Seiko Turns Its First Dive Watch Green For A Lake Hallstatt Tribute; Sicura Returns After Nearly Half A Century; Héron's White Rainbow Diver; Chronoswiss Goes Hard On Stone Dials

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. This morning I walked into my dentist’s office to see why I had the tiniest amount of pain when I sometimes drink cold water and walked out with my first ever root canal. So do excuse any post-anesthesia hallucinations.

In this issue

• Seiko Turns Its First Dive Watch (Tribute) Green For A Europe-Only Lake Hallstatt Tribute

• Sicura Returns After Nearly Half A Century With The Hexa 400 Diver

• Héron Brightens Its Rainbow Decompression Diver With A White Dial And A Steel Countdown Bezel

• Chronoswiss Is As Original As You Expect Them To Be With Even When Using Stone Dials

👂What’s new

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Seiko Turns Its First Dive Watch (Tribute) Green For A Europe-Only Lake Hallstatt Tribute

The 62MAS from 1965, Seiko's first dive watch, is one of the most important models for both the brand and the industry at large. I’ve always wanted to own a 62MAS, I just bit the bullet to get one. But at the rate that Seiko is releasing variants of the 1965 Heritage Diver, a modern take on the 62MAS, I kind of doubt I will ever get the original because these are too good. Especially since the collection got an overhaul some two years ago. I mean, just look at this absolute banger of the HBC010. Unfortunately for the majority of my readers, but fortunately for me, this is a Europe-exclusive limited edition finished in a green-and-gilt scheme inspired by Austria's Lake Hallstatt.

The case follows the 62MAS closely, including the crown at 3 o'clock, which kind of has to be pointed out on Seiko watches. The 2024 revision trimmed things down slightly: 40mm wide, 13mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 46.4mm. You get a screw-down crown and caseback, a domed sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating, and a unidirectional bezel with a 60-minute scale. Water resistance is 300 meters.

Then, there’s the incredible green. Both dial and bezel are done in a dark green, though on the grained matte bezel insert it seams to look near black unless the sun hits it directly, with cream numerals and markings. Absolute perfection. The dial is more obviously green, a sunray brush, with gold-toned markers and hands filled with cream Lumibrite. The date window still sits at 4:30, the only downside to the watch.

Inside is the calibre 6R55, an automatic beating at 3Hz with a three-day power reserve. It comes on Seiko's steel bracelet with rounded links and the updated folding clasp, which includes a dive extension good for 15mm of adjustment across six 2.5mm steps. A black silicone strap with a pin buckle is included, so you have options out of the box.

The Seiko Prospex 1965 Heritage Diver HBC010 is limited to 1,400 pieces, sold only in Europe, priced at €1,650. See more on the Seiko website.

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Sicura Returns After Nearly Half A Century With The Hexa 400 Diver

Sicura is one of those Swiss names that I always wished they would come back. Founded in Grenchen in 1939 and built up under Ernest Schneider through the 1960s and 70s, it made affordable, oddball tool watches under the slogan "The Specialist for Specialities," everything from compressor divers to jump-hours to early LED digitals. Schneider used the profits to buy Breitling in 1979, moved Breitling production into Sicura's factory, and in 1993 renamed the company Breitling AG, quietly retiring the Sicura name. Now, 47 years on, it's back under the Netherlands-based D Group, and rather than reviving one of the weirder pieces from the catalogue, the new Hexa 400 builds on the 1968 Diver 400 and its dual-crown layout. It’s a sensible decision, I guess, but I’ll just remind you that Sicura once made a watch with a built in knife and a watch that timed the recommended time between two cigarettes for optimal health benefits (five minutes, if you’re wondering). I appreciate a good dive watch as much as the next guy, but a watch that counts down the time to your next dart as you use the built-in knife to whittle a piece of wood…? Come on!

The case is 40mm wide and keeps the original's angular hexagonal shape, though this version is sharper. It's made out of 316L stainless steel, brushed with polished chamfers, 14mm thick and 46mm lug-to-lug. Those are interesting proportions — it’s hella thick, not extremely wide and has a super-comfortable lug-to-lug. Screw-down crowns and that mass of thickness get it to 400 meters of water resistance, and the sapphire crystal has both anti-reflective and anti-fingerprint coatings. The bezel is a modern 120-click unidirectional unit with a black ceramic insert and a 60-minute Super-LumiNova scale.

Depending on the reference, you get blue-yellow, black-yellow or orange-white color combinations. That upper crown operates the bi-colour inner rotating ring for tracking a second time zone, making it somewhat of a GMT without the complexity of a third hand. The dial comes in black, blue or orange, cleaned up from the busier vintage version, with applied Super-LumiNova indices, a prominent 12 and broad faceted hands. There’s a date aperture at 3 o’clock.

Inside is the Sellita SW200, a pretty standard automatic choice with a 38-hour power reserve. It's the well-worn alternative to the ETA 2824-2, I just wish they opted for the upgraded power reserve version that was just released. The three-link steel bracelet closes with a double push-button deployant clasp with a safety lock and, crucially, a tool-free micro-adjustment system.

The Sicura Hexa 400 is available now, priced at €1,450. See more on the Sicura website.

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Héron Brightens Its Rainbow Decompression Diver With A White Dial And A Steel Countdown Bezel

Decompression dials had a real moment a few years back. The feature was a diving-era curiosity from the 1960s, made obsolete by dive computers decades ago, but the colorful scales came roaring back in the early 2020s when Mido and Vulcain revived them from their archives and brand like Christopher Ward jumped on the look for the first time. Héron, the small Canadian brand, did its own take with the original black Marinor Rainbow, and it pulled on a couple of my heartstrings. I love a good decompression dial. Their latest release, the Rainbow White, swaps the black top layer of the sandwich dial for white while keeping the pink, yellow, green and blue scale underneath. Now, to be honest upfront, Héron watches sell out like hotcakes and this one is no different. Why write about it then? Well, they do regular restocks, so keep an eye out for them if you want one.

The case is 39mm wide, a slender 10.6mm thick (that does go up to 12.2mm when you include the box-style ar-coated sapphire crystal), and has a 46mm lug-to-lug. Héron uses stainless steel that’s hardened up to 1200HV, and this white dial version uses the same steel for the bezel that’s etched with a 60-minute countdown scale on the brushed outer ring and an etched minute track on a polished inner ring. It’s cool, but the black version used a sapphire bezel insert, which is a touch cooler. Water resistance is 250 meters.

The dial is familiar and new at the same time. It’s a stark white base that has cutouts in it to show the lower level of the dial which is painted in rainbow colors. The handset is familiar: a faceted big-arrow hour hand, an obelisk minute hand and a lollipop seconds hand, all filled with blue-emission Super-LumiNova.

Inside is the Miyota calibre 9039, a reliable automatic and the sensible choice at this price. If I remember correctly, it beats at 4Hz and has roughly 42 hours of power reserve. You can have it on Héron's hardened steel three-link bracelet with screwed links, quick-release spring bars and a micro-adjustable folding clasp, or on a quick-release FKM rubber tropical strap, done in pearly white to match the dial.

Like I said, the Marinor Rainbow White is sold out now, but when it does come back into stock, they will set you back $600 on the rubber strap and $650 on the bracelet, which is a great price for what you get. See more on the Héron website.

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Chronoswiss Is As Original As You Expect Them To Be With Even When Using Stone Dials

The German brand Chronoswiss has become so well known for their regulator setups that it comes almost as a shock when they do something else. But even if the layout is not shocking, Chronoswiss is such a wildly cool brand that they will shock you with their brand. For their release they chose to do a small seconds setup with a stone dial. Sounds simple, right? Well, no, look at them. You’ve never seen stone dials like these.

The case is 40mm wide and 11.5mm thick, the smallest and slimmest in the current lineup. The 17-part construction keeps the details Chronoswiss is known for, including the signature fluting under the bezel and around the caseback, and the onion crown, slimmed down here to match the thinner case. Most surfaces are polished, with sandblasting in the recessed lugs for contrast. Domed sapphire crystals sit front and back. The crown doesn’t screw down, which drops water resistance to 30 meters.

These are cool cases, but just look at these cases. They use Jasper and Serpentine stones. The Jasper has beige, brown, yellow and ivory in an uniquely cool pattern, while the Serpentine is a mottled green stone quarried near the Matterhorn, set in a two-tone steel and red gold case. Because both are natural stone, no two dials are identical. The small seconds is positioned at 9 o'clock with a guilloché center and an outer track that echoes the minute flange. The Breguet-style Arabic numerals are applied directly onto the stone and the leaf-shaped hour and minute hands get Super-LumiNova.

Inside is the automatic calibre C.6000, developed with La Joux-Perret in 2003 for the Delphis line. It has an openworked tungsten rotor, ruthenium-plated bridges and plates, radiating Côtes de Genève, a 55-hour power reserve and a 4Hz beat rate. The Jasper comes on a brown calfskin strap, the Serpentine on green calfskin.

Each edition is limited to 50 pieces. The Small Second Jasper retails for CHF 11,500 and the two-tone Serpentine for CHF 16,900. See more of the Jasper here and the Serpentine 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

• Across the United States, dozens of law enforcement officers face accusations of misusing Flock, a surveillance network of 120,000 cameras that track license plates. Flock’s proponents claim that the technology does far more good than harm; one investor tells the Washington Post that abuse is “truly a nonissue.” But fear isn’t a statistic. Drew Harwell, Douglas MacMillan, and Aaron Schaffer structure their investigation of Flock’s misuse by law enforcement around the story of a woman in suburban Atlanta who had her whereabouts tracked hundreds of times by her ex, the local chief of police. Their report telescopes between the tradeoffs of a “transformational” technology and a few nightmarish cases of misuse.

• The war in Iran began five months ago. Headline news about the conflict tends to focus on when and how it might end. In the meantime, the impacts of the conflict are felt worldwide—by drivers, farmers, business owners, and families. The Associated Press shares the stories of seven people suffering because of the war. Among them is Edgar Funelas, a jeepney driver in the Philippines who lives with his ten-year-old daughter.

• Mark Seal is very fond of the phrase “Who Ya Gonna Call? Scam Busters!”—he uses it three times in this piece. Yet it’s still refreshing, despite being from last year, to read a story that focuses on the painstaking effort to trace scammers rather than lingering on the victim’s humiliation (looking at you, Netflix). Seal does explain how a French woman named Anne fell for “Brad Pitt” online and subsequently lost her fortune to the scammers, but her supposed savior, cyber‑detective Marwan Ouarab—sporting a cat‑in‑a‑trench‑coat T‑shirt—gets most of the page time here. Ouarab apparently found the scammers within 48 hours, but no charges have been made, and Anne is still fighting to recover any of her money. You can call the scam busters, but you’re still in for a long wait.

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One video you have to watch today

A very nice doc.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk