Scottish Watches Podcast #793 : A Whirlwind of New Watches for July

A

Welcome to Scottish Watches podcast. Today we're getting blown away. Not that way. It's whirlwind day. Or as the French say, un journee tourbillon.

B

That was your best French, wasn't it? That was actually, to be honest, pretty good.

A

That's because in Google when you translate, you can press the little play button and it lets you hear what it sounds like. Nina, all you need to do is remember that for when you're recording podcasts. But why are we talking about Tourbillons, Dave?

B

It's the remembering part that's usually difficult for you. Why are we talking about Tourbillons indeed? Well, because, well, tourbillons and there's this thing that's euphemistically being called Tourbillon day. And that is, of course, war was June 26th. 6th. June 26th being the day when I believe it was the. Either the patent was issued to Abraham Louis Breguet for the tourbillon or it was invented. But I think it was probably when the patent was issued. But we can check that out later. Check show notes for actually accurate information.

A

Yeah, show notes probably tell you about them. That is where you'll find all the information on all the releases, products and the things we're going to chat about across the next hour or so. They'll be located in your podcast player. Click link at the top and it'll take you to our website. Same idea on YouTube. It'll be in the description. But yeah, Tourbillon Day was a few days in the past and by the time you hear that, it's probably yesterday's news. But it's something we should chat about, talk about because there are many link ups with tourbillons and only a week ago some company released a video. But we'll get to that in a second. Why don't you tell us about what Breguet are doing to celebrate?

B

Well, of course, Abraham Louis Breguet was the inventor or the named inventor of the tourbillon. And Breguet, the brand that holds his name, they're celebrating 225 years of the tourbillon complication. Is it truly a complication? That's debatable. But we can leave that for other people to argue about.

A

Can we also argue about the fact that people will just celebrate anything? I mean, 200, quite a big number. 220, little bit. Okay, 225. Dave?

B

Yeah, there's also a country that's celebrating a big anniversary, but it actually makes them really quite young. But anyway, let's say about that probably the better. We'll get ourselves into trouble. Anyway, let's kind of go back in time. At the end of the 18th century, Breguet was reaching for a happy place because the French Revolution was ongoing. And he spent some time both in Neuchatel and Le Lock in Switzerland. And then after that he returned to Paris feeling all a bit fresher and inspired. And the result of his trips were a couple of new inventions. Of course, the tourbillon regulating device or regulator was one of the big ones. And yes, it was the official patent that was granted on June 26, 1801. Now, the purpose of the tourbillon has been oft talked about. Of course, it was all to do with pocket watches. It was to do with gravity, the balance in the spring balance assembly, gravity pulling down on it to solve it. Breguet created this system based around a cage around the escapement. And they whirled round like a whirlwind spinning. And it constantly kept on a rotating axis, which meant that gravity had less effect on the timekeeping element, that is the adverse effects of gravity on it, which is, well, as we know today, one of the big inventions within watchmaking,

A

and that was for pocket watches, where the watch, well, the mini clock in your pocket would sit in the one position, whereas on wrist, it's always rotating, it's moving around. It's almost as if the motion of your body or your wrist, if you're on a computer, that has got the tourbillon effect. So that was a functional device back in the past to keep things moving forward. Nowadays it's more just decorative and for funsies.

B

Well, yes, I mean, it still does have some degree of impact, but much less so than a static pocket watch, which would sit in your pocket, as you mentioned, Ricky, for long periods of time, only really coming out when you wanted to tell the time. And of course, as technically we don't really need them on a modern wristwatch. That said, though, it has a small impact, but they are very pretty. They are seen as something that is generally quite complicated to engineer and do and to make work reliably and accurately. Therefore, it's seen as something that has got a lot of visual allure and kind of grandiose to it. And of course it's full of technical complexity. Now, what have Breguet done? They've got four new creations or watches. Now, the first time that a tourbillon appeared on a wristwatch with regards to Breguet, the brand was in 1988, which doesn't seem like that long ago. Although when you do the math, it was actually a fairly long time ago. I was alive, Ricky was alive. Just to think. But you know, 1988 feels like yesterday to me. But there's many people that were not even born until it had a 20 in front of the year. But anyway, moving along, that first reference was the 3350. And for this 225th tourbillon day. Yeah, it doesn't sound great that does it, Ricky? It doesn't really ring 225th tourbillon day.

A

Anyway, you know the Bertun, the 222nd, at least that would flow and look cool.

B

Yeah, 222, another branded something. They probably get themselves into trouble. Trouble afoot. Trouble afoot. Move on. Move on. Anyway, yes, Breggy looked back at that Histor historic model and they've brought out the classic Tourbillon 7357. Certain elements from that one remain, like the Breguet numerals, as you would expect, of course, things like the iconic guilloche patterns that you see on many of their watches. But many things have been redesigned. The lugs for example, better follow the curvature of the wrists, makes it more wearable. And overall the design gets a bit of an update and upgrade that aligns more with the newer aesthetic codes of Breguet, which were introduced back I think in 2025. The tour will be on of course at 6 o' clock and in regards to this watch, it's positioned just a tiny fraction of a millimeter below the level of the dial and it's directly on the main plate. This adds depth to it. The three arms that are also the running seconds hand are just curved slightly which follows these contours. And you've got a single cross through bridge which has also been kind of designed and redesigned, sorry, should I say. And rounded off. You've got the new calibre in there. It's the 187B that's built off of the original calibre, the 558 back in 1988. Runs at 2.5Hz. It has a few updates though. You've got Breguet's Nivachron balance spring. You've got a silicon pallet lever. Of course, all these technologies coming from the greater Swatch group. And that comes in two configurations. One in a fairly mute and cool color palette platinum case with kind of gray tones. In my opinion, the best looking one and one a bit warmer. It's an 18 carat Breguet Gold Swatch group. Love to call their gold names that are related to their brands. Swatch do it. Omega does it. They all do it, in fact. But that's also got more in line tones in terms of beige colorways. Those two are the headliners. But they've also introduced two other watches in there as well. We've got the classique tourbillon sideral 7255. That's been updated. It's a current model, but it's been updated with a platinum case and a black Aventurine enamel dial. You've got the tradition tourbillon7047. That's again a new platinum case, but they've got an addition of Bleu de France, which is the shade of blue. And that's on the Fousey and Chain on the dial. Not just on the bridges, but also on the Fousey chain bridges. And they're both on the front and the back. And finally, you've got a third generation of the Marine Tourbillon Equation Marchant. That's the 5887 that's been revived, originally launched in 1990 and it was revamped in 2017 and we've now got the third generation of it with regards to that. You've got a center sapphire dial. It's got a miniature painting, of course, all done by hand. And that's in a gradient blue Grandfou enamel. And you've also. Also in the upper surface, he's got a hand painted luminescent depictation of the night sky and its constellations with the moon in the exact position that was seen in Paris in June 26, 1801. All of the pricing is by request and the Classic Tourbillon will join the permanent catalogue. The Sideral is a 50 piece limited edition and the Tradition Tourbillon and the Marine equation are both 25 piece limited editions. I've talked for a long time. I don't want my voice to go hoarse again. Ricky, any thoughts on these or are you just going to go. Yep, more Breguet Tourbillons do have a few thoughts.

A

This isn't the type of watch that I'm really interested in personally, but we talk about all kinds of things on the show. Doesn't matter the cost, the background, where it comes from or the color scheme. And there are lots of different color schemes involved here. There are light shades, there are darker shades. There's almost a fumi pattern with the night sky. And I'm looking at them and they're not all the same. Yeah, they do look similar. They do have brand DNA, brand heritage and recognition. But the one I like the most is probably the most classic looking one. It's not the one with the crazy guilloche patterning on the front. It's the more sedate. It's the one that maybe would slip under the wrist and you wouldn't exactly know too much about it. I love the fact that they have done something that is a little bit different. They have taken things in a forward direction, perhaps a little bit like Vastrone a few years ago, where they had ghosted out sapphire dials where you could see, but you couldn't see. It was slightly hidden, slightly translucent. Similar effects here, but done with obviously the master creator Breguet's name in the background. I'm not 100% sure if these will appear anywhere soon we will ever get to see them in real life because when they do such low subscription numbers, they usually disappear into people's collections. And not knowing the price point is a tricky one because you can't compare and contrast. You can't say, ah, well, the Grubel Forzy, ah, well, the Vacheron Constantin. But if this is for a collector, and a collector that loves Breguet wants to get a little piece of history, but I think they could do no worse than checking this out. And there's something else that you can check out, and you can check this out free of charge. We've been talking on the show for a long time about a movie that was coming out from the guys at Raj, the place that Dave works, funnily enough. And this had happened in the past. There was a really good video put together called Chasing Microns. And I thought, okay, they've shot the load, that's it, they've done their cool video, they'll just move on, they'll do other things. But it turns out they could do a lot more. And that video has finally seen the light of day for the greater populace. It is now on YouTube and only a few days ago it got uploaded and I managed to sit down and have a good look at it. But Dave, tell people all about this.

B

So, yes, as you mentioned, we made a movie a couple of years ago called Chasing Microns that was more about the nuances of how difficult it is to engineer and manufacture mechanical watch calibers. Chasing Microns, talking all about the very small margins of error you've got to play with with tolerances. But we also probably are most famous for bringing tourbillon to the masses. That was our lockdown project and we wanted to document it we wanted to make a film all about the people that were involved and why we did it. That is now, as Ricky mentioned, seeing the wider light of day, we had a cinema tour with it where we went around various cinemas. We were in Asia, we were in Europe, we were also in London and of course in the USA where we showed it to audiences who attended various events that we were at.

A

I'm going to jump in because Dave's going to explain about this and I'm quickly going to tell you, don't phase out and don't tune out because as much as this, yes, it's produced by and it features the guys from Arage and the technology they work with. This is about the actual functioning part that we have just discussed in Breggy. So tune in, listen to this, watch it. Even if you've got no interest in the Raj, the brand, the releases, the watches, anything to do with Dave and his cohorts across in Bobn. Watch the video because you'll learn something. I learned something. I own a tourbillon. I own an orage tourbillon, one of the original ones, and there was lots of information. Nothing to do with the brand, nothing to do with the timepiece, just to do with the technology. And if you watch this show, if you listen to this show, you're going to be interested in this kind of stuff. Carry on, Dave.

B

Very kind of you, Ricky. And I think that's true. We wanted to make the film about a. The people who were doing the work and of course some of the narrative behind it. It's called Taming the Whirlwind. Of course, whirlwind being the English translation of the French word tourbillon. And it's about the story of the tourbillon that shouldn't exist because people told us we shouldn't do it. If we did do it, we would fail, we might go bankrupt, we might burst the company. We would never actually be able to do it. And it really documents. All of it's on YouTube. Check out the show notes, there will be a link to it if you enjoy it. Please do leave a little comment in there if you have any questions. If I've not answered something in the film again, leave a little note. Yes, I do work for Araj, but we hopefully think that you will enjoy it because we want to make movies that, well, the wider audience enjoys. And there is a other movie about another thing we've done that's currently about to start being made, which will come out probably end of the year, starting next year. But we can talk about that much later on. But yes, you will find, of course, the link to it in Miziel's masterful show notes. Or you can check out any link on the Hiraj Instagram account where you'll see it as well. So let's get on with the show.

A

Well, before we get on with the show, I'm going to give my thoughts on watching the video and it'll be very, very brief, don't worry, because it's a very short video. I sat down wondering what I was going to see and what was going to be different. Because the first one, Chasing Microns, it was so well executed, so well put together. The production team that was behind the scenes, they had put in so much ingenuity and effort. And I thought, this time around, is it going to be just as good? Because everyone's using AI to create things. Even Hollywood movies are using AI to supplement what you see on screen. But I was glad to see in the blooper reel, at the very end, as the credits were rolling, they showed you how they filmed a lot of this stuff. And for a 5 second montage of watch parts floating down in front of the camera lens, they had set up a motion control rig that you would see in Hollywood on 300 million dollar productions where the camera is on this robot and it moves at lightning speed to track the falling watch part. So that isn't AI, that isn't cgi, VFX or anything that is legit. And there's even some outtakes of Dave talking about certain things and pronouncing porridge and all that kind of jazz. So you will enjoy it. It's a good little aside for 20, 25 minutes and you'll learn a thing or two. Even if you don't care about tourbillons, even if you don't care about Raj and all the rest of it. If you like watches, you'll love that. And there's a brand that we speak to quite a bit. Maybe two years ago coming up, we were awakened to this brand from France, I believe, and they were producing all kinds of cool watches. Was a NASA watch sitting on the table in front of us at Geneva Watch days. There was something else. There was some new ideas. It was some old ideas. There was a bit of a lineage, a bit of a history from these two creators that I'd never heard of before. And since that moment, we've not managed to get rid of them. They forced us against our will, in her will. I don't know. It'll probably be in Dave's will because he's about to expire. But last year we got dragged across to not Watches and Wonders, but just around the corner time to Watches, which is adjacent, round the corner, a different building, to see the latest creations that they'd put together along with somebody from Scotland, the Dall artist. And we've seen their Jurassic Range. We've seen this, that and the other. But these guys at Awake, they just can't stop doing amazing things. And the latest amazing creations Dave's going to tell you about just now, I

B

like that lead in. You were awakened. That was quite clever. Pretty good. But anyway, yes, they are probably best known now for their dials, these Son Mai dials, which of course are very artisanal in the way that they're designed, similar in some ways to what people would know as Grand Fu. But it's not enamel, it's lacquers. And it's a technique that was mastered in Vietnam. This latest release is the Frosted Leaf Royal Blue. And the first of July at. At 2pm Central European Time is when they go on sale. There are only 200 pieces. So as you're listening to this, it will be pretty fresh. You will probably need to be quick if you want one of these because their latest releases have been known to sell out very quickly. Now, what's new about this? Well, it's the very first time that they've integrated pure gold into the crafting of these Vietnamese Son Mai lacquer dials. As they say, it's a fusion of material and light. This royal blue dial is entirely made by hand. It's composed of successive layers of lacquer, pure gold leaf and these natural blue pigments in various different shades. Now, that color combination has got a long and steeped history. It carries poetic and philosophical resins that transcends the boundaries of a mere aesthetic refinement. That's their words from their press release, but it sounded quite good, so I thought I would say it anyway. Now, what we've got here is each dial takes around 15 hours to make, which definitely feels realistic. We've also seen how long it takes to make grandfud dials, both with Annerdain in Scotland and with the guys in Switzerland. It is a fairly complex process and it's all executed by hand. They've got their all new 38 millimeter case that's had some refinements on it. The logo's had a bit of an update. It's got a new handwritten style logo. They're using the Swiss La Joux Paris movements. It's got 68 hours of power reserve and it's been fitted with their new rotor. Strap wise, they're using Jean Rosso straps. That French tie up there. Again, it's in a blue Alcantara which is equipped with their new micro adjustable pin buckle. Price point wise it's going to be €3,000. With deliveries of this specific model from early September. It looks epic. I'm a big fan of what Awake do. I remember their early days where they were cool but nothing hugely unique is the best way I would describe it. Then I remember this kind of transition from the Generation 1 design language into the. Well, the brand we know today with these sun my dials. And that's when they really caught my attention. Really nicely designed case. I love the dials on them. They've done all sorts of colors from bright and punchy to fairly undertoned to well, well, film themed and lots of other areas as well. This blue is a good blue. Blue is well, an oft overused color in dials, but as we know, we're Scottish, we like blue. We also like blue when it's with white. But if you get the blue correct and I'm a big fan of French blues, they're very nice. It's just not too dark, not too light. It's a bit like Goldilocks. Just right. Love this one. Ricky, you're probably going to say something like they should have phoned us and told us this would even mean a Scottish watches collab or something like that. Does that sound a bit right?

A

No, because it's got gold on it. It's not like the blue and white watch that Fears did last. Anyway, that was last week, now we're in this week. I love this. And going back right to the first ones they showed us and I hadn't heard of the brand before, I hadn't been awakened and they showed us this NASA collab from a number of years ago and I thought that's really cool. Then they showed us a cartoony graffiti style watch where all the cartoony parts were linked together like a jigsaw on the dial. Love that as well. Then they moved on to the latest design language which is now two years old. And they've changed up again. They've changed the logo recently just to add a little bit more prestige to what they're doing. As if they needed that, which they didn't. And this one, it reminds me, and always like to say it reminds me of. Because to buy something it has to Have a bit of a feel good factor. It has to bring some kind of thing from the past into your life. And with these dials, I'm thinking looking at a treasure map, I'm thinking maybe Indiana Jones, where you see the little red line moving across the screen as he moves from country to country. And it just, it reminds me of a sunny day where you've got the golden beaches, you've got the beautiful sea and you've got the blue skies above. Things we don't really see too much in Scotland, although it has been a bit of a heat wave here as much as it's been a heat wave everywhere else. And I do have an air conditioning unit and I will not relinquish it. You will pry out of my cold, dead hands. These watches, fantastic. Limited, as always. They do, they just disappear very, very quick. So hopefully the fact that it was only released yesterday, as you're listening to this, perhaps a couple of days in the past, if you're watching us on YouTube, then you may still have a chance of obtaining one of these. And if you get the opportunity, if you're going to your local Red Bar meet, if you're going to maybe one of Hamish's events across the country, Scotland and England, then you might meet these guys, you might see what they're producing, or if you're coming across to Geneva, watch days that we fully recommend because we are in the planning stages. It's only a couple of months away and in the past we have met up with people that listen to the show, watch the show, follow us on different social media platforms, and you'll get the chance to hopefully meet up with these guys and see what they've got, maybe see something that they've got coming down the line, and something that's coming down the line straight after the podcast and audio is the video version. We're over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and moving thick and fast. So if you've not already started to watch us there and you listen to the audio podcast, there's a lot you're missing. There are many visual gags, there are many visual things that we get to see thanks to Gavin. And in the coming weeks, hopefully we'll get up to two shows a week in video instead of just the one, because Simona has been learning the craft of video editing and she's doing pretty damn good at it. So check us out on YouTube, Scottish watches, along with, obviously, Scottish watches on Instagram. And what we're going to talk about

B

next, yes, we're going to Ring in with some legal news I think Ricky.

A

Ah yeah, well this is something that reminded me of something else. We're old, we've said this before. Do you remember? Time for some member berries. Do you remember when you used to pay good money to download mono ringtones for your phone and then it was polyphonic ringtones and then it was audio clips but those little beeps and bops that you would get on the Nokia. We've talked about Nokia Snake watch. We've talked about things in the past there that link in but I remember the little BP's and it was as I say, monotone. It wasn't polyphonic and you would just have maybe Axle F, maybe you'd have this that the other, the crazy frog. Well those guys were maybe skirting the law slightly back in the day when they had copyrighted music that they would charge you to then put on your phone. It turns out there's various copyrighted trademarks and things of the legal natures that perhaps Samsung, Samsung didn't quite get the memo on.

B

Well this is not anything technically new because it was going back to 2022 where Samsung well got their knuckles thoroughly wrapped. They were sanctioned for well, allowing the copying of Swiss watchmakers designs on their smartwatches. Yes, in fact, well if you own a smartwatch you'll know that there's lots of well, third party apps that you can download various, well watchy faces that look like well, many of the very popular watches that you can spend a lot of money buying. And SwatchGroup are not so happy and they're seeking, well, not insubstantial amount of money. $170 million from Samsung for ripping off Omega and Tissot designs for their smartwatch dials. So where does this all come from? The claim follows that 2022 ruling by London's High Court that found Samsung themselves liable for trademark infringement after many third party apps were made available through its smartwatch ecosystem. They of course allowed users to download digital watch faces that resembled iconic designs, many of which were from the Swatch Group. Now where does this all lead us? Of course Swatch Group are arguing that the comp should reflect the hypothetical value of the licensing deal that maybe should have been done for its intellectual property across all of its 10 brands to be used in these watches and they claim that's around $170 million. Now there's various intellectual property experts at various law firms that said things like trademark cases are generally difficult because the claimant have to show how these losses have been established. But what Omega are going with is that, well, in the field of luxury goods they would normally license their their rights to be used and they believe that this number is relative to what they would have had to pay if they'd wanted to license all of these watch brands. So an interesting take on it. I got a funny feeling there'll be some out of court settlement or a number will be settled on that will be probably a lot lower than $170 million. But nonetheless Samsung have had their knuckles wrapped and there'll be some well recompensing of them for it. I noticed most of those apps have, well, vanished into thin air. And Apple kept themselves at a bother because, well, with that sandboxed system of theirs they never really were able to put watch dials as apps onto the Apple watch. People took pictures or created digital pictures, but they didn't really work in the same way because they weren't of course active. So they've managed to keep their, well, toes out of the boiling hot water pan on this one. Let's see how it pans out. And thanks to Jason Hooper, a regular listener who brought this onto the radar as well, it then kind of suddenly made it across the news as well. But Jason's always a man that's got his fingers finger on the pulse.

A

Fair comments and now it's time to do that thing we like to know as the wrist check. And I am wearing a Tourbillon watch today. Yes, I dug this one out of the watch box. So what do we have here? We have got the og. This is original Raj Tourbillon one. The watch that started things off in earnest, didn't start things off with the brand because they'd been going for probably around about 10 years behind the scenes with the Autarc and various other things. But this is the watch that really put them on the map. Especially with myself. Before Dave was even sniffing at for joining the team over there because you got to remember he's only been with them for about, I don't know, three years, something like that. Three and a half years. And it was way back in 2019, Scottish watches first got involved with the folks at Arage and here's something I didn't mention earlier when we talked about the movie that has been put together that you can watch recharge on YouTube. The amount of depth, history and truth that is in there. There are stories I thought would have been locked up in the archives about why the Tourbillon one was created, the real reason behind the scenes, the truth behind the fact that A large massive organis that were making movements kind of shat all over. Mirage made them have to pivot, made them have to turn things up to 11 and create their own Tourbillon movement. But they were quite happy making the K1 and working on the K2. But this is the OG, the original. This is model T101. It says it on the back. Ain't going to take it off. Well, actually we'll take off in a second. And this watch has been in my collection for. Oh God, let me think now. This is coming up five years in a few months time because it was to go to Dubai watch week back in 2021. Pandemic was still hovering around a little bit and I actually got to take this across the water to Dubai to showcase it. My first, my only tourbillon. And you were talking about the fact that we love blue here because we're very patriotic, patriotic, whatever you want to call it. This came in various different guises. You could pick what color the front was, you could pick what color the back was. And I thought having the dial say that grid arrangement to the lattice structure, the blue waffle on the front would be a little bit too much even for myself. So I chose to have the back plane actually in the anodized blue color. And you can just about see it from the front in certain angles. When you peer through the dial, underneath the carriage where the tourbillon lives and obviously round the different wheels that are in the background, they're matching those hands pretty damn nicely. This bracelet that you can see, this actually was an add on after the fact. This was designed way down the line when the second iterations of the Tourbillon were released. And this contours and flows perfectly into the original, the og. And it was offered as an aftermarket alternative or an after the fact alternative because obviously it is oem, it is from the guys at Arage, it's not from a separate third party company. And it just all comes together, works fantastically well. And the guys have not pumped the price point. Everyone else has increased, increased and increased the cost of even the most basic of time telling devices. Look at Omega with their price points. Look at Rolex. Every year increasing this and the other. Even the guys at TUDOR and others have been constantly increasing the margins, the profits, the costings to get cool watches on the wrists. That's why we talk about the independents like Arage and various other players at all times. And if you want to find out a little bit more about the design process, where the thoughts and the feelings to put this watch together came from go back in history. Look in the show notes. Miz will link an episode where we had the design team on way back before Dave was even a glint in the bosac of Arage. And that is a great intro to the brand. And we keep saying it. We've talked about this brand for so long because they've done so many things, they've gotten themselves involved in so many things that could have ended them up in a lot of trouble a la Samsung a minute ago. And they've managed to come out the other side pretty much unscathed thanks to the determination of the two head honchos. So that's one to check out. And the next thing to check out is Dave Frischek. What you got for us?

B

Well, Dave is wearing something from, well, very nearby. In fact, we did a collaborative watch with them recently, that being Formex, where we. Well, collaboratives may be a bit strong, but we collaborated with them to bring the movement to them. We brought our K2 micro rotor movement, of course, to Formix and they introduced their all new Ariya which has, well, gone great guns. So I'm wearing, well, a little watch that we did a collaboration with them, that being the podcast. So here we have the essence that was done as a collaboration watch. Now I think this must be. Is it over a year ago now, Ricky? I think it was probably just over a year ago.

A

Definitely not three years ago, Dave.

B

Yeah, time disappears. There we go. Three years ago. No ideas. Anyway, it has a blue Aventurine dial on there. It's in the smaller size, it comes on the bracelet, but I have actually fitted mine onto the original Form X well, fabric strap and of course they are very excellent Micro adjust buckle which has got a carbon interior with the stainless steel cap, but it gives you 7 millimeters of adjustment. Now to the party tricks. I don't actually have a torch with me to hand, but on the back check out the show notes for good pictures of it. We've got the hidden illumination image of a castle that was done by Will Matt, one of the great long term listeners. He's a tattoo artist and he did some amazing draw. Now it only shines and appears when you hit it with the Lume torch. It's a fantastic watch that I actually really enjoy. I was never a huge fan of the slightly larger essence sizes, but this one, as far as I'm concerned, hits the nail on the head. And that Aventurine dial is punchy but subtle at the same time. It's even set to the correct time and date for when we're actually recording this. Not the 1010 that we usually do so that you can see the logo, but it is definitely a Formix Scottish Watches Edition. What's the official name for it, Ricky?

A

This is the Formex Essence Scottish Watches Collaboration Sky Edition with Dunvegan Castle on the back, thanks to Mat.

B

Another thing, as we can say, much like the tourbillon one, if you want one of these, tough luck because unfortunately they've all sold out. But maybe just keep tuned if you're a fan of collaborative watches with Scottish watches and Formex. Well, something may be afoot.

A

Well, since Dave is telling you to keep abreast of news and current affairs, turns out as much as we are in the podcasting sphere, in the broadcasting sphere, something happened that brought a tear to a glass eye a little bit, and that was the fact that BBC Radio 4 decided to come off the airwaves, to come off long wave and to stop broadcasting. It was 96 years there or thereabouts. The figures got a little bit fluffy because it wasn't always on long wave, it was on different things, medium wave, etc. But a little bit of sad news that something that has been around for nearly a full century has ended. And I was hoping they would have kept it going for that hundred years, put it to bed on a nice round number. But behind the scenes, apparently the third party that operates the broadcasting equipment said up, we can't keep this stuff running any longer. We just don't have the spare parts and there aren't that many people listening on Long wave any longer. So I thought that was a bit of a wee sad story there. But a great story was our visits down to England over the past couple of weeks. Yeah, we managed to go there twice. And I don't mean Dave, because he just goes around the world all the time. I mean, myself and Simona, we headed down to Birmingham for the Watch Out Fair and then we came home and then we went straight back down south to Newcastle in the biggest heat wave, I believe, since records were devised, blah, blah, blah here in the uk. And this was to help out the guys at ebay, because they had recently launched this new service we've talked about called ebay. Live Think Home Shopping Network Think Live Auctions. Fuse them together with a chat room. Genuine online buying and selling from trusted traders, trusted dealers that have been using ebay as a platform for many years. And we went down to Newcastle to meet up with a couple of chaps from Watch Trader and company to sit in and to help out a little bit behind the scenes with one of their live auctions. Instead of it just being quick fire. Here's a watch, here's the quick details of it. Show it to the camera. Right, okay, bid on it. Next watch. We added a layer almost like a podcast, although not quite. And we were quick on our feet. We chatted through various different things. There was a bit of storyline going along. It was a bit of a collector's journey. Talking about if you get into a brand, perhaps you're a new watch collector, you get your first Tudor or Omega, then you move up the ranks. Maybe you get something from one of the other brands, maybe you get a Grand Seiko, then you end up with a Rolex. What is an exit watch? What is your eternity watch? And everything in between. Cool releases from many different years in the past popped up, including an absolutely killer deal on a Cartier that my missus was looking at and could not fathom that it went for such a low cost. And these things are rapid fire. And some of the prices, prices that these watches went for, I could not believe how low they were because I've got a bit of a handle on the secondary market. I did a little bit of research ahead of time but we had a brilliant time down in Newcastle and we're going to be doing a return leg for a second show and we're going to bring those guys onto the podcast because it's been a long time since we had anybody in the secondary market come on and talk about that side of things. Yeah, we talk about pre owned, pre loved second hand watches through things such as Chrono 24 and eBay. We have the folks from the police coming on to tell us how to buy and sell watches safely. They will be on shortly. Stay tuned for that one. But I just want to find out what it's like, lick our finger stick in there, see exactly what it is like on the secondary market at the moment. Because it ain't the crazy prices of 2122. Things have reverted back to the norm, if not below the norm from back in 2019 forward. And we don't have Jonathan at Edinburgh Watch Company to constantly chat to, to bring on to talk about that area because he retired well over a year ago. Possibly Paul Thorpe ain't doing watches no more. So it'd be good to bring things full circle, bring a couple of chaps on that are living the dream multiple times per week. Not just working in their own store in Newcastle. There's one in London as well. But doing the online thing, trying out this new thing, working hand in hand with ebay to see how it would all go. And judging by the text messages that I saw today, everyone seems quite happy with the first one. Although I ended up in a hotel with no air conditioning on the hottest day and night of the year. That was not fun, definitely not fun. But what was fun was just a few days ago and there was a car event. This is something I like to do. Jump onto Facebook, go into events, find things local or get them to show you things local. And because Meta knows everything about you, they can figure out what you like. Is it vintage video games? Is it Comic Cons? Is it car events? And there was a car event happening near a local shopping center in Glasgow. And we didn't really have big high hopes, no great expectations of what we would find, what we see. But we went along, we managed to find the part of the car park where they were actually having this event. And we got to see some amazing machinery. The weather was terrible, but the cars were brilliant. We got to walk around, see everything from vintage Ford model, whatever the hell they were, A's or T's. We got to see drag racing cars, we got to see American muscle right up to modern day Mustangs. And we got to see some really cool vintage, as in classic, classic vehicles. Including, we've talked about Eddie Jordan on the show, including the Honda Civic Jordan. That yellow thing. Do you remember them, Dave?

B

The bumblebee. Yes, I remember that. I'm sure it had that trademark little kind of wasp bumblebee sticker on it as well. Or was it along the side? I can't quite remember. But that was, well, the last of the great generations of heavily modifiable cars that. Well, I can't remember exact number, but those engines got ripped out of them and put into many a kit car and many other things as well. But yeah, that was back in the heyday of car modification.

A

Well, the one that we saw. And there will be some pictures in the show notes hopefully, and there'll definitely be some video in the YouTube video. It was really well catered for and cared for. It didn't have a blemish on it. And you're right, the little imagery of the bee sting at the back, that was still there, the inside of it. Even the gear shift gear in leather didn't look like it had been buggered up at all, probably replaced. But it all worked great and there was everything. There was even a pink Mazda MX5 red original with one of the pop up headlights in its pop top position. Yeah, just a really cool little day out. I actually picked up some random tat while I was there. It turns out everybody at shows they want to have a little marketplace selling this, that and the other and tons of people were creating 3D, printed this, that and the other. And I picked up a clock that is sitting in the background over to the side and it is reminiscent, reminiscent of perhaps a Bugatti dashboard steering wheel from one of their Tourbillon cars. So yeah, it's all coming full circle. Trying to think anything else? I'm getting prepared to actually work on my own car. Mentioned, played around with the wife's car, learned some tricks of the trade on it, going to implement them on mine. So over the next coming weeks and months I'm going to be doing stone chip repair on the front end. I'm going to be doing compounding, polishing, taking. I think it's some kind of oxide across the windscreen to take out scratches, all that kind of stuff because I want it to look its best for the road trip we've got happening later on in the year.

B

I just hope the paint is of a similar nature to the paint that you've practiced on. I'm sure you'll be absolutely fine though. But yes, I went through a full clean down on mine, although mine has a full hard multi year ceramic coating on it which makes life very, very easy. Outside of that, what have I been up to? Not a whole lot, Just very much trying to calm down and recover my voice. It sounds infinitely better than it has for the last couple of weeks, but there's still a tiny little croak in the back of my throat. Yes, Ricky, before you say anything, it's not because I've been sticking things in there that shouldn't be in there, but I'm going to be getting on a long haul flight In a about 10 days from now as well. So it'll probably come back with a vengeance when I'm over in Chicago. So if anyone's listening and you're in

A

the Chicago area, don't put anything down your throat.

B

No. Well, I mean it depends what they want to put down my throat. And if they ask nicely first and if I am affirmative about said actions, then it's all good. If I say no and they do it, that's very different. Anyway, Chicago, if you're in and about that area, if you're going to go to the Wind up show, I'll be there for a few days, let me know. Can always meet up in one of the evenings or we can catch a drink on one of the days out. If you're about, if you're going to the show, come and say hello. It should be great fun. And of course, as Ricky mentioned, we've got some planning ahead for various other things. We may be over on the Emerald Isle in the near future as well. That is something. Work in progress. But enough about us. We should get on with the watches that we want to cover.

A

We should. And JLC is a brand that we talk about. We don't really get a lot of interaction with. It's been a number of years since I was across seeing their manufacturer. Oh God. It was seven years ago. And since then. Yeah, okay. We meet up with them at Watch and Wonders occasionally. Sometimes they say send us some press releases but they've not said much recently at all that I can think of. They haven't popped their head up and produced anything of merit or not. Yes, they make nice watches, they're good quality but they just have kind of disappeared into the background. But now they have actually created something that we can talk about. It is getting the headlines. The folks in the blogosphere, the people on YouTube, the TikTokers even are talking about JLC again and for good reason.

B

Well, they seem to have maybe found their groove again. I think there's been a few years where maybe the groove wasn't quite as groovy as it should have been. And what we're going to talk about, well, they have released a a new edition of the Polaris date. I'm not even going to give you the number. Okay, I will. It's a Q912-8981. They need to get past that thing. Just use names or something a bit more attractive than a weird number. Anyway, the Polaris arrived back in 2018, not really that long ago and the new date version keeps that kind of historically inspired sporting look from the very original. Now when they did introduce it or reintroduce it back in 2018 it was 42 millimeters by by 13.1 millimeters tall. This newer one, all a bit more svelte, still not small watch, 40 millimeters by 12.9 in height retains a 200 meters of water resistance which kind of makes it a water friendly watch. Stainless steel in terms of construction for the case makes it practical. You've of course still got the twin crowns in there with that inner rotating bezel and you've got these dark blue colorways with these kind of Layered finishes which. Well, I think it looks really good. So good in fact I've got one of the original ones. Comes on a blue canvas strap with a double folding clasp. It's got their self winding caliber, the 899. It's a reasonably slim caliber. It's under 5 millimeters thick, runs at 4 hertz, 70 hours of power reserve and it's all off of 1 barrel, 218 components. They are after all known as the watchmaker's watchmaker price point. Well, in US we've got it at US$10,400. It's putting it in a similar price point to many other, let's call them dive watches. I don't think they officially call it a dive watch, but it's basically a dive watch at the end of the day. It's a good quality one at that. Would I be paying that amount of money for it today compared to what I paid for it? That's a very different question. But as we mentioned earlier in the show, many of the, well, bigger brands have not been shy about punching their prices towards the sky over the last couple of years. Great looking watch it is, sitting in and about the same price pool as many of its competitors. But I think there's also probably some quite interesting watches you can get for less money money and just as much spec. But it looks good nonetheless. As I say, I have one that I paid a lot less money for. Ricky, you'll probably quite like this because it's generally in and about your aesthetic.

A

I do like it. I like the almost symmetry of the dial, everything about it. It reminds me a little bit of one of the Moser watches we talked about recently where you had split sector arrangements and inner dials within the dial surface itself. It doesn't offend me. The price point people might have some trouble with that because at 10k plus sales tax over in the States we're playing into Rolex territory and JLC is a watch for a connoisseur and even at that price point is a bit of an ask. There are many different brands out there that are nipping at the heels here. So this might be a tough sale. A little bit like we talked about Panerai after watches and wonders and some of the price points that they were pushing things out were phenomenal. Some of the technology was amazing. We couldn't believe what they were showing us in front and then they showed us the price point of other watches and we thought how do these things connect? Will the market look after this? Will the people be receptive to it. I actually saw a Panerai advert, the first time I have ever seen a Panerai advert. I was watching something on Amazon prime, one of the videos, and I ain't paying to go ad free and a Panerai advert appeared in front of me on tv. I was beside myself. I could not believe what I was seeing. But anyway, that is an aside. This watch looks cool. If you've got 10k plus sales tax and you like it, go buy it. It will not serve you wrong. Glc, they know what they're doing. They've mentioned the watchmaker's watchmaker because up until very, very recently they were providing some of the movements for Audemars Piguet in the Royal Oaks right up to almost present day. We're talking maybe three to five years in the past. And what we like to do is to tell you to get in touch, never DM us, always email us because that way we actually see it instead of our inbox and Instagram just flowing with absolute rubbish 24 7. And we've had a few emails in over the past couple of weeks and we've got one here that's all about Dave.

B

Hey guys. Longtime listener, love the podcast. Has Dave's association with Red Bar ended? Not heard much about it for a while. Keep up the good work. Alistair or Alistair sometimes, depends how you want to pronounce it. Well, I can say Alistair. Alistair. No, I absolutely still involved. Yes, there are less events and I think it's fair to say for many of the chapters there's slightly less events because, well, we're getting back into a tempo now. The hype days of watches where we had literally hundreds if not potentially thousands in some areas of people wanting to have events, the number of are more sedate now. There's still a good chunk of people but there's a London event that's happening in fact next week, I think round about 8 April. The invite for it went out in the last couple of days. Glasgow. We had an event just around the time of the Glasgow Watch show, which was a mere couple of months ago. Sadly, that venue that we managed to find in Glasgow is now quote up for sale. So there were a little deal we had going with them which was, well, they didn't charge us to use the venue, which is kind of what we need because we are a non financially orientated audience organisation. We don't charge for people to come along. Well, that venue is up for sale. Well, probably because they were giving away their Venue to be used for free from us. But anyway, hopefully with the new owners, they might carry the deal on. We've got something planned for Glasgow in the coming months. Edinburgh. Well, Glasgow and Edinburgh kind of work together and I know that the other guys that are doing in Oxford, they had an event around about 10 days ago and the guys in Southampton, in fact, they're doing a little event the day before the Southampton Watch show, which is the weekend just coming up as we record this, that is the second show. It did a show up in Glasgow and they're doing the Southampton show as the second show, followed later in the year by Manchester. We try and line up events with those as much as we can. So, yes, slightly less events, but it's all still going. Please do also check your spam folders because, well, many of these email block senders are getting locked down now and more and more emails end up in people's junk folder. So do check your junk folder regularly or you can also try and just mark those emails as good ones so that they end up in your inbox. But there we go. Hopefully that answers your question about ratings.

A

Red bar, Dave, telling you to check your junk regularly. Yeah, sounds about right. Well, we're going to ask you to check something out that is not junk. So this watch is from a guy that has been creating timepieces out in Canada and there have been collabs in the past, there are going to be collabs in the future. And when I saw the design of the watch, it stood out because it was a little bit different and I love little bit different watches. And then I saw the price point and I thought, oh, that is not crazy money. That is pretty insignificant price point wise when we're looking at everything else that's on the table, especially today with JLC and the likes. And I thought, right, okay, let's find out a little bit more. And then we struck up a bit of a conversation. Then we appeared on WhatsApp, chatting back and forward, discussing this, discussing that, turned into a phone call that ended up being nearly an hour long. And I got to find out a little bit more about the watch, the brand, the ethos, how things came to be. And it just reinvigorated me because this was a fledgling brand that hadn't been going for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 100 years. This was something fresh, hip and happening. And this watch, I've not seen much like it. Dave.

B

No, this is a very cool watch. And what we're talking about, well, it's the canuck X, Ando, Ando Ando and it's the fourth dimension. Now as Ricky mentioned, I think it's fair to say pretty cool things can be done for not so much money. There's a few other brands. For example, the Delhi watch company out of India, they did a watch called the Terra Titanium, which kind of caught fire. It was only a few hundred and it was a very cool watch. Now this one is the third chapter of this unique collaboration between two microbrands. There's going to be two variants of this watch and it's going to be limited to 50 units, 25 of each. Now it's fair to say about 10 years ago, microbrands really were beginning to make a significant comeback and really mark themselves out into the world of watches. And James Williams, who's Canuck's founder, he wanted to do designs that were reliable, easily serviceable so that any, anyone could own a watch regardless of where they live and they could look after it again regardless of where they lived. Now James idea for this fourth dimension is based on wandering hour watches, which of course are typically fairly technically complex and generally expensive because of that. But he came up with a fairly simple idea of, well let's replace the hands of a very simple off the shelf Seiko NH38A which is a 41 hour power reserve, 3 Hz movement, super easy to maintain anywhere you go in the world. But replace the hands with discs so that this gives you this kind of impression that time is drifting on the dial. Now this watch is housed in Ando Ando Ando's Bespoke PVD coated 35 millimeter case. It is a small watch, but you've also got the crown in an unusual position. It's I think at 6 o' clock between the lugs, it's 43 millimeters lug to lug, which makes it a slightly bigger watch in terms of wrist presence. It's 11.6 millimeters thick and it's got 20 millimeter lug width, which will mean it's very utilizable in terms of lots of different straps, 100 meters of water resistance, which means it's very practical day to day. And this as our third chapter, it was preceded by the Black Hole and the Wormhole, which were both watches that paid homage to Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, one of their favorite films. Now in this one it's all about time slowing down compared to Earth's time clocks. Now the main point of interest in this fourth dimension is the dial on the periphery. You've Got a wide chapter ring and it's placed high up in the case housing and it's kind of a little bit abstract as a minute track. Long curved lines and rectangular dashes marking the minutes. They're all composed of thick layers of lume. Then at 12 o' clock there's a large kind of teardrop shaped hand we'll call it, which is also lumed and it's got James signature. There's an aperture in it though where you read the hours and minutes as those discs turn anticlockwise or counterclockwise. Now the watch is 35 by 43 by 11.6. As I mentioned there's two, two versions. There's a black PVD coated one and there's also a bead blasted stainless steel version. That price, it's killer. US$496. It's on pre order on the website. You've only got 50 pieces in total as I mentioned, 25 of each. So you'll need to be quick. And the watches are planned to ship before the end of August 2026. Definitely check the show notes out. This funky cool looking watch that is definitely. You can tell that's not an ultra expensive watch but you will not think it's 500 bucks either. Could easily be sitting in the high hundreds, low thousands, quite easily. Cool looking thing. I actually like the size. It's a bit of a weird skinny sideways but long lengthways. I think it's cool. I like the black one which is unusual because normally I'd go for the non black version but the black one seems to be the one that I think hits the mark. It'll look amazing, fully loomed.

A

I agree. I think this is something that is different. I looked at it and I thought first of all something had gone wrong. You know when you download an image, doesn't happen as much nowadays, but you download an image, you're looking at something on the Internet and back in the day you get a little bit of interference and the image would be slightly skewed. Or even further back in the day, Dave will remember this one when perhaps there was a video signal that was scrambled or encrypted. But you could just about make out if you squinted your eyes what was going on and you didn't really. Shouldn't really be able to do that. Remember that Dave? Yes you do. Well, that's what this dial looks a little bit like. The numerals are slightly skewed as if the transmission hasn't come through properly or it's been photocopied. Numerous times and hasn't quite worked. And you take that slight diffusion, slight parallel dimension, almost the fourth dimension, and you look at it on the wrist, you have to pay more attention because it isn't quite as conclusive on first look as perhaps it should. And that just plays into everything. It could be a device from an alien nation where you're trying to decode something the way that everything moves around on the dial and then you just look at price point and it's not insignificant. Money is tight. People don't have spare cash like they did in the past, in the pandemic days any longer. When you're talking sub $1,000, then it's something to pay attention to. And in this day and age, there ain't a lot left under a thousand bucks that you can buy.

B

Absolutely true. When we were squinting our eyes, that funny thing was that round about the time when Debbie went to Dallas.

A

You're going back to prehistoric times and cave paintings there, Dave. But we're going to tell people to go back in time through our back catalog, because we have got almost 800 episodes sitting, sitting there vying for your attention. If you've not already heard them, perhaps you're new to the show, you've been listening, you've been watching for a couple of weeks, months or a couple of years. Well, 790 odd episodes are sitting there waiting. Any highlights from the recent past?

B

Well, Barbara has been back on. She pops onto the show every once in a while to tell us what she's been up to. And she's been up to plenty. So check out Barbara's episode, also the episode with inquirious or inquiries, however you want to describe it. They are now in cahoots with ebay, of course, making sure that any watches you buy there are definitely legit and not of the stolen nature. Jem, also from Elliot Brown back on the show telling us what they've been up to. We've got the live episodes from, well, the show in Glasgow and of course our live recording with Buchra in London, Formex Raf was on telling us all about the aria. We mentioned that earlier in the show as well. And of course, lots and lots more that can be listened to, whether you're listening again or listening for the first time. Definitely worth checking it out. We do definitely need to work out what we're doing for that 800th episode because we still don't really know, but we will get something very cool planned so that for 800. Well, it's a big one.

A

All the episodes are really cool, Dave, so it doesn't really matter what we do for episode 800. It's the episode 1000 that I'm looking forward to because that is a couple of years away and it wasn't that long ago with Steve McDonnell on for episode 500. We're now 300 down the road from that. They come thick and fast. So yeah, just stay tuned. Make sure you're subscribed, watch the YouTube videos as much as you listen to the audio podcast because we're growing on that platform and more and more people are actually watching long form content between 50 and 55 minutes for our podcast, our video show on their televisions because, well, holding your phone for an hour could be a little bit problematic, especially for Dave with his arthritis. But anyway, I digress. Time to tell you to check out the show notes if you've missed them already. Follow us on Instagram ottottishwatches. And yeah, just stay tuned because there's lots of cool things happening, including a lot of live stuff and perhaps a limited edition watch with Scottish watches and somebod else. So thank you for listening and we'll catch you again soon.

B

Take care.