Seiko Releases Two 145th Anniversary Divers; Nodus Adds Cerakote To Field Titanium; MeisterSinger's Panthero Jumping Hour Guilloché; Panerai Goes Back To 47mm; De Bethune Teams Up With EsperLuxe

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Have a great weekend and good luck to anyone wanting to get the AP x Swatch tomorrow.

In this issue

• Seiko Releases Two 145th Anniversary Divers, The Prospex HBC005 And Samurai HBB001

• Nodus Adds Colorful Cerakote Coatings To The Sector II Field Titanium

• MeisterSinger Introduces The Souscription Panthero Jumping Hour Guilloché

• Panerai Goes Back To 47mm With Two New Vintage-Inspired Luminors

• De Bethune Teams Up With EsperLuxe Retailer For The DB27 Night Hawk

👂What’s new

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Seiko Releases Two 145th Anniversary Divers, The Prospex HBC005 And Samurai HBB001

Seiko's anniversary celebrations rarely produce anything truly surprising, but what they do produce are a solid, good looking watch that comes with a bit of exclusivity. This year marks 145 years since Kintaro Hattori opened K. Hattori in Ginza, and Seiko is marking it with two blue-accented limited editions based on models we've already met: the updated 1965 Heritage platform, and the redesigned Samurai, both from 2024.

The HBC005 builds on the new version of the 1965 Heritage: 40mm wide, 13mm thick, lug-to-lug of 46.4mm, steel case with super-hard coating, screw-down crown and caseback, 300 meters of water resistance, sapphire crystal. The only real change from the base model is the bezel insert, which swaps to aluminum in Seiko Blue. It's a good-looking piece of kit, especially if you missed the SPB511 LE that introduced the updated bracelet clasp. This one carries it over, with a micro-adjustment system offering 15mm of range in 2.5mm increments via side buttons.

The dial on the HBC005 is silvery-white with a lightly brushed surface, embossed luminous hour markers, and a blue seconds hand to match the bezel. Inside is the calibre 6R55, an automatic running at 3Hz with 72 hours of power reserve: Seiko's workhorse movement for this tier. The watch ships on a three-link steel bracelet with super-hard coating.

The Samurai HBB001 uses the 2024 redesigned platform: 41.7mm wide, 12.3mm thick, lug-to-lug of 49.5mm. The angular edges are still there but tamed, and the lug-to-lug is actually longer than the old version despite the narrower case. Water resistance here is 200 meters. The bezel insert gets a two-tone treatment in silver for the zero-to-15-minute zone and Seiko Blue for the remainder. The silver brushed dial with matching blue seconds hand picks up the same setup as the HBC005. Inside is the calibre 4R35, a basic automatic at 3Hz with 41 hours of power reserve. Three-link bracelet, folding clasp.

The HBC005 is limited to 4,000 pieces at €1,500, available worldwide from June 2026. The Samurai HBB001 is limited to 9,999 pieces at €650, also from June. You can see the HBC005 here and the Samurai HBB001 here.

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Nodus Adds Colorful Cerakote Coatings To The Sector II Field Titanium

Nodus built the Sector Series around a single design principle: one midcase architecture that can absorb any finish, any colorway, any iteration the brand wants to throw at it. And it’s working great for them. As evident in the new Sector II Field Titanium Cerakote Series which takes the already cool titanium field watch and slaps on a trio of cerakote finishes for a great effect.

The case is made out of Grade 2 titanium, 38mm wide, 11.7mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 47mm and a 20mm lug width. At 45 grams for the watch head, it disappears on the wrist. The crown and caseback stay in media-blasted raw titanium, while the case and fixed bezel take the Cerakote in green, blue and sand. On top is a box sapphire crystal with blue anti-reflective coating on the underside. Water resistance is 100 meters.

Three colors are available: Canopy (deep, forest green), Dusk (a saturated, punchy navy), and FDE (a warm brown-bronze in the general family of dirt and stone). All three dials are matched to the case color and are paired to Old Radium Grade X1 Swiss Super-LumiNova.

Inside is the TMI NH38 automatic, beating at 21,600 vph with a 41-hour power reserve and antimagnetic resistance rated to 4,800 A/m, regulated in-house to ±10 seconds per day. The watch ships on Nodus's DPM Hybrid TecTuff rubber strap with a titanium buckle.

The Sector II Field Titanium Cerakote Series launches at $600 and is not a limited run. See more on the Nodus website.

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MeisterSinger Introduces The Souscription Panthero Jumping Hour Guilloché

MeisterSinger is a brand that has made a habit of releasing things that seem almost deliberately counterintuitive: single hands, restrained dials, minimalism as a kind of philosophy. The new Souscription Panthero Jumping Hour Guilloché is the brand doing something technically ambitious within that framework.

The 40.5mm steel case carries the slim bezel introduced with the Panthero collection, brushed and polished surfaces creating contrast without fuss. A domed sapphire crystal sits over the dial. At 50 meters, water resistance is just OK.

The dial has a light grey surface in guilloché using traditional manually operated machines, and the result is a texture that shifts constantly under different light. The minutes are read from an off-centre blue ring, while jumping hours appear through a circular aperture at 12 o'clock. The single hand tracks minutes. A rotating "sun wheel" that indicates the seconds completes the dial.

Inside is calibre MS-JH-01, built on a Sellita SW300 base with a proprietary jumping hour module developed with Dubois-Depraz. It beats at 28,800 vibrations per hour with a 47-hour power reserve. The watch comes on a blue embossed leather strap.

The Souscription Panthero Jumping Hour Guilloché is priced at €7,990 including VAT. See more on the MeisterSinger website.

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Panerai Goes Back To 47mm With Two New Vintage-Inspired Luminors

Panerai keeps reaching into the same well, and I keep falling for it. The new PAM01735 and PAM01629 are the latest in a string of archive-inspired releases, but these two take a slightly different route than that one. Rather than quoting a single visual feature, they chase the feeling of an aged watch. The reference point for both is the Ref. 6152/1, the 1960s cushion case model made for Italian Navy commando frogmen, and the 47mm case size is lifted directly from that original.

Both watches share the same 47mm cushion-shaped stainless steel case, with the brushed crown-protecting bridge, and a domed sapphire crystal that deliberately mimics the thick Perspex used on 1960s models, producing optical distortion at the dial edge, which is a genuinely nice touch. Water resistance on both is 100 meters. The PAM01735 has a polished stainless steel case with a brushed bridge. The PAM01629 is where things get more interesting: Panerai's first-ever forged titanium case, made by bonding two grades of titanium under heat and pressure with a forging hammer. The result is a surface with wave-like patterns in contrasting grey tones that varies from piece to piece, so no two watches look identical. It's 40% lighter than steel.

The dials are exact opposites. The PAM01735 gets a matte ivory sandwich dial with a grainy surface texture designed to cut reflection and approximate the look of a vintage dial that has been sitting in sunlight for decades. There's a gradient from lighter at the centre to a warmer, browner tone toward the edges with beige Super-LumiNova on the lower plate visible through the cutout Arabic numerals, and double pencil hands in matching beige lume. There’s also a small seconds at 9 o'clock. The PAM01629 takes the opposite approach: an anthracite sun-brushed sandwich dial with the same beige lume treatment, cooler and more industrial, which suits the forged titanium case.

Both are powered by the calibre P.3000, a hand-wound movement with twin barrels and a three-day power reserve. There's a useful quick-set hour function that advances or reverses the hour hand in one-hour increments from the crown's first position. The PAM01735 ships on brown calfskin with a steel buckle plus a black rubber strap. The PAM01629 comes on light beige suede calfskin with an extra black rubber strap.

The steel PAM01735 is priced at €12,100 and arrives in June 2026. The forged titanium PAM01629 is a limited edition of 100 pieces at €23,000, available in November 2026. See both on the Panerai website.

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De Bethune Teams Up With EsperLuxe Retailer For The DB27 Night Hawk

De Bethune releases watches at a pace that keeps even regular readers busy. Just in the past few months, I've covered, among others, the DB Eight, the DB28XS, the DB25xs Starry Varius, and a strange diver. But what we haven’t seen much of is the DB27. We should have. The collection has been running since 2012, when the Titan Hawk introduced the formula: Grade 5 titanium case, patented floating lugs, and the AUTOV2 movement, all in a slightly more compact and accessible format than De Bethune's flagship pieces. This new Night Hawk edition is a collaboration with EsperLuxe, an independent watch retailer in Sudbury, Massachusetts, and it's limited to ten pieces.

The case is 43mm wide and 9mm thick, machined from Grade 5 titanium with alternating polished and brushed surfaces. The floating lugs are one of De Bethune's signature looks: short, flame-blued titanium, matte-finished, articulated to flex against the wrist. The case middle has the brand's microlight decoration. Double AR-coated sapphire crystals are front and back. Water resistance is 30 meters.

The dial is brand new for the DB27 and it’s De Bethune's "Starry Sky" motif, made in flame-blued titanium, mapping the night sky as it appeared on the date and from the location marking the start of the EsperLuxe partnership in 2021. A classical chapter ring with Roman numerals surrounds the celestial disc, and a peripheral minutes track in Arabic numerals runs at the outer edge. The combination of an astronomical display at the center and conventional time-reading architecture around it works better than it has any right to. Mirror-polished, two-tone hour and minute hands — blued with silvered tips — and a central seconds hand sit on top.

The movement is the familiar AUTOV2 calibre, visible through the sapphire caseback. In-house, automatic, 217 parts, 28,800 vph, 60-hour power reserve. It includes a titanium balance wheel with white gold inertia weights for thermal stability, and De Bethune's own balance spring with a flat terminal curve. The oscillating weight combines titanium and tungsten. The watch ships on a blue fabric strap with a titanium pin buckle, and a second bespoke strap is included.

De Bethune DB27 Night Hawk is limited to 10 pieces, available only from EsperLuxe. Price is set at $70,000. See more on the EsperLuxe 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

• For L.A. Material, Anna Holmes writes about an anonymous artist whose canvas is Griffith Park. His creation is “The Hiding Man,” a figure said to live in, around, and underneath the park and the L.A. River, and who is described as “a burn victim with great cheekbones, or Frankenstein as interpreted by Pablo Picasso in his Cubist phase.” The artist’s other creation, the “Narrator,” warns the public about this man via strange, grammatically incorrect signs—some that resemble official signage—posted around the park and Eastside neighborhoods. “A HIDEN MAN DO WATCH YOU,” one reads. Holmes writes a quirky story about guerrilla art, Los Angeles lore, and one person’s eccentric love letter to a city park.

• Paloma Karr’s piece turns the lens onto the clients at legal Nevada brothels. At Sheri’s Ranch, another legal brothel, she is careful to point out that she is paid for her time, not for the service; many of the men are looking for something that runs deeper than sex. Over the course of a year, she comes “to understand the deep well of need in the men who surround me,” and the result is a fascinating, unsettling portrait of bought intimacy and genuine connection.

• For Science, Kai Kupferschmidt profiles Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at UC Berkeley who specializes in determining whether images or videos have been manipulated. Since helping establish the field more than 20 years ago, Farid has been “engaged in an arms race with technology: the advent of digital photography, ever more sophisticated editing tools, and now AI.” Today, journalists and researchers contact him daily to authenticate footage, and his meticulous methods to separate fact from fabrication—physics and geometry, shadows and reflections—feel more necessary than ever.

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One video you have to watch today

You know why I adore YouTube? Because I can watch a guy talk about shoes I will never buy for 20 minutes and be thoroughly amused.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk