Prager, ran a marijuana smuggling operation, filling the hulls of a small fleet of sailboats with Colombian weed and then moving it into the US. The logistics of Prager’s smuggling operations are fascinating enough, but the longer story of his life holds the most outlandish details. A fun caper with more than a few surprising turns.

• A vanishingly rare, highly terminal diagnosis placed Christopher Ingraham on a precipice and left him there for a year before another diagnosis pulled him away from the edge. What lingers, in this rollercoaster of an essay from Slate, is the precision of Ingraham’s interiority. He charts the rise and fall of his dread like a tide; he begins to strategize about eventualities that are impossible to perfectly plan for. He looks down for a long time, and returns with perspectives that some of us don’t necessarily have the time or good fortune to develop.

• Despite the headline and the lede, Michel Chaouli isn’t actually interrogating our reading habits. Instead, he’s interrogating the function of completion itself—the sense of “ending” that both marks and haunts any and every plot-driven narrative. “[T]he pressure to finish a book comes not from society nor from some neurotic impulse in my head,” he writes, “but from the work itself.” But that doesn’t mean he can’t poke at the all-too-common anxiety of deciding whether to put down a book you’ve already started.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Watches of Espionage needs to do more videos like this and less of those generic voiceover stuff.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk