Seiko Teams Up With Rowing Blazers For An Incredible Vintage Inspired Duo; An Olive Oris Divers Date; Three New Circula ProSeas; A Racing Chopard Trio; Panerai's Submersible 44mm On A Bracelet

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. How cool are Circula watches? They make some of my favorite bang-for-buck watches.

In this issue

• Seiko Teams Up With Rowing Blazers And Wind Vintage For An Incredible Vintage Inspired Duo

• The Oris Divers Date Gets A Really Nice Vintage Military Inspired Olive Dial

• Circula Gives the ProSea Three New Dials And Handsets, Just In Time For A Good Summer

• This New Chopard Mille Miglia Classic Chronograph Trio Reaches Back To National Racing Heritage

• Panerai Finally Puts Their Submersible 44mm On A Metal Bracelet

👂What’s new

1/

Seiko Teams Up With Rowing Blazers And Wind Vintage For An Incredible Vintage Inspired Duo

The Rowing Blazers (a preppy fashion brand), Seiko (a large watchmaker), and Wind Vintage (one of the best vintage dealers on the planet) collaboration was one of the defining releases of the limited-edition mania a few years back, and now the trio is back after a long pause with a fourth chapter. These two new Rally Divers continue the SRPG49 from 2021, itself a nod to a late-sixties Seiko Rally Diver that Eric Wind has called the first vintage watch he ever bought. The 2021 Rally Diver was the most popular of the original three, and capping that run at 500 made it hard to get. The trio is now upping the production numbers, but expect these to go extremely fast. They also might be some of my favorite watches of the year.

The blue SRPM19 uses the same 42.5mm sizing of the 2021 edition at 13.4mm thick, while the green SRPM21 shrinks to a far friendlier 38mm wide and 12.1mm thick. Both are stainless steel with a unidirectional bezel wearing that checkered aluminum insert, silver paired with either bright blue or forest green. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The bezel color matches a double-signed Seiko/Rowing Blazers dial in the same blue or green, applied indices, LumiBrite throughout. The handset is mostly brushed, but the pointing half of the seconds hand is striped red and white, the one deliberate break in an otherwise monochromatic dial.

Inside is the Seiko 4R36, the workhorse behind most Seiko 5 models, running at 3Hz with a 41-hour reserve and day-date. The exhibition caseback is mostly given over to printing: Rowing Blazers' Bath Club dripping-faucet motif alongside the Seiko and Wind Vintage logos, which obscures much of the movement. Both watches ship on a steel bracelet with the familiar stamped Seiko 5 clasp, and each includes a nylon strap in the opposite dial color, blue strap with the green watch and vice versa.

The Rowing Blazers x Seiko 5 Sports released Thursday, July 9th at 11am ET on both the Rowing Blazers and Seiko websites, with a small allocation at Rowing Blazers' NYC store. Both are priced at $495, each limited to 2,500 numbered examples. While they were still available at the time of writing, I don’t even want to check if they’re gone. See more on the Rowing Blazers website. God, I wish these would make the permanent collection without the double signed dial.

2/

The Oris Divers Date Gets A Really Nice Vintage Military Inspired Olive Dial

When Oris retired the Divers Sixty-Five in 2024, the worry was that a decade of goodwill would go with it. The Divers Date fixed that quietly: a redesigned case, a ceramic bezel, real water resistance, and none of the vintage charm sanded off in the process. Two years on, the collection gets an olive green dial, and it’s pretty good.

The stainless steel case is 39mm wide, 12.1mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 46.5mm. That is smaller and flatter than the old Sixty-Five, and I like how these sit on my wrist. The unidirectional bezel was reworked for grip and rigidity and has a black ceramic insert. A double-domed sapphire with anti-reflective coating and a screw-down crown finish the package. Water resistance is 200 meters.

Olive green is the major novelty. It joins the black, steel blue and beige from the 2024 relaunch, and it has a muddy field-watch green appearance rather than the glossy forest gradient Oris already sells on the 40mm Sixty-Five Date. The applied bevelled markers are filled with Super-LumiNova, the hands are lumed, and the central seconds has a lollipop that also glows. The date sits at 6 o'clock, tucked into the collection typography introduced in 2024.

Inside is the Oris calibre 733, an automatic built on the Sellita SW-200. You see it through the exhibition caseback. It beats at 4Hz with a 41-hour power reserve. The watch ships as a set with the riveted-style steel bracelet and a black rubber strap, both on a quick-change system.

The Oris Divers Date Olive Green is priced at EUR 2,450, available now and part of the permanent collection. See more on the Oris website.

3/

Circula Gives the ProSea Three New Dials And Handsets, Just In Time For A Good Summer

Circula has been quietly building one of the better independent tool-watch catalogs coming out of Germany. I’ve been writing about them for year, regularly putting their watches on my best-of-the-year lists, and it seems that they are seriously hitting their stride. I couldn’t be happier for them, the owner Cornelius is an incredibly cool guy. One of the watches that knocks it out of the park for them is the ProSea, initially designed by Guy Bove. Now, the ProSea is getting three new dial variants, as well as a new handset.

The 40mm stainless steel case remains unchanged, which is no complaint. It has a hand sandblasted and surface-hardened up to 1,200 Vickers. On top is a sapphire crystal with an internal anti-reflective coating, surrounded by a unidirectional bezel that has a ceramic insert with fantastic color choices. Water resistance is 200 meters.

The three new dials swap the previous organic texture that was styled after manta ray skin for a fine matte grain that cuts reflections and gives the color some depth. Anthracite is the technical, low-key option. Dark Blue is the safe, but still beautiful, maritime pick and probably the volume seller. Madame Jeannette, on the other hand, is a wildly cool yellow borrowed from the DiveSport Titanium and named after a Caribbean chili. The new handset is a bit bolder, with a broader hour hand and a slimmer, longer minute hand, and plenty of lume.

Inside is the Sellita SW200-1 in Elaboré grade, the same reliable automatic that carries most of this price bracket. No surprises, just a movement that works and is easy to work on, with a 4Hz beat rate and about 40 hours of power reserve. You can get the watch on a rubber strap or upgrade to a really nice scratch-resistant steel bracelet with tool-free micro-adjustment.

The ProSea Anthracite, Dark Blue, and Madame Jeannette are available now, starting at $1,090 on rubber and $1,290 with the steel bracelet. See more on the Circula website.

4/

This New Chopard Mille Miglia Classic Chronograph Trio Reaches Back To National Racing Heritage

Chopard has timed the Mille Miglia since 1988, and since then, the brand has been doing the Mille Miglia watch line, with what must be hundreds of editions so far. In time for this years race, they’re releasing three Classic Chronographs, the smaller variant, in national racing colors — British green, French blue, German silver.

The case is the same across all three: 40.5mm wide, 12.88mm thick, made out of Chopard's Lucent Steel, which is supposed to be harder and brighter than the usual stuff. The knurled end of the pushers mimics a brake pedal, the crown has a steering-wheel engraving, and on top is a box sapphire crystal for the retro look. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The dials are the cool thing about this release. British Racing Green gets a circular-satin galvanic green with white markers, rhodium hands, and a tricompax layout with small seconds at 3, a 12-hour counter at 6, the 30-minute counter at 9, and the date tucked between 4 and 5. The French version keeps the same setup but with a varnished blue lifted from the tricolour flag, with silver counters and red hands for the chronograph. The German Speed Silver goes nearly monochrome, silver opaline with grey and black markings. All three keep a red-tipped chronograph seconds hand and the Mille Miglia arrow as their only bright note.

Inside is a modular automatic chronograph based on the ETA A322-11, COSC-certified, running at 4Hz with a 54-hour reserve. It’s visible through a sapphire caseback that swaps crossed-flag motifs by country, pairing the chequered flag with the French, British, or German one. British Green and French Blue come on rubber straps with a tyre-tread pattern borrowed from 1960s Dunlop racing tyres, while the German edition gets a perforated black calfskin strap with grey stitching instead.

Each variant is limited to 100 pieces and sold only in its home country. The British Racing Green is £8,050 in the UK, the French Limited Edition €11,100, the Speed Silver €11,300 in Germany. I assume that the website localization prevents me from seeing the watches on the Chopard website, but have a look for yourself, it might work.

5/

Panerai Finally Puts Their Submersible 44mm On A Metal Bracelet

The Paneristi are their own breed. When the collecting world swings away from big tool watches, they don't follow it out the door, they keep buying the oversized divers Panerai built its name on. And despite the popularity of the 44mm Submersible, this model never came on a steel bracelet before. The PAM01756 fixes that.

The case is the familiar 44mm wide Submersible in stainless steel, water resistant to 500 meters, sealed by a screwed steel caseback, with the legendary flip-down crown protector. The new thing is the bracelet, which borrows its design from smaller models like the 42mm PAM02068: an H-link at heart, but with a half-circle ridge running across each link that mimics the shape of the crown guard. It looks great

The dial is sunray-brushed black under a blue dive bezel, and it's time-only. No date at 3 o'clock. Inside is the calibre P.980, an upgrade over the P.900. You get a 72-hour power reserve and hacking seconds, beating at 4Hz.

Which brings us to the price, and it's a lot. The PAM01756 is €12,800, putting it at the top of the steel Submersible list. Sure, it makes sense because it gets the new bracelet, but it’s still an eye watering amount of money for a steel Submersible. See more on the Panerai 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

• Within the first few paragraphs of his exceptional feature, Luke Winkie—Slate‘s newest licensed alligator trapping agent—is perched atop an apex predator, trying to help subdue it. Florida residents report 10,000 “nuisance” gators annually; each call starts a process that, over the past 30 years, has killed nearly 200,000 of the creatures. “What remains a mystery to me,” writes Winkie, considering the reptile he straddles, “is why this particular alligator—floating peacefully in a retention pond—was deemed to be a threat.” Winkie inspects Florida’s Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program from nose to tail; as he does, he reveals the Sunshine State’s complex relationship with its best-known animal.

• Blood and slapstick share a screen: a woman mid-miscarriage watches men gleefully brutalize their bodies, laughing through pain that feels unendurable. As Jackass’s aging daredevils court injury for camaraderie and memory, she weighs a different risk—the fragile, isolating gamble of wanting a child. What kind of toughness does it take to try again?

• If you read any of the “Little House” books as a kid or have seen Little House on the Prairie on television, you’ll recall the patriarch, Charles Ingalls as a “wholesome and gallant man.” For Vanity Fair, Rosemary Counter reports that the real “Pa” struggled to find stability for his family, forcing a series of moves due to failing finances and bad business deals, among them, a bawdy house.

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One video you have to watch today

This is a pretty fun video. I love a good antique market.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk