The Vault

As Far as I Can See

A Rolex Explorer 114270 with a black lacquer dial you can see into farther than you should, and a founder twenty-four years in who doesn’t know where he’s going. An essay about the dark, and walkin...

The Ticker Tape

Grand Seiko quietly swapped the reference number on one of its most-loved dials this summer, Phillips just closed a 97-lot online sale with an independent brand punching four times its high estimat...

Looking Up

Grand Seiko is praised in the language of serenity. There is nothing serene about the first red light breaking over a mountain.

The Ticker Tape

Grand Seiko just confirmed it's retiring the entire current Evolution 9 Hi-Beat "Birch" lineup this October, same movement, new bracelet and clasp, and a roughly 23% price jump at the register. Tha...

Parallels

The SBGA283 is not a watch for the man who has conquered his past. Such men exist mainly in autobiographies written by liars. It is a watch for someone who has made peace with the evidence: the mis...

Fame is a Lousy Archivist

Two heavy brancards run the length of the watch. They could have been smooth, but they aren't. Somebody carved them into a repeating pattern of ridges and cuts. The silver catches light on the high...

The Scorecard

The outer scorecard is what everyone else thinks of your choices. The inner scorecard is whether you can live with them yourself. I ignored mine for a very long time.

The Borrowed Heart

The Holy Trinity is Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin, and you're meant to recite it the way you recite a creed — three names, no substitutions, no questions. So I'll ask one. Wh...

The Third Omega

But here is what I actually want to tell you, and it has less to do with escapements than with time itself, the thing all of this is supposed to be about.

Pride and Joy

Louann was the only girl in a house full of brothers — wiry, grizzled men who looked like they’d been cut out of a cigarette ad. My great uncle Bud had the Marlboro Man’s mustache and his weathered...