Yema Brings The Superman Bronze Back With Three Glossy Gilt Dials; Seiko Takes Sunset Inspiration For APAC Exclusive Samurai; Unimatic Toughens Up The Modello Uno; A Restored Valjoux 72 Singer

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I’m done with this week, so no smart words from me today.

In this issue

• Yema Brings The Superman Bronze CMM.10 Back With Three New Glossy Gilt Dials

• Seiko Adds Two Sunset-Themed Prospex Divers to Its Asia-Pacific Limited Edition Run

• UNIMATIC Toughens the Modello Uno With a MIL-STD-Tested Dive Build

• Singer Reimagined Restores the Valjoux 72 for the Heritage V72 Chronograph

👂What’s new

1/

Yema Brings The Superman Bronze CMM.10 Back With Three New Glossy Gilt Dials

The Yema Superman has been the brand’s flagship diver since the late 1960s and has covered a lot of ground since then — titanium cases, manufacture movements, even a tourbillon version, all developed at Yema’s own workshops in Morteau in the French Jura. But one of my favorites has always been the Superman Bronze. It’s been around for a while, but now it comes back with three new glossy lacquered dials and it’s a good look.

The bronze case measures 39mm wide and 10.95mm thick, with a 48mm lug-to-lug. Surfaces alternate between vertical brushing and polished chamfers, and the bronze unidirectional bezel is radially brushed to set it apart from the case grain. You get a screw-down crown with the embossed logo, Yema's bezel lock, a 2.2mm thick double-domed sapphire crystal, and 300 meters of water resistance. The bronze will patina with wear, which will only make it look cooler.

The dials are the novelty for this watch, and it’s an interesting contrast to the bronze. There are three colors to choose from — white, green and brown — all done in glossy lacquer, with applied gilt logos and raised hour markers, plus gilt-coated diamond-cut hands filled with Grade A Super-LumiNova that glows green.

Inside is the CMM.10, Yema's manufacture calibre developed, assembled, and regulated in Morteau. It beats at 4Hz, with a 70-hour power reserve from a large single barrel, and Yema rates it at -3/+5 seconds per day with plenty of shock and magnetic resistance. Each watch comes on an integrated FKM Tropic-style rubber strap matched to the dial, closed with a brushed bronze pin buckle.

The new Yema Superman Bronze trio is available now, limited to 1,948 numbered pieces across all three dials, priced at €1,890. See more on the Yema website.

2/

Seiko Adds Two Sunset-Themed Prospex Divers to Its Asia-Pacific Limited Edition Run

I both love and hate Seiko’s regional limited edition. I love them because they’re usually a much cooler version of a watch available anywhere else. I hate them because they are usually very hard to get. Their latest such release are the Prospex HBB003K and HBB004K, Asia-Pacific exclusive (Japan excepted) Samurai models. While not groundbreaking, they come just as I’m toying with the idea of getting a Samurai. And that yellow one just might be the on.

The case measures 41.7mm wide, 12.3mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 49.5mm. That's a familiar modern-Seiko footprint. Departing from classic Seiko is the Samurai case which has sharp angles and facets that give it a dynamic look. The crystal is Hardlex rather than sapphire. Seiko is pretending that this is somehow a good tradeoff between acrylic and sapphire, but it’s not. A screw-down crown and solid caseback give you 200 meters of water resistance.

The sand-textured dials are really nice. The HBB003K goes bright yellow for peak golden hour; the HBB004K pushes later into a saturated orange. The broad hands and applied markers have a heavy dose of Lumibrite, and the date sits between four and five o'clock in a tiny round aperture. Seiko usually uses this aperture to integrate the date very well, but here the date wheels are white, clashing with the dials.

Inside is the Calibre 4R35, Seiko's automatic workhorse running at 3Hz with a 41-hour power reserve. Nobody buys a 4R35 for its numbers, but it will run for years and pretty much everyone can service it. The steel bracelet has brushed and polished surfaces, a 20mm lug width, and a three-fold clasp with push-button release and expansion to clear a wetsuit.

Both are available for pre-order now, but only in the Asia-Pacific region. Price should be somewehere in the A$995 range, which translates to about €600. See more on the Seiko Australia website here and here.

3/

UNIMATIC Toughens the Modello Uno With a MIL-STD-Tested Dive Build

Unimatic keeps finding new things to do with the same case and I respect them for it. Their latest such feat is the Modello Uno UT1-PD, obviously a diver built on the Modello Uno case, but here a dive watch built to survive being dropped. Really hard. So hard it passes the MIL-STD-810H impact testing, and they do it, you guessed it, by using a quartz movement that’s very well protected. This is also part of their Toolwatch collection, recognizable by little pops of orange.

The case is the familiar Modello Uno case, made out of sandblasted 316L stainless steel, 40mm wide on its own or 41.5mm across the bezel, with a lug-to-lug of 49mm. It measures 13.3mm thick without the crystal and 13.6mm with it, which is chunky but expected for 300 meters of water resistance. Sure, you would expect a thinner quartz watch, but here the movement is wrapped in a shock absorbing protector which takes up thickness. The construction is tested to MIL-STD-810H, a U.S. military testing standard that subjects equipment to environmental and mechanical stresses like shock, vibration, temperature extremes, and moisture to verify it can survive rough field conditions. Sure, marketing speak, but if it works, it works.

The dial is matte black with printed Arabic numerals, a white open seconds rail, and international orange trims. Matte black ladder hands show the hours and minutes, while a reverse lollipop seconds hand with an orange tip tracks the running seconds. Super-LumiNova C1 is used on the hands.

Inside is the Seiko VH31A, a quartz movement with a sweeping seconds hand rather than the usual tick, accurate to ±15 seconds per month with roughly two years of battery. It sits inside UNIMATIC's 360-degree protection system. The watch comes on a black TPU two-piece strap with brushed stainless steel hardware, and the whole thing weighs 99 grams strapped up.

The Modello Uno UT1-PD is a limited edition of 250, individually numbered, available August 7th starting at 5PM CET. Price is set at €525, but that’s without VAT. See more on the Unimatic website.

4/

Singer Reimagined Restores the Valjoux 72 for the Heritage V72 Chronograph

OK, this is a bit of a complicated one, I hope I can make sense of it. Singer Vehicle Design was started in 2009 by Rob Dickinson, former singer of Catherine Wheel and cousin of Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson. They started by restoring Porsche 911 cars to absolute perfection, essentially dominating references to the word “restomod”. They evolved from restoring these old cars to creating their own modern variants of old Porsches, with completely custom made frames and engines. These are insane projects starting at a million dollars to build, but also the pinnacle of restoration. Dickinson also started Singer Reimagined with designer Marco Borraccino, a watch company. They kind of did the exact opposite path to that of SVD. They started by making some uniquely modern watches with brand new developed movements from partners, only to make their way to the Heritage collection which meticulously restores iconic vintage movements to put them into their fantastic looking watches. Last year, we saw the Heritage Chronograph use new-old-stock Valjoux 236 movements. Now, we’re getting the Heritage V72 which takes pristine new-old-stock Valjoux 72 movements, one of the great manual-wind column-wheel chronograph calibres, and rebuilds them to a finishing standard that is pretty much unprecedented.

The case is 38.8mm wide and 13.25mm thick, available in either stainless steel or 18k yellow gold. Singer gives it a sunray satin finish with polished bevels, vintage piston-style pushers, and a flat fluted crown, with glassbox sapphire crystals front and back. Water resistance is 50 meters, which is fine for a dress chronograph that you likely won’t be diving with.

Two dials colors are available, one for each case material: a stone-grey matte on the steel, velvety matte black on the gold. Both have the very cool toothed golden flange from the Caballero and lay out the classic Valjoux 72 tricompax registers, champagne snailed sub-dials for the 30-minute counter at 3, the 12-hour totaliser at 6, and running seconds at 9. Faceted golden markers, openworked sword hands with orange lume, and Singer's signature orange central chronograph hand tie everything together. It's handsome and restrained.

It’s all restrained until you flip the watch over and see that wild, wild chronograph movement. The calibre, now designated SG7201, keeps the Valjoux 72's original 2.5Hz beat rade and 44-hour power reserve, but everything cosmetic has been redone: frosted bridges, hand-polished chamfers and screws, rhodium-plated steel, and a blue ALD-treated switch component. The Y-shaped chronograph bridge has a "Restored by Singer" inscription. The gold model comes on a 20mm black grained leather strap tapering to 16mm; the steel gets a grey textile strap of the same dimensions.

The steel Heritage V72 is limited to 50 pieces at CHF 23,000 without tax, while the gold is limited to 20 pieces at CHF 45,000, also without tax, both delivering early November 2026. See more on the Singer Reimagined 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

• Vice, both the magazine and the subsequent media house, has been a bit of an obsession of mine. I’ve studied their rise and fall from grace with great interest and I’ve loved hearing all the inside stories. Mitchell Jackson, a wild character in his own right, writes down his memories of the failure of Vice. He claims the company didn't die because of investors, sexual harassment charges, or going 'woke' — it died because the founder stopped believing in the product that made them famous. Great story, made even better with memories that include stuff like this: “Aaron Carter, high on meth, threatening to kill me”, and “Aaron Carter, again high on meth, FaceTiming me about Los Angeles County towing his car” and certainly “Shane Smith ordering a German executive to lock the staff in an attic so we would no longer write about bestiality because it offended Gloria Steinem and the CEO of Google when Shane sailed with them on a yacht.” There’s a bunch more here. 

• Forced disappearances have plagued Mexico for decades. In 2019, something remarkable happened: Twenty-one disappeared people were found, alive. They had been toiling in narco-slavery camps, an under-covered aspect of Mexico’s illicit drug trade. But there wasn’t a happy ending.

• In this harrowing, incredibly reported story co-published by Science and Retraction Watch, Brendan Borrell uncovers how “Mei,” a 6-year-old girl in China, died a week after an experimental gene-editing trial went wrong—and how her medical team, led by neuroscientist Zilong Qiu, downplayed the risks to her parents, did not publicly disclose her death, and has faced no real accountability.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Yo… this is either the best edited trailer of all time, or this will be the best movie of the year. How in the hell can a movie about the TV show To Catch A Predator (btw, I will forever think of this as one of the greatest TV show names in history) look this good? Also, do you remember when Robert Pattinson played a sparkly vampire in Twilight? Yeah, neither do I, because this man is on a generational run of acting.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk