Grand Seiko’s Two New Spring Drives, One For The Wrist, One For The Safe; Certina's Colorful Summer Titanium Divers; M.A.D.Editions Goes On The Road; Naoya Hida's First Chrono; CvdK's Venus Duo

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I’m off to the coast this weekend and I’ve been thinking about dive watches lately… that Certina would look great on my wrist. Certina, if you’re listening… you know where to find me.

In this issue

• Grand Seiko’s Two New Spring Drives; The SBGY043 Iwao Blue For The Wrist, The SBGZ011 For The Safe

• Certina Gives Us Three Colorful DS Action Diver 38mm Summer Editions In Grade 2 Titanium

• M.A.D.Editions Takes The M.A.D.2 On The Road With The New Live Edition

• Naoya Hida Debuts Its First Chronograph; A New 31mm Calatrava-Scaled Model; And Five More New Designs

• Christiaan Van Der Klaauw Brings Venus Into Its Own With Two New Astronomical Watches

👂What’s new

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Grand Seiko’s Two New Spring Drives; The SBGY043 Iwao Blue For The Wrist, The SBGZ011 For The Safe

Grand Seiko brought two new Spring Drive references to Watches & Wonders this year, and I kind of missed them in my initial reporting. The SBGY043 Iwao Blue is an Elegance Collection addition — restrained, wearable, the kind of watch you could wear every day. The SBGZ011 is a 50-piece platinum Masterpiece from the Micro Artist Studio in Shiojiri, hand-engraved, inspired by a waterfall, priced at €86,000.

The SBGY043 case is 38.5mm wide and 10.2mm thick, in stainless steel with Zaratsu polishing alternating with brushed surfaces and a dual-curved sapphire crystal. The SBGZ011 uses the iconic 44GS case, here rendered in platinum at 40mm wide and 9.6mm thick, with the angular lugs Zaratsu-polished and the remaining surfaces hand-engraved with small indentations meant to evoke flowing water.

The Iwao Blue dial comes in a deep indigo — Katsuiro, historically associated with samurai armour — over a textured rock pattern that catches light from different angles. You get diamond-cut applied markers and faceted dauphine hands and no date. The SBGZ011's dial goes further: also hand-engraved with waterfall motifs, with hour and minute hands plus applied markers all in 14k white gold.

Both watches run on manual-winding Spring Drive movements. The SBGY043 uses calibre 9R31 with a dual-spring barrel and 72-hour power reserve, accurate to ±1 second per day. The SBGZ011 uses the 9R02 — the thinnest Spring Drive calibre built, 4mm, developed exclusively for Micro Artist Studio pieces — delivering an 84-hour power reserve via a dual mainspring and torque-return system. The SBGY043 comes on a nine-link brushed and polished steel bracelet; the SBGZ011 ships with a black crocodile strap and platinum clasp, plus a Kyoto leather strap as a second option.

The SBGY043 is available exclusively at Grand Seiko boutiques from June 2026, priced at €10,000. The SBGZ011 follows in July 2026, also boutique-exclusive, at €86,000. See more on the Grand Seiko website.

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Certina Gives Us Three Colorful DS Action Diver 38mm Summer Editions In Grade 2 Titanium

Certina's DS concept has been around since 1959, when the brand figured out that a properly sealed crown and a few strategically placed O-rings could turn a regular watch into something hard to break. The DS Action Diver carries that idea further than almost anything else in the Swatch Group portfolio, and last year Certina beefed up the 38mm version with full DS Concept Extreme Shock Resistance — the reinforced crystal, the anti-deformation plate between dial and movement, the ring-shaped movement retainer. Now, we’re getting three new summer editions wearing all of that hardware in grade 2 titanium cases with some very loud lume colors.

The case is 38mm wide and 13.2mm thick, built from grade 2 titanium with a ceramic insert in the unidirectional bezel. The crystal is domed, scratch-resistant sapphire, reinforced and slightly convex to distribute shock. Water resistance is 300 meters, ISO 6425 certified, with a screwed-down crown protected by guards and a sealed caseback.

Three colorways are available: an electric blue ceramic bezel over a matching blue dial with orange Super-LumiNova on the indices and hands; a dark grey bezel and dial accented in turquoise; and a black bezel and dial with pink lume. Love the color combinations.

Inside is the Powermatic 80, Swatch Group's workhorse calibre with a Nivachron balance spring for antimagnetic resistance and an 80-hour power reserve. All three come on brushed titanium bracelets with a quick-release system, a deployant clasp with dual pushers, and a diver's extension.

The Certina DS Action Diver 38mm Summer Edition is available now, priced at CHF 925. See more on the Certina website.

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M.A.D.Editions Takes The M.A.D.2 On The Road With The New Live Edition

The M.A.D.2 has had quite a year already. It won the Petite Aiguille at last November's GPHG and the collection has now grown to five colorways since designer Eric Giroud introduced the pebble-cased DJ turntable watch in 2025. The newest one, the M.A.D.2 LIVE, launched this past Thursday at Windup Watch Fair in San Francisco, and getting one requires more than just a credit card. Just like you would expect from the very cool offshoot from MB&F.

The stainless steel 316L case is unchanged from the rest of the M.A.D.2 family: 42mm wide, 12.3mm thick, with dual sapphire crystals front and back, both treated with anti-reflective coating. It's a smooth, rounded shape that sits closer to a river stone than a traditional watch case. Water resistance is 30 meters, which is fine for what this is.

The LIVE edition gets a silver dial plate with electric blue hour and minute discs, and the same blue carries over to the winding rotor, visible from both sides. That rotor still mimics a DJ platter, complete with a stroboscopic ring inspired by the legendary Technics SL-1200 MK2 turntable. The raised subdials represent the turntable's mixing console.

Inside is the La Joux-Perret calibre G101, a self-winding movement beating at 4Hz with 64 hours of power reserve. The bi-directional jumping hour module is developed by MB&F, giving you hours that snap on the hour rather than tracking continuously. The strap is white rubber, and the engraved deployant clasp is stamped with the city code of whatever stop you're buying it at — 13 cities across the full tour, which gives each piece a slightly different identity.

Oh, yeah, that’s the catch with the M.A.D.2 LIVE. You will only be able to buy one on a 13-city tour, live. The price is set at CHF 2,900, without tax, and the first place you could have gotten one is in San Francisco. The next announced locations are Beverly Hills (May 6), Bordeaux (May 29–30), London (June 13), and several Asian and European stops through the fall, culminating in Geneva in November. See more on the M.A.D.Editions website.

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Naoya Hida Debuts Its First Chronograph; A New 31mm Calatrava-Scaled Model; And Five More New Designs

Naoya Hida has been building one of the most formidable catalogs in independent watchmaking since the brand launched in 2018, and every year the collection grows by exactly as much as the small team can produce. As we covered here when they introduced the Type 6A Perpetual Calendar last year, the brand works in very limited runs, very small cases, and finishes that hit above almost any price point you can name. For 2026, the headliner is something Hida has wanted to make since the beginning: a chronograph.

The NH TYPE7A is 36mm wide and 11.7mm thick, made in 904L steel with a concave polished bezel and engine-turned motifs on the pushers, a clear nod to the Patek reference 1463 Tasti Tondi. The dial is German silver with laser-engraved tracks and numerals, the latter hand-engraved Breguet-style figures filled with cashew-based synthetic Japanese lacquer. Time hands are solid yellow gold; the chronograph hands are heat-blued steel. Under the closed caseback sit restored and serviced vintage Valjoux 236 movements that Hida acquired in bulk years ago, apparently waiting for exactly this moment. It wears on a Granite calf strap by Jean Rousseau. Ten pieces will be made between 2026 and 2027. The NH TYPE7A is priced at JPY 5,300,000 / $38,300.

The other entirely new model is the NH TYPE8A, a 31mm watch inspired by the original Calatrava 96 and Breguet 3210 — which means Hida is explicitly going to the source material, not the modern interpretations of it. At 8.9mm thick with a screwed caseback, it's an extreme proposition in 2026. The dial is engraved German silver with Breguet numerals, small seconds at six, and blued steel hands. Through the sapphire caseback sits the new calibre 2326SS, a 23.5mm hand-wound movement beating at 3Hz with 38 hours of power reserve. Hida doesn't name the base ébauche but it sure does look like the Peseux 7001. Twenty pieces in 2026-27 will be made. The NH TYPE8A is priced at JPY 3,200,000 / $23,100.

The rest of the new 2026 references are evolutions of things we’ve seen before. The NH TYPE1E is the fifth iteration of the brand's original model, now in a 36mm case with a more pronounced domed sapphire crystal that takes the thickness from 9.8mm to 10.9mm — still powered by the hand-wound calibre 3019SS, which uses a heavily modified Valjoux 7750 base. 25 pieces, priced at JPY 2,700,000 / $19,500.

The NH TYPE2C-2 introduces Naoya Hida's first porcelain dial in the 37mm center-seconds TYPE2 line: glossy milky white with hand-painted indexes, 10 pieces, JPY 2,850,000 / $20,600. The rectangular TYPE5B and TYPE5B-1 are refined versions of the 2024 TYPE5A, with shorter lugs by 1mm per side, a wider stepped case flank, more angular dial numerals, and larger hands — the TYPE5B-1 adding an acrylic crystal in place of sapphire and Breguet numerals on the dial. Both are 10 pieces each, both priced at JPY 3,700,000 / $26,700.

Finally, the NH TYPE3B-4 takes the moonphase TYPE3 into 18k yellow gold with hand-engraved Art Nouveau decoration across the entire case surface (bezel and caseback excluded) and gold leaf applied to the relief-sculpted Arabic numerals. Two pieces will be made. JPY 15,000,000 / $108,300.

The entire 2026 collection goes on sale between May 18 (10 AM Japan time) and May 21, 2026. If you want the chronograph specifically — and you should want the chronograph — clear your calendar for May 18. See more on the Naoya Hida Website.

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Christiaan Van Der Klaauw Brings Venus Into Its Own With Two New Astronomical Watches

Christiaan van der Klaauw is a name we've mentioned here before, mostly because I deeply fell in love with their watches. CVDK's specialty, in case you need the context, is astronomical complications: they have been making them from Schoonhoven, Netherlands, since 1974, and the two Venus models just released at Watches & Wonders continue that very specific obsession.

Both watches share the CKM-01 automatic movement, introduced in 2024, now fitted with a newly developed Venus module. That name gives away a bit of what’s happening on the dial of both of the watches: four separate discs, three of which rotate, carrying the real-time positions of Venus, Earth, and the Moon as they orbit the Sun. This is a functioning mini-planetarium on your wrist. Venus completes its 224.7-day solar orbit on the watch exactly as it does in the sky.

The Venus Zodiac takes the more expressive route. Its aventurine dial — deep blue, flecked with light — represents the night sky, and it incorporates a zodiac function showing which sign the Sun currently occupies, with the boundary between signs falling around the 21st of each month. The moonphase display here is handled in an unusual, but very expected, way: new moon is when the Moon sits precisely between Sun and Earth, full moon when Earth is between the two. It's a geometric description of what you're already seeing, made visible. The case is 38mm in rose gold, crystal is a domed sapphire, caseback too. Worn on a blue sailcloth strap with a single-fold clasp bearing the CVDK rose gold logo.

The Venus Annual Calendar goes the technical direction. The dial is sunray-finished silver rather than aventurine, and it adds a practical layer: an annual calendar with the months displayed on an outer rail-track ring, each section scaled to reflect the actual length of that month. You correct it once every four years for the leap year. The same planetary and lunar information is present — orbit times, orbital speeds, moon phases — with the same domed sapphire crystal and see-through caseback over the star-shaped bridges and skeletonized rotor. This one comes in stainless steel on a cognac ostrich foot leather strap.

Both run the CKM-01 at 21,600 vph with a 60-hour power reserve, with a free-sprung hairspring, variable-inertia balance wheel, Swiss lever escapement with jeweled bearings, and hand-finished, beveled, rhodium-plated bridges. The Venus Zodiac in rose gold is €58,500 excluding taxes; the Venus Annual Calendar in steel is €38,200 excluding taxes. See more on the Christiaan van der Klaauw 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

• Sitting in a retrofitted hearse snarled in Los Angeles traffic, the narrator is pulled into the black-lit orbit of the Black Dahlia, where a brutal 1947 murder has become true crime’s founding myth. As new books and podcasts promise a final answer, the real question sharpens: are they solving history, or feeding its hunger?

• We’ve long known how important bees are as little pollinators. But did you know how smart they are, too? In this fascinating piece, Hannah Nordhaus explores what experiments are being conducted to test how bees solve problems. Her words are complemented by beautiful photos and videos taken by Karine Aigner—and you’ll be amazed watching a bee roll a ball over, stand on it, and extract a “sweet treat.” Yet another reminder that we need to look after these remarkable creatures.

• A glittering promise of luxury and discovery became a slow-motion disaster beneath the North Atlantic, where a family’s dream of reaching the Titanic collided with a culture of denial and fatal risk. Christine Dawood’s account traces the trip from excited planning to the moment the Titan vanished, leaving behind grief, unanswered warnings, and the haunting question of how so many alarms were ignored.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Much like the watch world asking for smaller watches, the car world has been asking for simpler and cheaper cars. A lot of watch brands tell me that when they do listen to buyers and come out with a smaller version of their watch, it doesn’t convert to sales. Let’s see what happens with cars that are simpler and cheaper.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk