Timex And Todd Snyder Release Olive Green Marlin; FC And Time+Tide's Onyx Moonphase; Vero Teams Up With The Scout Motors; Le Forban's Cool Diver; Albishorn's Type 10 Officer; Czapek's Celebration

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. There’s just one more week of this newsletter left in this year, which means that I will do my traditional rundowns of favorite watches of the year. If you have any favorites that you think deserve a spot on the list, please do let me know.

Also, from now on, readers of It’s About Time will get early access to episodes of The Real Time Show. For more than a year now, this newsletter has been part of The Real Time Show network — I’ve just done a poor job of telling you that. The Real Time Show is a weekly watchmaking podcast founded by Alon Ben Joseph and Rob Nudds, now hosted by them along with Scarlett Baker and David Vaucher. Their episodes come out on Sunday, but you get to hear them on Friday. I’m not saying this because we are part of the same network, but The Real Time Show is one of the more significant podcasts in the watch world, as the hosts sit down with brand owners and industry insiders. This is the podcast for you if you ever wanted to know how watches are actually made.

In this issue

• Timex And Todd Snyder Take Inspiration From The Mad Men Era For A Wonderful Green Marlin

• Frederique Constand And Time+Tide Release A Very Stealthy Highlife Moonphase Manufacture Onyx Moon

• Vero Teams Up With The Returning Scout Motors For A Duo Of Workhorse Chronographs

• Le Forban Releases The Very Patriotic Sécurité Mer Marseillaise With The Coolest Bundt Strap

• Albishorn Is Back With Another Alternate History Watch, This Time A Type 10 Officer

• Czapek Closes Out Anniversary Year With Quai des Bergues “Sursum Corda”

👂What’s new

1/

Timex And Todd Snyder Take Inspiration From The Mad Men Era For A Wonderful Green Marlin

There are very few watches that Timex makes that are adored by watch aficionados as much as the Marlin. And no wonder why - it’s a super simple, very affordable and diverse line that can be both sporty or elegant, depending on the model you choose. And Timex knows this, so they’re keeping the collection very much alive. Now they’ve teamed up with the fashion brand Todd Snyder to make a very Mad Men-ish Marling with a wonderful green dial.

While Timex calls back to the times of Mad Men in their marketing copy, the size of the watch is certainly not era-appropriate, but it’s also not huge. It measures 38mm wide and 13mm thick. That thickness might sound a bit over-the-top, but consider that there’s a box-style acrylic crystal on top that takes up a lot of height. The case is simple, with a polished finish and a fairly vintage-looking style. Water resistance is not ground-breaking at 50 meters, but is good enough.

The dial is kept just as simple as the case, with a sunray brushed finish and a deep, deep olive green color. Looks incredible. That’s paired with applied silver hour markers and dauphine-style hands. The one thing that is a standard let-down on Timex dials is the “WATER RESISTANT” text that sits above 6 o’clock. Bros, you give us 50 meters of water resistance, there’s no need to brag about that.

Inside, you’ll find an unnamed movement, but looking at it, I would say that it’s an automatic Miyota from the 8200 series, which has a 3Hz beat rate and a 40-hour power reserve. Quite decent. The watch comes on a brown leather strap with crocodile-style embossing.

The new Todd Snyder x Timex Olive Marlin is available now, but I’m not sure how long it will be. It’s not a limited edition, but these collabs have been known to disappear. Price is set at $279, and it’s available from Timex or Todd Snyder. See more on the Timex website.

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Frederique Constand And Time+Tide Release A Very Stealthy Highlife Moonphase Manufacture Onyx Moon

37 years is not exactly a short amount of time (I’m 38), but in the watch world, it’s a blink of an eye. Especially if we’re talking about a watch brand like Frederique Constant, which has developed a huge number of in-house movements and grown quickly into a brand that those in the know turn to when they want a really well made watch for a fair amount of money. That’s a very impressive feat. And now, Frederique Constant has teamed up with the Australian watch media outlet Time+Tide for a very cool, very stealthy take on the Highlife Moonphase Manufacture with a very cool onyx dial.

While the case looks like it’s a regular Highlife watch, it’s actually been resized to be a bit smaller. While regular Highlife measures 41mm wide, this new one measures 39mm wide, 12.79mm thick and has a very comfortable 45mm lug-to-lug, thanks to the flat edges of the case. On top is a slightly domed sapphire crystal, surrounded by a chunky and curved polished bezel. Water resistance is 100 meters.

But where all the collaboration happens is on the dial. Gone is the regular embossed globe motif on the dial and it’s replaced by a a deep, deep black onyx stone dial. It looks even more dramatic as pretty much all markings have been removed. There are no minute tracks or hour markers, just the white Frederique Constant logo at 12, with Geneve underneath it in red. The central hands are faceted, brushed and polished and they removed all lume from them. Underneath it, at 6 o’clock, is a moon phase aperture with a black sky that has stars painted on and a realistic looking moon. Surrounding that is are the date numerals, all in white except for the red 31, pointed to with a small silver hand.

Inside, for the first time in a Highlife, is the calibre FC-716, previously used only in the Classic collection. It’s a recently updated movement that gets a larger barrel with 72 hours of power reserve and decent decorations that include fan-shaped Côtes de Genève on the bridges. The watch comes on a Jubilee-style five-link steel bracelet with brushed and polished finishes and you get an additional black nubuck-style leather strap and a black textured rubber strap.

The new Frederique Constand And Time+Tide Highlife Moonphase Manufacture Onyx Moon is limited to 100 pieces — 50 sold by Frederique Constant and 50 by Time+Tide. The watches go on sale today, December 12 at 6PM CET, priced at €4,895. See more on the Frederique Constant website.

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Vero Teams Up With The Returning Scout Motors For A Duo Of Workhorse Chronographs

Just like watch brands, car brands have been known to fold and disappear. And just like watch brands, they get revived. That’s exactly what’s happening with Scout Motors right now. From the 1960s to the 1980s, International Harvester made the absolutely sensational Scout off-roader, perhaps one of the coolest SUVs ever made. In the late 1980s, International switched their focus to making commercial trucks and the Scout disappeared. A couple of years ago, Volkswagen purchased the parent company, which included the rights to the Scout name and they’re getting ready to release the first two models under the new Scout Motors brand. And launching with them are two new watches from Vero, a fantastic pairing as both the Scout and the Vero Workhorse, on which these watches are based, are quite quirky affairs.

This is a beastly watch, measuring 44.5mm wide, 13.5mm thick, with a 49.5mm lug-to-lug. The case is fully round with very thing lugs, but has a very rugged look with bull bars that look like they’re holding the watch firmly together. The case is made out of stainless steel, but coated in Cerakote, a colored ceramic, giving it a unique look. You get the option between Moonstone, which is a deep blue case, and Terra Cotta, which is a bright orange. Also unique are the pushers and crowns. At 2 o’clock is a large, cylindrical, crown that operates the internal bezel, at 9 o’clock is the same crown which sets the time, and at 8 and 10 are pushers for the chronograph, with the Moonstone having red pushers and Terra Cotta getting black pushers.

The dial is a bit less quirky, but certainly not conventional. The Moonstone gets a blue dial with red details, while the Terra Cotta gets a black one with white details. Surrounding the dial is an internal bezel with a 60 minute graduation and the very edge of the dial gets 60 dots for the minute scale. Beyond that you get Arabic numerals and two sunken sub-dials, a 60 minute chrono counter at 3 o’clock and a running seconds at 9 o’clock. The sub-dials have brushed hands, and the hour and minute hands are lumed.

Inside, you’ll find the simple but reliable Miyota 6S21 quartz movement. The watches come on nylon straps with a hook-and-loop closure and they are color matched to the cases.

The new Vero x Scout Motors watches are available to purchase right now, limited to 150 pieces per colorway and shipping starting from January 15th. See more on the Vero website.

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Le Forban Releases The Very Patriotic Sécurité Mer Marseillaise With The Coolest Bundt Strap

The scuba diving craze was at its peak in the late 60s and early 70s and nowhere was it more prevalent than in France. Sure, people all over the world got in on the sport, but in France it was almost a national treasure. Of course, that was in large part due to the influence of Jacques Cousteau, one of the pioneers of scuba diving. This rise in popularity of the sport brought with it an increase of demand for tools, among them watches. One of the companies creating diving watches, especially those for the French Navy, was Paris-based Le Forban Sécurité Mer. They introduced their first dive watch in 1969 and since then have put out a number of well made and robust watches loved by sailors and divers. Don’t be worried if you haven’t heard about them, because Le Forban Sécurité Mer is one of those that disappeared during the quartz crisis.

Brands that went belly up in the crisis and are being relaunched in the past five to ten years have been known to draw criticism for just profiteering on the heritage of long lost brands, without any direct connection or lineage. I’m not in that camp and believe that a revival can be done respectfully. One such revival has been that of Le Forban. And I really like their new watch, a very patriotic variation of their Le Forban Sécurité Mer, the Marseillaise.

This is a bout as classic as a diver can get, with a case that gets very close to a Monnin shape. It measures 40.8mm wide, 11.95mm thick and has a comfortable 46mm lug-to-lug. The steel case has a brushed finish with wide polished bevels on the sides and long guards for the screw-down crown. On top is a flat sapphire crystal, surrounded by a unidirectional 120-click bezel with a classic black aluminium insert. Water resistance is 250 meters.

The dial also keeps things quite traditional, with a sunburst blue color that fades to a darker blue, almost black, on the edges, or on a sunburst black dial. You get the classic round and rectangular SuperLuminova C3 printed markers with a triangle on top, white on the blue version, and a cream version on the black. The simple hands are lumed and at 3 o’clock is a date aperture with a white disc inside. Above the handset is the Le Forban anchor logo surrounded by the wordmark, and below is the model name with a blue-white-red underline bar, connecting it to the French flag.

Inside, you get a standard issue, well known, Sellita SW-200 movement which beats at 4Hz and has a 40 hour power reserve. But the best part of the watch are the carrying options. You can get the watch on a very traditional brushed three-link bracelet with polished sides, or on a bund strap. A bund strap on a diver, you ask? Who in their right mind would go diving with a leather strap? Well, this is a bund strap made out of rubber. How cool is that?

The new Le Forban Sécurité Mer Marseillaise is available now, priced at €940 on the rubber bund strap and €990 on steel. See more on the Le Forban website.

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Albishorn Is Back With Another Alternate History Watch, This Time A Type 10 Officer

Looking at watch releases every day, all day, you get kind of numb to the excitement of it all. Right now, there’s maybe a handful of brands whose new models genuinely make me giddy. Ressence is one, for sure. As is stuff coming from Serica. But I would be hard pressed to find a brand I like more currently than Albishorn. Ran by Sebastien Chaulmontet, Head of Innovation and Marketing at Sellita Watch Co SA and Manufacture AMT since 2017, Albishorn is set up as a brand that will create “imaginary vintage” watches, watches that fill a hole in the watch timeline. They started off with the Maxigraph, a hypothetical 1930s wrist chronograph that might have been commissioned by a competitor in the 1939 Bol d’Or regatta on Lake Geneva. They made the Thundergraph, a chronograph that could have been made for alpine exploration in the early 1950s and worn by the Swiss expedition to Mount Everest in 1952, a year before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, that was forced to turn back just 250 meters from the summit. They also made the Type 10 Chronograph, a predecessor of the iconic Type 20 Chronograph pilot’s watch. The Type 10 would have been made back in the 1940s, as a missing link between airplane instruments and wrist watches for military pilots. We already got two colorways of the Type 10, and now we’re getting a third — this is the Albishorn Type 10 Officer.

Pretty much all Albishorn watches share the same case, but with tiny different details that make such a huge difference they make them look like different watches. The case is made out of stainless steel and measures 39mm wide, 12mm thick and has a lug-to-lug of 47.7mm. On top is a box-shaped sapphire crystal surrounded by a steel bi-directional bezel that overhangs the case and has a glossy black DLC and a fully graduated 60-minute scale with lacquered numerals and beige lumed hash marks at 5 minute intervals. The case lacks the regular crown and pushers setup you would expect. Instead, the crown sits at 10:30 and underneath it is a large rectangular red aluminium monopusher to activate all of the chronograph’s functions, making it easier to activate with your thumb when wearing the watch on the left wrist. Water resistance is 100 meters.

Then, there’s the dial, which has one of the coolest setups you’ll find in any chronograph. You get a fairly conventional grained base, which is beige on the new Officer model, with large black lumed Arabic numerals and hands. Where things get very wild is the position of the sub-dials. Now the crown and pusher make a lot of sense, because if you rotate the watch so that the crown is pointing to the right, you’ll see that it has a bi-compax setup with sub-dials at 9 and 12 o’clock. But the way they place the movement in the case, the sub-dials end up at 4:30 and 7:30, which is just spectacularly cool.

Inside is a proprietary chronograph movement, built on a modified 7750 architecture. This comes as no surprise, seeing as how Chaulmontet is a well known chronograph specialist. This movement beats at 4Hz and has a 64 hour power reserve. It also has a patented chronograph function dot indicator at 12 o’clock, usually hidden by the lollipop chrono hand. The indicator displays the three chronograph states – reset, start and stop — in three different colours —black, red and white. The watch comes with two leather straps, one black and one beige.

The new Albishorn Type 10 Officer is limited to 99 pieces and goes on sale today. Price is set at CHF 3,950 without taxes. See more on the Albishorn website.

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Czapek Closes Out Anniversary Year With Quai des Bergues “Sursum Corda”

Boy, has it been a year of anniversaries. I can count at least five watch brands celebrating significant ones, and they all released a bunch of incredible watches to do so. As we approach the end of the year, Czapek is releasing a watch that celebrates the 180th anniversary of the founding of the company and the 10th anniversary of the rebirth of the brand. They’re doing so with a limited edition Quai des Bergues, the watch with which the brand was relaunched in 2015. This is the new Czapek Quai des Bergues “Sursum Corda”.

The Sursum Corda comes in a familiar Quai des Bergues case which is made out of 5N rose gold case, measuring 40.5mm wide, 11.9mm thick and with a 47.7mm lug-to-lug. The finishing on the case is impeccable, with a fully polished finish and indented flanks with sandblasted finishes. On top is a domed sapphire crystal, while out back is a flat one. Water resistance is a surprisingly capable 50 meters.

The inspiration for the dial comes from the Czapek & Cie pocket watch ref. 3430 from the 1850s. It gets a white Grand Feu enamel base with black elongated Roman numerals. There are two recessed sub-dials with small seconds at 7:30 and day of week and power reserve at 4:30. There’s a lot of writing done in white here, making for secret signatures — there’s Czapek’s signature in the small seconds sub-dial, a Sursum Corda signature above the handset and 10/180 below. The centrally mounted hands are blued and you get a choice of either arrow hands or fleur-de-lys.

Inside the watch is the manually wound calibre SXH1, developed for Czapek by Chronode. It beats at 21,600vph and has twin barrels that give you 168 hours, or 7 days, of power reserve. The movement also takes a lot of inspiration from 19th-century pocket watches, with openworked bridges that show you the symmetrical barrels and finishes like circular graining, hand-chamfered bridges and sandblasted surfaces. The watch comes on a blue alligator strap with a 5N rose gold pin buckle.

The new Czapek Quai des Bergues “Sursum Corda” is limited to 10 pieces (the website has a cool feature where it tells you how many are left — as I write this, 9 are), priced at €39,400. See more on the Czapek website.

IT’S ABOUT TIME PRESENTS: The Real Time Show Podcast Sits Down With Brendan Horneman, Kneijnsberg Watches Founder

350 years ago, Christiaan Huygens invented the balance spring, one of the most significant milestones in watch history. Now, Brendan Horneman, an independent watchmaker and teacher at the Dutch national school for watchmakers, goldsmiths and jewellers in Schoonhoven has launched his own brand called Kneijnsberg Watches, with his first creation paying homage to Huygens himself. It’s a super cool watch, and the story how we got to it is even cooler! Click the link below to listen to the episode:

⏲️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

• With Netflix getting ready to assimilate acquire Warner Bros. (maybe), the fate of theatrical film is once again being debated. Not so fast! As long as there’s breath in A.S. Hamrah’s lungs, or at least power in his typing fingers, the esteemed and iconoclastic critic will fight against the dying of the night at the movies.

• In June 2022, 53 migrants died in the back of a tractor-trailer while being smuggled into the United States. Two of the men in the truck that day were brothers. Only one of them survived.

• In this expansive piece for Hazlitt, Larissa Diakiw uses the mysterious echolocation skills of bats as a lens to examine how we perceive—and fail to perceive—other forms of consciousness. The essay explores “soul blindness,” our inability to see others as whole beings rather than objects. In mulling how we must learn to recognize the array of selves around us, it asks us to honor what we cannot fully know on faith, as a prophylactic against misunderstanding and fear.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

We just saw the end of one of the craziest seasons South Park has ever done, and based on that, you know the end of The Boys is going to be a masterpiece.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk