Seiko Gives Us More Tokyo-Inspired King Seiko VANAC Models, Now On Leather; The Lists Of The Best Affordable, Sports, Money-Is-No-Object And My Personal Favorite Watches Of The Year; And A Thanks

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. With this, we close out 2025, a year that didn’t blow me away with the quality of watches, but definitely did with the quantity. I have to take a break over the holidays and I still have about 40 watches released in the past month of so I haven’t had a chance to write about. That’s a strong year. I want to thank all of you subscribers and people reading on Reddit for all the fun throughout the year and I can’t wait to show you what’s coming next year with this newsletter. And to end, apologies that you have to click through to all the lists — I tried fitting it in one post and it’s about five times too long to fit.

See you all next year! Thanks!

In this issue

• Seiko Gives Us More Tokyo-Inspired King Seiko VANAC Models, Now With Leather Straps

• The IAT List Of Best Affordable Watches Of 2025

• The IAT List Of The Best Sports Watches Of 2025

• The IAT List Of The Best Money Is No Object Watches Of 2025

• The Completely Biased List Of My Favorite Watches Of 2024

• A Milestone Year Is Behind It’s About Time

• Give The Gift Of It’s About Time, Help This Newsletter Become Even Better

• FOR WATCH CLUB MEMBERS Historical Perspectives: The Red Star Over Geneva, The Story Of Seagull

👂What’s new

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Seiko Gives Us More Tokyo-Inspired King Seiko VANAC Models, Now With Leather Straps

Earlier in the year, Seiko expanded their King Seiko collection by reviving one of their legendary models, the King Seiko VANAC, originally released in the early 1970s, produced for two years, and beloved even today for their great colors, fantastic dial textures, angular cases and faceted crystals. The only downside to that watch comes when you find out what VANAC stands for — Vibrant, Active, Novel, Alternative, Comfortable. But disregarding that horrible acronym, it’s a pretty beloved watch. And the re-release has been met with approval as well. Now, we’re getting new versions of the VANAC, with brown and green dials, and leather straps.

While the original releases were all sub 38mm, Seiko moved the re-release more towards a modern sporty watch with a retro design. That means that it’s quite wide at 41mm, but that shouldn’t be a problem for the vast majority of wrists, since the integrated lugs give a lug-to-lug measurement of 45.1mm. Where the watch does stumble, however, is its thickness, which measures a surprising 14.3mm. Part of that is due to the movement they are using, part due to the box-style crystal that stands very proud of the case, with no bezel around it. I think people would have much less of an issue with the thickness had Seiko decided to bring back the amazing faceted crystals of the originals. But we don’t get those. We do get a pretty great combination of brushed and polished surfaces. The crown screws down and ensures 100 meters of water resistance.

OK, so there’s no faceted crystal, but at least the dials reflect the ethos of the 1970s. You get horizontal grooves in the centre framed by a gold colored ring, surrounded by a radially grooved chapter ring that holds the chunky hour markers. The markers and hands are all lumed, gold toned and polished. There are two colors for the dial — a dark brown for the SLA093 and dark green for the SLA095.

Now, the insides. There, you’ll find the new cal. 8L45 which, has a 4Hz beat rate and a 72 hour power reserve. The 8L line is based on Grand Seiko mechanical movements, but give you less decoration and lower accuracy (although it’s still decent at +10/-5 seconds per day), and the new 8L45 is the new top-of-the-line Seiko mechanical movement in its mid-tier watches, if that makes sense. But it’s major downside is the thickness at 6mm, which is quite a lot. For example, the plane jane ETA 2824 measures 4.6mm thick. These two new versions come with black and brown leather straps that have proprietary connection to give them an integrated look.

The new King Seiko VANAC collection goes on sale in January, priced at €3,300. See more on the Seiko website.

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The IAT List Of Best Affordable Watches Of 2025

The first of these lists I put together is also the most nebulous of the four. After all, what is an affordable watch. Every person has their own line they draw. For me, especially with the major price increases we saw in the past year or so, I set this bar at about €1,500. A lot of money, sure, but these are the watches I think of when I think of good value for money. Click here to see what I think are the best affordable watches of the year.

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The IAT List Of The Best Sports Watches Of 2025

Now, for a more specific category — sports watches. As you’ll see, these occupy all price points, styles and colorways. But it’s also one of my favorite categories. Click here to see all the watches.

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The IAT List Of The Best Money Is No Object Watches Of 2025

Sometimes, it’s cool to daydream about what those first 100 or so watches you would buy after winning the lottery would be And at least half would be priced like a small house. I put together the best of the best from this year when any budget constraints are removed. A lot of these I got to try on at various fairs and when you hold them up close you see why they are so insanely pricey. Others are actual bargains despite being really expensive. So, here we go, the list of the best money-is-no-object watches of the year.

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The Completely Biased List Of My Favorite Watches Of 2024

Here we are, the end of the year. Looking through all of the releases of the year, I have to say I wasn’t exactly blown away with the year as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, there were some extremely cool releases, but something’s missing. Could be that I was just in a grumpy mood while going through them. Anyways, the cool thing about best-of lists is that every single person on the planet could make their own. And every single list tells a story of the person who made it. Click here to see my favorite watches of 2025.

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A Milestone Year Is Behind It’s About Time

It’s a time to say thanks. To all of you. Because without you, there wouldn’t be an It’s About Time. So, let me tell you how this year panned out with a few numbers which don’t cease to amaze me:

• 374 posts were published this year

• I wrote about 772,000 words this year, just for this newsletter. That equates to a 3,000 page novel

• The posts were read a total of 13.92 million times. Come on, that’s pretty incredible

• The newsletter is also posted on Reddit, where there’s been a lot of interaction. A total of 64,000 upvotes and comments, to be precise

The feedback from all of you has also been gut-wrenchingly positive, which really isn’t helping with my impostor syndrome! Thank you for that.

I can’t wait to show you what I have in store for 2026.

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Give The Gift Of It’s About Time, Help This Newsletter Become Even Better

Over the last few months, you might have noticed an increase in advertising in this newsletter. That’s, unfortunately, a necessary evil, since it costs money just to send out an email to so many people. So far, the small ads have been covering most of the cost, but I’ve made some serious plans for 2026. These plans include new formats, a lot of traveling to visit watchmakers and fairs and maybe do some good. But more on that later.

I’ve partnered up with three great people for next year to better partner with advertisers and bring in more ads. If you, like me, don’t like ads, there’s an easy way around them. You can subscribe to the premium version of the newsletter. That will get rid of all the ads and you’ll get a TON of extra and early content.

Better yet, you can give a subscription as a gift for the holidays. Just click here and select gift.

And best of all, all subscriptions are 20% off until the end of the year.

FOR WATCH CLUB MEMBERS Historical Perspectives: The Red Star Over Geneva, The Story Of Seagull

China's military forged a watchmaking powerhouse in secrecy, exporting millions while the West dismantled its factories. Read it here. 

⏲️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

• Stanley Kubrick’s most misunderstood film has become a conspiracy theorist’s Rosetta stone. This piece traces how Eyes Wide Shut morphed from maligned swan song to supposed Epstein-era prophecy, then follows the paper trail, phone calls, and half-remembered scripts that either expose a chilling secret — or reveal how badly we want one to be there.

• Oliver Sacks arrives in 1960s New York in a butter-colored suit and a rare state of joy, newly in love and newly unashamed of his desires. But one delayed letter, one misspelled word, and a lifetime of shame begin to twist that euphoria into something darker, trapping him in a “psychotic cage” of his own making.

• A wealthy astronomer's obsession with Martian canals captivated America, birthing a century-spanning craze for alien life. Percival Lowell mapped intricate networks of channels he swore proved an advanced civilization—until skeptics exposed them as tricks of the eye and mind. This saga of belief, bias, and debunking reveals how confidently we embrace the unseen.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I’m stealing this tradition from The Grey Nato, and I don’t care. Because listening listening to the Shepherd, a novella by Frederick Forsyth as read by Alan Maitland from CBC Radio around Christmas time is a good tradition.

It’s the story of a De Havilland Vampire pilot flying home from RAF Celle in northern Germany to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk on Christmas Eve 1957, when his aircraft suffers a complete electrical failure mid-flight. Lost in fog over the North Sea, he starts flying in small triangles, an odd flying pattern which would typically be detected on radar, with the intention of notifying an air traffic controller to send other aircraft to find him and shepherd him home. A plane appears, but something is off…

Thanks for reading,
Vuk