Seiko Does The Marinemaster in High-Contrast Black; IWC's Legendary QP In The Yacht Club For The First Time; Citizen Teams With Hypebeast; Nodus Is Inspired By NVGs; A Wild Bovet GMT Tourbillon

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Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I have a fantastic watch coming in for review tomorrow, can’t wait to show you that.

In this issue

• Seiko Goes Back To The 1968 Marinemaster Name in High-Contrast Black

• IWC Puts Their Legendary Perpetual Calendar Into The Yacht Club For The First Time

• Citizen Teams With Hypebeast To Celebrate 20 And 50 Years With The Zenshin Three Hander

• Nodus Takes Inspiration Form Special Forces Night Vision Goggles With The Sector Deep Pioneer NVG

• Bovet Builds Its First True GMT And Ads A Flying Tourbillon To It For Fun

👂What’s new

1/

Seiko Goes Back To The 1968 Marinemaster Name in High-Contrast Black

Seiko keeps circling back to 1968, and for good reason. The 6159-7001 is one of the most important dive watches the brand ever built, and the SBDX001 that followed became a cult favorite for anyone who wanted that history in a modern package. The new Marinemaster 1968 Diver's Reinterpretation SLA079J pulls the "Marinemaster" name back out and hangs it on a fully blacked-out reworking of that lineage.

The stainless steel case measures 42.6mm wide and 13.4mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 49.3mm. That sounds large on paper, and it is in real life, but Seiko's angular case geometry from the 1968 original has always worn a bit smaller than the numbers suggest. The unidirectional bezel is hard-coated steel with an insert matched to the dial, surrounding a dual-curved sapphire crystal with inner anti-reflective coating. Water resistance is 300 meters, with a screw-down crown and screw case back.

The dial is textured black, and the whole watch commits to that single color. Applied indices and hands are heavily filled with LumiBrite, so legibility in the dark is not a concern. The date window sits between 4 and 5 o'clock and is color-matched so it disappears into the dial. It is a restrained, purposeful look that lets the case do the talking.

Inside is the Caliber 8L35, Seiko's automatic movement with manual winding, beating at 4Hz. Rated accuracy is +15 to -10 seconds per day with a 50-hour power reserve. This is the undecorated sibling of the Grand Seiko 9S calibres, and it does the job. Seiko pairs it with a matching steel bracelet.

The Prospex Marinemaster SLA079J is available now through Seiko boutiques and authorized retailers, priced at $2,900. See more on the Seiko website.

2/

IWC Puts Their Legendary Perpetual Calendar Into The Yacht Club For The First Time

IWC has been building perpetual calendars around Kurt Klaus's mechanism since the early 1980s, and the genius of that design has always been how little it asks of you, especially in the past few iterations: set everything through the crown, forget about it for decades. Interestingly, this complication never made it into the Portugieser's sportiest member until now. The Yacht Club Perpetual Calendar 42 fixes that.

The case is 42.4mm wide and 14.1mm thick, large by current standards but QPs are know to take up room. It's made out of IWC's Armor Gold, a proprietary alloy that IWC says is tweaked at the microstructure level to resist scratches. That sounds perfectly crafted by the marketing team. Well integrated crown guards protect the screw-in crown, a convex sapphire sits over the dial, and water resistance is 100 meters.

The obsidian black dial is built from several translucent lacquer layers, and you know it’s going to look good up close. Especially against the warm gold case and applied indices. The calendar is distributed to three well-proportioned sub-dials: date at 3 o'clock, day plus a leap-year countdown at 9, month and moon phase at 6. That moon phase stays accurate for 577.5 years before it needs correction. Every indication is set through the crown alone, so advancing one advances the rest, which remains one of the friendliest perpetual calendars you can actually own.

Inside is the in-house calibre 82651 from IWC's 82000 family, beating at 4Hz with a 60-hour reserve from a single barrel. Finishing is industrial rather than delicate, with circular graining and a skeletonized rotor. It comes on a black textured rubber strap with a gold pin buckle.

The IWC Portugieser Yacht Club Perpetual Calendar 42 is available now, priced at €52,300. See more on the IWC website.

3/

Citizen Teams With Hypebeast To Celebrate 20 And 50 Years With The Zenshin Three Hander

Citizen's Zenshin has quickly become one of the better answers to the affordable integrated-bracelet question since it was introduced in 2024: titanium, solar, sharp lines, no fuss. This new version is a collaboration with Hypebeast marking two anniversaries at once, the fashion platform's 20th and 50 years of Citizen solar-powered watches. It’s a surprisingly restrained watch for a double anniversary, which is a good choice.

The case is 39.5mm wide, built from Citizen's Super Titanium, which is treated with an anti-scratch coating. For this edition Citizen adds an additional coat of its Duratect Platinum surface treatment to the case and integrated bracelet, giving the whole thing a bright silver color and extra everyday durability. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial continues the monochrome theme: silver, with a vertical brushing. Citizen swapped the usual lume-filled hands for skeletonised ones, which I like a lot. The Hypebeast reference comes in the form of an Arabic "20" that replaces the baton at 4 o'clock. The caseback has Hypebeast branding and individual numbering.

Inside is Citizen's Eco-Drive calibre J800, a solar quartz movement that runs on natural or artificial light and drives central hours, minutes and seconds plus day and date. The watch ships on the matching Super Titanium bracelet.

The Citizen x Hypebeast Zenshin Three-Hand is limited to 600 pieces and priced at $625, available now. See more on the Citizen website.

4/

Nodus Takes Inspiration Form Special Forces Night Vision Goggles With The Sector Deep Pioneer NVG

While no one will call a Nodus watch a dainty thing, you would expect the entire lineup to have the same rugged appearance, seeing how they all use the same Sector midcase. And yet, they have the Sector Deep, a massively capable, deeply well made behemoth of a watch (not so much in size) that stands above the rest of the collection. And the Pioneer is the maximalist version of an already maximalist watch: a GMT diver with a compass bezel, born from a Design Lab commission for an unnamed unit. This NVG edition wraps the whole thing in black DLC and swaps in a dark green ceramic compass insert, a nod to the green glow of night vision.

The case measures 38mm wide at the midcase with a 42mm bezel sitting on top, 13.6mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 47mm and 20mm lugs. That four millimeters of bezel overhang is kind of cool. It makes the watch look larger while keeping the actual case compact, doubles as impact protection, and gives the compass and timing scales room to breathe. Also, it has one of the best bezel actions on the market. On the inner part of the bezel, you’ll find the compas function, here done in dark green ceramic. The DLC-coated 316L steel adds scratch resistance and a moody look. The crown is positioned on the left side of the case, screws down and has a 500 meter water resistance.

The dial is simple and familiar, done in black. Everything glows: the hands, the standard and 24-hour markers, both bezel scales, and the date, all in BGW9 Grade A Super-LumiNova. I’ve seen some people not like the handset that Nodus uses, but I’m a huge fan, with each hand easily recognizable with the quickest of glances.

Inside is the TMI NH34, a caller-style GMT, regulated in-house to +/- 10 seconds per day with a 41-hour power reserve and antimagnetic resistance to 4,800 A/m. It comes on a DLC-coated steel bracelet that tapers from 20mm to 16mm, with Nodus's NEM clasp and quick-release springbars.

The new Nodus Sector Deep Pioneer NVG is available now, priced at $725. See more on the Nodus website.

5/

Bovet Builds Its First True GMT And Ads A Flying Tourbillon To It For Fun

Bovet doesn't do restraint, and the Récital 32 is no exception. What you see above is the brand's first proper GMT, and rather than just making a good travel watch, they went ahead and added a flying tourbillon to it. If you've followed Bovet's Récital line, this makes perfect sense as they love mashing complications together. This is best evident in the 46.3mm Récital 28 from 2024 packed a world timer, perpetual calendar, tourbillon and a solution to Daylight Saving Time into one case. The 32 is much more similar to the 30 in size, as that was a more practical 42mm wonder-watch.

This case measures 42mm wide and you can have it in polished titanium or 18k red gold. A panoramic box sapphire crystal domes heavily over the whole thing, which it has to: the flying tourbillon at 6 o'clock sits raised well above the movement plate, and the extra height needs somewhere to go. It's a case built around the spectacle inside it.

The dial is openworked, so the movement is on full view. Local and home time are shown in an off-centre sub-dial at noon, with a blue lacquered outer track and two hands for local time, and a white lacquered 24-hour ring for the second zone. A hand-painted day/night indicator sits at the sub-dial's centre. Below, the raised tourbillon and a cylindrical power-reserve roller at 9 o'clock are on full display, surrounded by hand-bevelled, mirror-polished bridges.

The movement is where you see why Bovet is so cool. Instead of the usual traveller's setup where you jump the local hand with the crown, home time is set by the crown and the second time zone advances via a pusher on the left of the case. Push it, and the second zone jumps forward an hour. The 375-part in-house movement has a 10-day power reserve fed by a single barrel, wound efficiently by a patented spherical differential that doubles each winding action. Both watches come on a rubber strap.

The Récital 32 is limited to 60 numbered watches per variatn. The titanium is priced at CHF 150,000, while the red gold is priced at CHF 175,000. See more on the Bovet 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

• Rory Feldman made his name collecting artifacts that once belonged to legendary magicians. But a few of Feldman’s fellow collectors suspect some sleight of hand behind his success; wands, swords, and business agreements have allegedly vanished in his orbit. Nina Strochlic and Michael Greshko’s feature for Rolling Stone is a dynamic legal drama elevated by the characters at its heart, who celebrate deception but crave authenticity. Every illusion has an explanation. Some are just more evasive than others.

• “You want to get rich? Publish journalism on the internet.” No—sadly, that isn’t true. But it’s the pitch Jason Koebler adopts as he immerses himself in hustle culture. In this entertaining piece, he spends a wonderfully absurd day “LARPing” as a rich entrepreneur: staging luxury shots and deploying bogus dashboards to mimic the tactics of “hustlebros” who deceive their followers. No one ends up with a private jet, but in a surprising turn, Koebler winds up with something else instead: a renewed appreciation for the real, rewarding life his blogging career has given him.

• America has a reputation for food that’s fatty, fried, and fantastically decadent. How we got here is a gut-busting story — and it started way before McDonald’s.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I wasn’t that offended by the Ferrari Luce. In fact, I think it was a good business move from Ferrari. This, on the other hand, seems like some pretty nasty crap.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk