Watches

I don’t usually write about quartz watches but when I do, they’re about Movado watches (I can’t believe I just wrote that).  Movado watches have a special place in my heart, my first “real” watch was a Movado Museum piece that I bought when I was in college; everyone thought I was some rich kid.  I still own that watch and occasionally wear it.  Today I bring you the Movado Series 800 Dive watches.

The Movado Series 800 watches have been around for a while now with a few different varieties, they seem to be quite popular and pretty reasonably priced.  I personally prefer the look of their museum watches but I guess Movado can’t sell as many watches when they all have the same black dial and two hands.

The Orient Watch Company is one of Japan’s largest mechanical watch producers and has been in the business since July 1950. But the company’s roots go back even further when Shogoro Yoshida sold wholesale watches in 1901. Having been in the watch industry for over 60 years, the Orient Watch Company has also had a few of its own innovations. Innovations such as developing the power-reserve indicator which allows the user to see how much “power” is left in a mechanical watch. Orient is also known for having their own in-house movement on the low-end watches in the hundred dollar price range. Having in-house movement is fairly rare in the entry-level watches.

To mark the 60^th anniversary of the company, Orient released two limited edition watches, the SDT00001S (gold case) and SDT00002W (silver case), only 1,500 pieces were produced in each color and they’re both now sold out.  We got our hands on the gold watch and what a watch it is!

Earlier this year, URWERK released the very complex URWERK UR-110 Torpedo watch. At first I didn’t really get the watch, but after watching their video (see below), I was amazed by the complexity of the timepiece.

The watchmaker has now released a limited edition version of the watch called the URWERK UR-110 ZrN Torpedo. Only 12 of these limited edition timepieces will be produced.  The only difference between the limited edition watch and the regular version is its color.  The original watch came in naked titanium and many people claimed it looked unfinished (not that there’s anything wrong with being unfinished ;)).  The UR-110 ZrN Torpedo comes with a black coated dial and caseback and the front of the watch is still titanium but has been coated with Zirconium Nitrite (ZrN), which looks more finished I guess.