The Grey NATO - Ep 78 - The Baselworld 2019 Megasode

Published on Thu, 11 Apr 2019 06:00:04 -0400

Synopsis

The hosts discuss their experiences and favorite watches from Baselworld 2019. Jason talks about his trip to see the iconic Schilthorn mountain featured in the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. They analyze new releases from brands like Seiko, Citizen, Doxa, Zodiac, Nomos, Manta, and Tudor. Jason is impressed by new watches from DeBethune and MB&F that reimagine traditional dive watch designs. They share opinions on the controversial Rolex Sea-Dweller and Tudor Black Bay P01 releases. Overall, they highlight affordable and interesting sports watches in their preferred $500-$2500 price range from microbrands and enthusiast favorites. The hosts also discuss new camera gear like the Leica Q, share recommendations from listeners for content about the Apollo 11 mission and rock climbing, and tease an upcoming Webby award for which listeners can vote for their podcast.

Links

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Transcript

Speaker
Jason Stacey	Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Graynado, a Hodinkee podcast, a loose discussion of travel, diving, driving, gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 78. And we thank you for listening. Good. Yeah. How are you doing?
Jason Heaton	Not too bad, not too bad. I think we've got a really, like a really awesome show ahead. This is our Basel World Megasode. It's one of our biggest shows of the year. This is going to be a long one. Yeah. And because of the timing of the shows and the recording for the Braymont episode, and then we delayed the show for a week, there's actually been quite a bit for us to catch up on. We were in Basel together, got to hang out a little bit, which is great, but we have so much to talk about. Yeah. I'm kind of excited to dig into everything and especially to hear about your little field trip out of Basel, which I'm exceedingly jealous of, just from the photos.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah, yeah.
Jason Heaton	But before, right from the top, it has been brought to my attention that Hodinkee has been nominated for a 2019 Webby Award. Oh, very cool. And part of that is the podcast effort. And so if people aren't familiar with the Webbys, it's basically the Oscars of the internet. So every Webby nominee contends for a People's Voice Award as selected by the voting public, anyone who would like to vote. So, uh, Jason and I, and actually the whole team at Hoding Key would love it. If you have a moment, go to vote.webbyawards.com. Go to the search bar, type Hoding Key and vote for us. If, if, if you think it's something that we should, uh, we should win or be in contention for. And, uh, voting is open until April 18th. So if you could do Jason and I a favor, it would be incredible if we, uh, if we had enough votes to, uh, you know, win a Webby, that would be something really, really special. And, uh, I just wanted to get that kind of. out there right at the top of the show. It's a fairly exciting thing to be recognized for some fun work.
Jason Stacey	So yeah, that's very cool.
Jason Heaton	Wow. All right. So with that out of the way, how have you been? What's new? You know, we've got there's this list is huge. We've got tons of watches. We've got just kind of like life stuff that's going on. It's great.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. And it's a good thing we're recording today because just a couple of days ago, it was still flat on my back in bed. I caught some sort of weird Swiss influenza or something while I was in in Basel. I got home on a Sunday and I was laid up from Tuesday afternoon through just until about two days ago, so I haven't been that sick in a long time. I don't want to go into some of the gross details, but it was kind of classic head flu, cough, extreme fatigue and that sort of thing, but it makes me rethink the whole flu shot decision that comes up every year. But no, I'm better now. So if I'm a little more nasally or coughing a little bit, forgive me. But yeah, all good.
Jason Heaton	And then before you got ill, you did have this kind of special side trip in Switzerland. Tell me about that. I'm excited. I mentioned it in Slack today. I've literally avoided asking you questions about it. Yeah. Um, I saw the pictures, they were on your Instagram stories and, uh, and that sort of thing. And we can, I'm sure pull a couple of those and throw them in the, in the post on hodinkee.com. But, uh, this is something you've definitely talked to me about several times.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. I, uh, I've wanted to do this for years. I mean, it, it, it, it seems also with SIHH in January, it's a little less, uh, uh, less appealing to do in January and in Geneva, but, um, You know, Basel time, it's spring in Switzerland and it just seems like, you know, you're over there. And, and certainly Switzerland's known for its chocolate and its cheese and its watches, but, but mountains are such a huge part of what I like about, about Switzerland. And so I've, I've often thought, you know, why not tag on a day or a couple of days and get out of, get out of Basel after, after looking at watches for a few days. So this year I decided to do that. And, uh, I was flying home on a Sunday and I had flown in on, on Tuesday. So I booked all of my. watch appointments for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and just kind of packed the days so that I would leave Saturday completely free. And, uh, so I got up early and I thought, you know, I'm jet lagged anyway, I'll be up the wee hours and you know, I can take, take the train and kind of make a full day trip out of going somewhere really interesting to look at some, some beautiful mountains. And, and my, my first thought was to, to maybe try to sneak a little bit of skiing in or, or some hiking. Um, But but then I got it in my head that for years I've wanted to go and see a mountain called the Schilthorn, which people might recognize the name because it was used as the setting for On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the 1969 Bond film, where it was called Pete's Gloria. And once I got that in my head, I thought, you know, I have to do that because I've been to the Grindelwald area, which is kind of the valley in the Bernice Oberland where these iconic peaks are, and skipped at that time, and I thought, you know, if I'm going to be over there, let's just make that the priority and see if skiing can fit in after that. So I got up, you know, I was up at, you know, four in the morning or whatever, and I caught the 6 a.m. train from the main Basel train station, and it was about, let's see, 6 o'clock, I got there about 9.30, so it was, you know, three and a half hours on the train, but, you know, time flies, I kind of just listened to a podcast and looked out the window and dozed a little bit and transferred at Interlaken and then Lauterbrunnen. From Lauterbrunnen you take a cable car up to a small, basically just a train station called Grutschalp. And then there's a short sort of train line that just runs back and forth between Grutschalp, the top of the cable car, over to a small town called Murin, which is sort of a high placed pedestrian only little ski village. Um, you know, right nestled below the, the Jungfrau, the Monk and the Eiger. And, um, so it, as luck had it, uh, the weather was great. It was sunny and, you know, Fahrenheit, it was probably in the fifties, you know, nice warm day. I packed a kind of my Topo Designs, uh, mountain briefcase with a cap and gloves and a layer or two and a bottle of water and, uh, I got off the train at about 9.30 right there in Murren and I went to the Hotel Iger, which is right there. It was a recommendation from our friend Chris Hollingrake, your PR guy there.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah, Chris.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. He had posted a few photos a few months ago. He'd been skiing in Murren and I wrote to him and I said, hey, I'm thinking about doing the same thing. And he said, go to the Hotel Iger. It's right there. And I said, you know, I'm just doing a day trip. But he had all sorts of great suggestions for me. And so I went and I had breakfast. They had a breakfast buffet and they let me kind of just pay separately a la carte. And I sat outside and had a nice breakfast. And then at about 1030 I wandered down through the town, which is this, you know, just classic quaint Swiss village with the timber sort of chalet style houses and little streets. And, um, down at the end of the road is, is the cable car that goes up to the Schilthorn. And the Schilthorn is, You know, it's admittedly a bit of a tourist trap. I think, you know, they've turned it into kind of this James Bond museum and kind of tourist destination. But it didn't diminish. You know, I kind of was prepared for that and I thought, okay, I'm going to be fighting, you know, people with selfie sticks and that sort of thing. And it was fine. I caught the cable car up and there's kind of a halfway point called BIRG, B-I-R-G. That's sort of a high ski station with an outdoor terrace where, you know, you can get some food. And then from there, you catch the next cable car on up to the Shilthorn. And the approaches to these stations are just tremendous. These steep, beautiful, sun-bathed, snow-covered alpine peaks. You can see the skiers down below carving their tracks. And the approach to the Shilthorn is right out of a Bond film. The cable car comes up right in the middle of it, and it's It made me want to see the movie again. In fact, I did watch it while I was sick. I just came home and watched it again.
Jason Heaton	It's a great movie.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. I think it's one of the underrated Bond films, actually. It was a great one. I got off the cable car up there. The bit of the history is that that place was half-built back in the late 60s. When they were scouting for a location to shoot this movie, they happened upon this place that was half built and in exchange for being allowed to film there, the owners of it said, we'll let you film here if you complete the construction of this revolving restaurant on top of this mountain. And so sure enough, they did. And they put in a helipad and then completed the restaurant. And so nowadays it is a revolving restaurant. But stepping out of there, it's just this weird sense of deja vu that you're in this movie set and you can picture where everything happened and so I wandered around and in the basement of it they have like a Bond Museum so they have like this sort of shell of a helicopter that they used for filming and an old bobsled and then they have scenes from the movies and kind of little interpretive plaques where they describe how they filmed it and who was in it and some little tidbits and then you know you can walk outside and you can kind of go down off of the the main sort of deck And kind of on this snowy slope, which seemed a little sketchy to me because it was pretty icy. And get a little ways away and then kind of take a picture looking back and you get this spectacular view of the Eiger again and the Monk and the Jungfrau. And then at the bottom of this, below where the cable car drops you off, there is the outlet for the ski slope. And apparently this is the steepest ski run in the Swiss Alps. It's called the Inferno Run. And, um, so it's, you know, clearly like a black diamond run. And, uh, but a lot of people go up there with their skis and, and had I had a little more, uh, a little more guts and a little more time, maybe I would've thought about doing it and I'd love to do it someday if my skiing improves. Um, but it's, uh, it's pretty dramatic. You see the skiers leave and they kind of get to these, this precipice and everybody sort of stops there. And then you sort of see them disappear down over the edge and off into the distance. But I spent probably an hour, hour and a half up there, kind of just taking it all in, and then caught the cable car back down, stopped and had a beer on the terrace at Beerg, and then ended up back in Murren at about 3 p.m., which sort of confirmed to me that there's no way I could have done multiple things in one day. There was no chance of you know, getting on skis and even doing any skiing around there because the lifts kind of close at about 4 p.m., so. Right, okay. I just sort of ambled around, just took in the scenery, I did a little hiking, you know, the trails are all really nicely marked around there and you can kind of get down a little bit away from town and kind of gaze up at these iconic peaks and then, you know, had a coffee and a pastry and just kind of took it all in and then, you know, at about, I don't know, I guess it was about 5.30 or so, I caught the the train and sort of reversed my route and was back in Basel by, I don't know, 8 p.m. or 8.30 or something and packed to go home the next day.
Jason Heaton	A successful adventure.
Jason Stacey	It was. It was great. I want to do it again. I think it's just, even if it's a matter of sort of budgeting an extra day in or an overnight would be ideal because then you could really kind of take your time and do a little more hiking or skiing or whatever you want to do. Absolutely. Well worth it. Highly recommend it, and the weather cooperated, but the Alps are just, you know, Basel itself is not a terribly inspiring town visually. I mean, I think there's some nice architecture, and it's got a nice old town, and the river is pretty, but to see dramatic snow-capped alpine peaks is just something else.
Jason Heaton	Yeah, that's what we want. For sure. I love it, man. I got to tell you, you know, it was it was a busy year at Basel this year, despite the show being obviously a little bit more compact. Yeah. Lots of meetings. And to occasionally pick up my phone on that Saturday when I was running from one meeting to another or trying to blast out a bunch of photos or something like that and see you like beer, eiger, you know, just just like in there like Lazenby. I was just like, man, that's I did something, I made the wrong choice this year. But yeah, hopefully the next time I can tag along. That sounds like a really, you know, like a solid TGN day trip.
Jason Stacey	I think it could be an annual thing. I mean, I think it could almost be a legitimate sort of, yeah, TGN sort of post-Basel sort of wrap. I mean, you could almost do your Basel wrap-up episode from some beer garden somewhere on a mountain. Oh, dude. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, let's think about it.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. Yeah, and hey, and then the whole thing's a write-off.
Jason Stacey	Exactly, right. Yeah, exactly.
Jason Heaton	All right, perfect.
Jason Stacey	So, yeah, so as you mentioned, I mean, Basel was busy on its own. You know, you're their full-on staff with Hodinkee, so you guys are cranking out posts. I'm there more on a kind of a freelance basis, just sort of gathering intel and meeting some folks. And so my show isn't quite as busy, but you know, we crossed paths a few times. We went out for dinner. We did a Hodinkee radio podcast recording, which was a lot of fun.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. Had a drink by the water?
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah, right.
Jason Heaton	It was good. No, I think I mean, it's always nice to be in Basel and we're definitely going to dig into into the watches and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, the fun thing about this time of year is like we're kind of it's always that kind of that hustle where like now show season's over in the next kind of phase. Yeah. Kind of kicks in. And, you know, I've got I got a bunch of stuff to kind of to kind of loop around on a new camera, which, you know, anyone who's on Instagram is, you know, would would have some some knowledge of at this point, but I had the opportunity to buy a lightly used Leica Q. Wow. Nice. And I got to tell you, you know, it's not cheap, but it also really makes me question why I, why I went with other systems the last few years.
[unintelligible_label]	Oh yeah. Yeah.
Jason Heaton	It's just, it's so intuitive. It's super fun to use. It feels like you're shooting this old piece of gear and then the lens, the lens is so sharp. And it's got Wi-Fi, so now I'm back with Wi-Fi transfer, and the files that it outputs are just incredible.
Jason Stacey	So, you know, you've had sort of a strategy of doing the watch stuff on your Canon, and then you had the Sony 6500 that you were using kind of for other stuff and even for cars. How does the Leica fit in? What's your strategy going forward going to be now?
Jason Heaton	I would say in a scenario where I'm shooting a trade show, or where I'm shooting home studio for a watch review, I'm gonna maintain the Canon. I think it's a perfect system that I'm very used to. Everything else would be Q. Oh, sure. And then if you wanna prove, just to prove a point, the regular Q is about 25 megapixels, so as soon as you crop down to something like 35 or 50, 50 being pretty good for a watch photo, you're taking a lot of data off the table.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	But the new Q, the Q2 is 47 or 48 megapixels. Sure. And Steven shot all of Baselworld with the Q2. Oh, really? Oh, wow. So there's a contender for one camera. So you can, you can, I think you still get something like 20 megapixels if you crop to 50 millimeters.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. Which is, that's enough.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	It'll crop to 70 as well if you want, but I think now you're down to 12. So it's be, it would be fine for Instagram, a little bit more difficult for print. Yeah. He shot the whole thing with it, threw a flash on it when he needed to. And suddenly his kit was way smaller, it was way lighter. I mean, like I'm not really in a position where I don't want to shoot with my Mark III in a 50 when I'm shooting a trade show. Yeah. Just because I can work so quickly with that system. Sure. But for the sorts of stuff where I was carrying the Canon with the 35 Sigma, it's a big heavy system. for that sort of thing where I was walking around a city taking pictures for fun or travel stuff or cars, it's all going to be on the queue now. Oh, yeah. It's so fast. The sensor is incredible. The lens is absolutely next level. It's so nice to have an EVF again so I can check focus and sunlight. Oh, sure. Yeah. And that sort of thing. And it doesn't weigh that much. I can carry multiple batteries pretty easily. You know, it really fits into the flow a lot like the 6500, but feels like a big step up despite being very similar resolution.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And I like that Zeiss lens, the one that I broke. The Q is a very easily understood step up. It has a macro mode. I can get really close to a watch. Amazing depth of, you know, amazing bokeh and depth of field on it. The handling is really nice. It feels very manual, so you can really, you don't have to leave the camera in automatic for many of the settings. Yeah. I'm thrilled. So, I mean, it's a $5,000 camera, but yeah. Yeah, so I mean, that's the other side of it. I have, I have a 6500 with a lens or two plus a bunch of old glass that can be modded to it.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And I have a, I have an Alpha A7S II, that's essentially brand new in the box, a ton of batteries, which also has a Leica mount adapter and a Canon Metabones adapter.
Jason Stacey	Wow.
Jason Heaton	So if anybody is in the audience and like would be in the market for something like that, I guess, uh, you know, drop me a line at the, the grainado gmail.com. These things will not be hard to sell. So I'm not that concerned about it. It's more of a question of being in Toronto long enough to actually make the sales post, uh, to put it on Craigslist or whatever. Uh, so I think I'll get to that when I'm, I'm, I'm in New York as we record this and I'll get to that when I get to, um, when I get back to Toronto. Yeah, but that stuff needs to go simply because I'm now, you know, I'm five camera bodies deep. And that's before we get into film. I need to dial it back to two is my comfort zone, I think. Yeah. And yeah, so the Q is absolutely everything that it's cracked up to be. It's super easy to use. It feels great. It looks cool. The photos are incredible. And and really, I lean on on our boy Brett Curry for really like I see his work constantly from the camera. I'm not saying that I'm going to get to Brett Curry levels of excellent. I mean, he's doing a show. in just outside of Seattle. For anyone in the Pacific Northwest, swing by Brett's Instagram. You can actually see a whole... It's a Leica show. It's at a Leica store of stuff that he shot on the Q. So if you wanted a proof of concept for what's capable when you're the best at it, take a look at what Brett's turning out. The work's incredible. I mean, we've talked about Brett many times, and Brett, if you're listening, Thank you for the inspiration and the continued great work. I'll be chasing that game for a while with this one.
Jason Stacey	Yeah, there's kind of a growing fan base for this camera. I mean, I think Ted Gushue uses one. He does, yeah. I think Ben, doesn't Ben Clymer have one? And now you and Brett. I don't know, I think I've mentioned Adam Morelli in the past. He's a Leica Academy photographer. I don't know what he shoots with, but obviously a Leica guy. I mean, I had some brief experience with a Leica film camera a few years back just to kind of play with it. A friend of mine lent it to me, but the Q looks, it looks good. I mean, I've never handled one, but I'd love to try it out next time we're together somewhere.
Jason Heaton	Well, yeah, you absolutely have to have to take it for a day and give it a run. I think it's just, it feels great. It works really well. The way it focuses is not like the Sony or even the Canon. It's just like, it's so routine that I take one frame.
[unintelligible_label]	Oh, really?
Jason Heaton	Just because it's so razor sharp, like if you want to catch somebody's eye, you get it immediately. And it's, it's great. And you can shoot it just wide open all the time. Wow. And it has, you know, like a shutter speed dial that goes to 2000. Yeah. And when I first picked the camera, I'm like, 2000, that's gonna be tough to shoot at one seven in sunlight. And then there's like an A next to it, which just puts it in an auto, and it'll go to 16,000. Oh, so it has a very fast shutter. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, you can shoot at one seven all the time. Uh, it's, you know, it has the ability to crop in camera. So if you want to see the line for 35 or 50, yeah, you just tap this button, this dedicated little button right by your thumb. Sure. So if you don't want to shoot in the native lens is 28 millimeters and then it crops in sensor, uh, sorry, it crops in software, uh, if you want, uh, to make it feel like you're shooting a 35 or a 50. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's great. It's expensive. It should be great. Um, I didn't buy the hype. I had shot a couple of frames and a couple of different people's cues over the days, but having one for 24 hours and I'm thrilled. I could definitely see, you know, uh, a business case for having a Q2. Um, if, if it, if it looked like I wanted to not be on the Canon platform at all.
Jason Stacey	Stephen did a nice review, I think of the Q2 recently on Hodinkee on a weekend recently, they might want to link out to that, but I don't know how different the two are, but the form factor is similar.
Jason Heaton	It's the identical form factor, same glass. It's weather sealed, so it now uses the battery, Leica guys may be upset with me, it's either the battery from the S or the SL, which is a magazine style battery. Okay. So it doesn't have a battery door anymore, the battery actually seals into the body.
[unintelligible_label]	Oh, sure.
Jason Heaton	And then you go from the 24.7 megapixels to something like 47 megapixel sensor. It's a huge Panasonic full frame sensor. Yeah. And that would be your big difference between something like the 6500 and this is the Leica Q's full frame. So it's the same resolution, but you're getting much better depth of field and more stops of dynamic usefulness, dynamic range in the photo and that sort of thing.
Jason Stacey	Oh, you're getting nicely tricked out for summer then and you got a new backpack as well. I know we were talking about like you'd been asking me for quite a while actually about my Patagonia black hole. I think you were looking for kind of a walk around bag.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. So just spending a lot of time in New York these days. And, you know, once you're like the 10 bow, which is what I've used for now for several years, five years, probably to carry a lot of gear around. Yeah. But I find that when you're just commuting, like it's say 30 minutes from my Airbnb to the office, and it's I'm on a subway. And I wanted to go back to having kind of just a nice backpack.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	not something really big, not something to travel out of specifically, but something that would operate as a carry on to carry things like a couple cameras, a laptop, a little bit of gear and a t-shirt. Or, you know, if I want to do an overnight somewhere, I could just pack a few, few things in this bag and go. Yeah. And, uh, I was very much interested in the, uh, the Patagonia black hole when I saw them in person, especially all the various colors of the shininess kind of turned me off.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And then I was hanging out with a guy in Toronto, a new friend. His name is Joe. He's a listener. Hey, Joe, thank you, obviously, for the hangout that day. So we went for coffee and we were chatting about bags and cameras and all this stuff. And he said, oh, around the corner from here, there's a Timbuk2 store. You should check them out. They make these kind of more minimal, aesthetically sort of bags. Yeah. And so I went in there and I came up with a bag. So it's called the Vert. It's made by Timbuk2. So, I mean, it's a San Francisco based company. It's a lifetime warranty. I think the bag is probably not made in San Francisco. I don't see how it could be for the 150 Canadian I spent on it.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	But it's like a green bag that kind of crosses a normal day pack with a little bit of like a skateboarding sort of vibe. So it has twin straps for a skateboard. Also very handy to hold a tripod or a jacket or something like that.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	It'll also, you can then, I'd like the reason that I grabbed it was it'll go, it'll slide itself face forward onto a suitcase handle, which is of course not at all what it's designed for. But when I saw these two skateboard straps, I was like, well, skateboard, suitcase handle, like I can make that work. And it has these kind of four segmented outer pockets, which are great for chargers and, you know, batteries and cables and a wallet or your sunglasses. And then it has a kind of larger inner pocket, which you can put all sorts of stuff in and then it finally has a fully separated laptop sleeve.
[unintelligible_label]	Huh. Nice.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. I got it in sort of a simple green color and I removed any of the branding and I've been using it for about a week now. And it's great. I mean, to, to do the walk around in New York and not have to have something either hanging on my shoulder for that long, that weighs that much. I mean, you're talking 15, maybe 15 pounds with all the gear.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And I just got really tired of having to like shoulder it when I got on and off the subway or like slide it around on the floor between my feet. And this way you just kind of mostly keep a backpack on unless the subway is really busy. And I don't have kind of the shoulder or the forearm pain of holding of like, you know, having dangling on my skeleton in some way. Yeah. So I'm I'm I'm pretty impressed. So Timbuk2, this is my first bag from them, and it seems to be very nicely made. They make much fancier bags like that are fully waterproof and much more kind of city style, but I saw this one and it kind of like looked the way that I wanted it to look.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And I went that route. It's not their fanciest bag. It's kind of a more specific design and I like it quite a bit.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. I've had a couple of their messenger bags in the past. I mean, you know, here it's funny, you know, we, we have obviously have these, these TGN themes and, and, you know, we just talked about cameras. We've often debated and talked about which camera is the best. And I've got a little camera related stuff to talk about here shortly, bags or another one. Again, we've gone back and forth about shoulder bags versus roller bags versus backpacks, and the pros and cons of each. The fact is, there is no perfect bag, and I think you found something. A backpack obviously has its merits. When I did my Shilthorn trip in Basel, I had this mountain briefcase from Topo Designs, and its advantages and its shortcomings immediately become apparent because, you know, I wore it as a shoulder bag because when I deployed the backpack straps, they're just a little too short once I had the bag kind of fully stuffed and it was sort of cutting into my underarms. So then it becomes a shoulder bag for the whole trip, which isn't entirely convenient. So you're kind of back to square one and a backpack would have been better, but I don't like to walk around trade shows with a sport coat on and a backpack. So agreed. There's just all of those factors and yeah, I mean, I'll always show here, but you know,
Jason Heaton	I'll always use the 10, but for something like a Baselworld or an SIHH, cause you can set it down. It doesn't fall over.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	I'm wearing a blazer. Like I don't want to have a backpack on that sort of thing. Yeah. Um, but then, you know, Topo, if, if Topo had a place that I could readily find, like their, their whole lineup in Toronto, I know there's one or two spots that carry some of it.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	Um, I probably would have bought a Topo cause I I've had a Topo day pack before, which is just a little bit too small for this use. Yeah. And the one or two steps up from that, they make some, they make some really nice bags and they can have like a fun use of color and they're really smartly designed. I just like the company, especially at an aesthetic side. Everything I've had from Topo has been really, really nice. And if I'd had kind of more opportunity to see them or if I had been willing to wait until I got to New York and I could go buy, you know, one of the larger stores that carry their stuff here. Yeah.
Jason Stacey	That's always a good option. Yeah. So geez, new backpack, new camera. I mean, you're, you're set for summer. I mean, it's like, Uh, you know, I mean, what more do you need for kind of exploring a city or something?
Jason Heaton	So, yeah, not a whole much. I mean, the, the, the funny, funny enough on my list, I've got somewhere around the corner, actually, uh, we've talked about these before, but we've got so many new listeners and, you know, it's one of these things, like I spent my own money on it. So I'm more than happy to chat about it, but I bought more of those kill hubris, uh, pocket t-shirts, the, the dye. So it's like kill hubris was our first sponsor ever on the show. This is not an ad I paid for the shirts and I'm happy to. but they make these washed pocket tees and they're my absolute favorite t-shirts in the whole world. Yeah. And I had all four colors previously and two of them were lost in my move. And, uh, and then the other two, I just wear them a lot. So you wash them, nothing lasts forever. And they started to get kind of like the pockets kind of, uh, stretched a little bit on them. Cause I'm constantly putting my sunglasses in and out of them when I'm shooting. And, uh, and so I figured like I would just re up, I won't, I'm going to wear t-shirts constantly summer. You're gonna wear t-shirts. And these are my favorite ones. I love the way they fit. They feel like an old t-shirt, but they're new, uh, and they're, they're awesome. So yeah, I am, uh, I am very well geared up for the summer bags, t-shirts, camera.
Jason Stacey	Let's get out there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just briefly, I've, I've got a dive trip coming up, uh, a few days after this episode airs, um, headed back to down to the Caribbean, going to Bonaire, um, for a little over a week. Uh, You know, it's become kind of an annual thing for my wife and I. It's just such a great place. And certainly we can link back or, you know, you can look for episodes that we've done where I've talked about Bonaire, so I'm not going to go into it. But with regard to cameras, I think I had mentioned a few episodes back that we got a Nikon Z7 kind of in the household for various uses. In fact, we had it back in November or December, and that's what the If you remember, I did that crazy Richard Mille review up in Colorado, up in the back country.
Jason Heaton	Hard to forget.
Jason Stacey	That article was all shot with the Z7. I think that was the first time we used it. And it performed well. It was great in cold weather, and battery life held, and the photos turned out great. So that's become our new underwater rig, replacing a Sony A7. Mark II that we've used for years, actually. I think most of the underwater photos for probably the past three, maybe four years have been from a Sony A7, which has been great. But, you know, we've got Nikon SLRs with lots of lenses, and just, you know, when Nikon announced the Z7 as its new kind of mirrorless flagship, it seemed like a good move to kind of move in that direction. So I've passed on my entire Sony rig, including the underwater housing, to my other underwater photography buddy, Chris, down in Milwaukee, and just got a new housing for the Z7, which is made by Nauticam. Very cool. Who I think makes some great, great housings. And so that just arrived last week. And these aren't cheap. I mean, these housings are made camera specific. It's all beautifully machined aluminum with a vacuum pressure system that allows you to check for leaks. you know, integrated flash trigger, just a super sophisticated, beautiful, beautiful housing, which costs exponentially more than the camera itself, but hopefully it'll get us through a few years of shooting and just can't wait to get that underwater and give it a try. So we've got a 17-35 wide-angle Nikkor lens on the camera with this giant dome on the housing, which should make for some really great wide angle stuff and possibly some split shots over undershots and whatnot. So really, really stoked to get that down there and give it a shot.
Jason Heaton	Well, yeah, I can't wait. We'll have a follow up from that trip on a future episode, and it'll be exciting to hear not only about Bonaire in general, but how, you know, how the camera and the new housing and everything performs, because that's some really good gear. It should be fun.
Jason Stacey	Yeah, yeah, should be fun. And, you know, still unsure at this point which watch or watches I'll be taking. I think this trip I'll probably be taking one or more of my own watches and possibly a story will come out of it, but I'm not sure. But then also revisiting that Garmin Descent Mark 1, which is Garmin's first dive watch. I took it there last year and it had a few teething issues that I reported back to Garmin and they actually incorporated the feedback and have improved it, which was really kind of a cool sort of experience to be a part of. Um, so they sent me another test unit to, uh, to give a try this time. And I've been skiing with it all winter and it's been, it's been, it's been fun. It's a, it's a really cool watch and, uh, and it does some really neat stuff underwater as well. So that'll be, that'll be on my wrist there.
Jason Heaton	Well, that's great. You know, I, I, um, I met with Garmin when I was in Miami for watches and wonders.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And we had a really nice meeting and they showed us, uh, the new Mark series is the, their most high end product and it's these kind of activity specific sports watches that are made like the cases are really beautiful. And you know, they're a little bit, they're, they're tuned either for driving or sailing, like specific to things that Garmin already has a big foothold in sailing and being on boats, a Garmin navigation, that sort of thing. And they have one for kind of like hiking and running and these different things. And then while they were at this meeting and they had these, you know, these really impressive Mark series, which I, you know, I'm sure we'll get a chance to dig into in the next little while as they launched in March. Um, But while they're at the meeting, the other thing the guy pulled out of his briefcase is this watch called the Instinct. Oh, yeah. And it's there... I know I've talked about the Phoenix several times before on the show. Yeah. But this is a third of the price of a Phoenix, or maybe half the price of a Phoenix. It's 300 bucks. Yeah. And the basic idea is you're getting a tough GPS watch. So I would say it's their direct competitor to something like the GPS enabled Casio, Rangeman, that sort of thing, or the fancier stuff from Suunto.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	But again, it's $300. It's like it has a connected charger, so you plug it in to charge it. The battery life seems to last a very long time. I've been using it quite a bit. It does all the smartwatch stuff if you want it to, it'll send you your messages, it'll do all that kind of stuff where you can just disable that. It obviously does all the fitness tracking as well. It basically is the same feature set as a Phoenix, but it's a black and white screen. Oh, which, which I kind of like, like, yeah, we couldn't care less. It's super easy to read. It's really bright. It has a great backlight. It's, um, extra rugged. So it's, it's, it's has a military standard for, um, shock resistance, water resistance, and, uh, thermal resistance. Yeah. So it's really tough. It has the three-axis compass, altimeter, barometer, and the GPS system. Yeah. It has the actually functional, always-on heart rate monitor, which is pretty cool for fitness. And then it has all the other things that I've talked about in past episodes as far as these activity-specific programs for hiking or swimming or running.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	I'm now set up you know, with an actual home in Toronto, and I'm right near a place called High Park, which is kind of like a prospect park or a central park, but for the west side of Toronto. And so I've started running again, and this is what I'm gonna use to get kind of back down to the time that I like to have for a five and a 10K. And so, so far, I'm like, I'm seriously impressed by what, by being able to get the Phoenix, so many of the Phoenix sort of functionalities into a watch at $300 that's in this kind of like super lightweight and rugged case. It's on a really nice rubber strap. It comes in like six colors from black and kind of white to like this reddish orange, this bright yellowy orange, this kind of tealy blue, and then this kind of like dark watery blue. I got to say, this is just a killer, killer piece. Like especially when, you know, you and I like to talk about these sorts of smart watches, these Garmin stuff or the Suntos or even some Casio G-Shock stuff as like, a tool watch for specific activity. Right. So like you and I may not wear an instinct every day, like they are designed to be worn as your everyday watch. Yeah, they don't cost that much more than a decent g shock. And the battery life is like two weeks if it's in just a normal mode, and then you get like 16 hours of GPS activity in there as well. Yeah, like you and I aren't going to wear one of these as our everyday watch. Like we love mechanical watches, and that's the name of the game. But if I'm going for a run, if I'm going for a hike, if I'm gonna go for a swim, if I want to... I've been using... It has a very quickly programmable countdown timer, which I know my phone does as well, but it's nice to have it right on my wrist. Yeah. I find it really handy just to have it on when I'm at home because I can put my phone down, it will buzz me if my phone buzzes or tell me if I get a call. but otherwise I can do a bunch of other things and just kind of manage a countdown timer or other stuff as I'm doing laundry or, or, you know, taking care of my kids or like whatever, whatever the day's tasks are. Yeah. So it's a really, I find it to be like, it's been the watch I've been wearing at home. It's been the watch I've been wearing when I'm running the, the running thing is really nice. Cause now I'm, I'm, I'm kind of deep deconditioned. It's been a few months since I've been running frequently. And so now I'm getting back into it and it's really handy to have that kind of detail to know like, Oh, I'm, five seconds a kilometer slower than I want to be or 20 seconds slower, a minute slower, whatever it is. Like, uh, I, I dig it. And, and, you know, uh, it's, it's lighter, it feels better on wrist than my experience with the Phoenix. It's not that much smaller. I mean, these are kind of still very large watches. It's 45 by 45 millimeters and it's a 15.3 thick. So it's perfectly wearable, especially as a lightweight sports watch is it only weighs with the strap, 52 grams.
Jason Stacey	Hmm. Yeah, I have trouble, my conundrum with this type of watch is I really like the functionality. I've loved wearing the Descent, although it is very big. Yeah. But it's very full-featured. The idea of having it as sort of a sports-specific tool watch, so I used it quite a bit cross-country skiing this year, which was sort of novel because, you know, I mean, using the GPS and the heart rate monitor, I mean, it's really cool. It has all the, you know, I could use it for open water swimming this summer. So it is that plus it does all of these notifications, you know, uh, linked with the smartphone and that sort of thing. But it is sports specific and I do wear it that way. But yet when it's sitting on my desk at home, it is beeping to tell me I have a new Slack message from you or an email or something. And I'm like, I sh this is the kind of watch that has so many functions. I should be wearing it all the time, but I don't want to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and so the idea of like, My Citizen Aqualand from the 80s was like, that's such a classic sort of sport-specific tool watch. Like, I don't feel bad not wearing that if I'm not diving. Because it's got a depth sensor and all those kind of features, but like, day-to-day, it's like, okay, it's a cool watch, but I don't mind leaving it behind. But, you know, like the Phoenix is, sorry, not the Phoenix, but the Descent is so full-featured that it almost seems a shame to not wear it, or to only wear it, you know, as a dive computer or as a running watch. Whereas it seems like the Instinct maybe just on the basis
Jason Heaton	If I'm doing laundry and I throw my hand into the dryer and hit the watch, it's not gonna matter at all. And these sorts of things, like I can't bang it on a door jam, chasing one of the kids around, it's just kind of a really good digital watch. And if you wear a digital watch day to day, go to the store and check one of these out. Go to REI or wherever they got them. Obviously, I'll throw them in the show notes. Right. They sent me like they sent you the dissent. You know, they send these out for loans so people can kind of preview them. I'm sold. This one's kind of like a grayish white one. So it's a pretty inoffensive kind of storm troopery vibe. I really like the one they had at Miami wasn't quite out yet is this yellow orange. Yeah. Let's see what they call it. Sunburst.
Jason Stacey	Oh, nice.
Jason Heaton	In that color. It's like it's super fun. It's like that old vector that you had or have. And, uh, and like the displays really crisp, it gives you a nice battery indication, like sunrise, sunset. I really like for walks. I like to know when the sun's gonna be setting and that's when I have the camera out, that sort of thing. Yeah. And, uh, and then of course you get like at your active heart rate, you can click a few buttons and put it into all sorts of different modes. If you're going to switch over to a run, it grabs the satellite quickly and goes. Yeah. And, uh, it doesn't weigh anything. And then being able to glance down on my wrist when I'm running and know that like, Oh, my heart rate's 180. I should probably slow down. I'm running a little bit too hard. Yeah. I've lost some of my edge that way. And then it does the recovery notice and all those sorts of things.
Jason Stacey	It's funny, this is our Basel episode and I'm kind of stoked about getting an Instinct now. It's like, this is the most exciting watch.
Jason Heaton	I'm genuinely impressed by it. I genuinely believe that anyone who's really into mechanical watches still can always, especially if you lead an active lifestyle, which is kind of a TGN tie-in. anyone, you could have a great collection like you or I, I'm very fortunate to have some really fantastic mechanical watches. Yeah, there's still a time and a place to have something like this. And it could even be only for when you're running. Sure. And maybe then you would just buy a Garmin for runner or something very specific to running. But I think that like when you when you take all the features and you want to have a watch that maybe could work really well for travel because it updates its time zone when you land places like by GPS, and I'm just like at 300 bucks, I think this is an impressive thing that feels really nice on wrist. It feels like a quality product. And it gives all these features that I was used to seeing in a watch that was more like 800 bucks.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. So good on Garmin with that one. And I haven't seen the Descent in person, but I'm excited to hear how it goes in Bonaire. It should be a great watch as well.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. Yeah. And Garmin was at Baselworld. They weren't there the day I went in to kind of peek at their booth. They were over in the hotel, so not in the main hall.
Jason Heaton	Oh, OK, cool.
Jason Stacey	They're kind of upping their game. The Mark was kind of an interesting line. I'm not sure how well it'll do, but with some of these offerings, they're making a push.
Jason Heaton	Yeah, I mean, they told me in the meeting that, what do you think from them, what do you think their most successful model is? I would assume the Phoenix. Yeah, see, I wouldn't have assumed that, and that's what it is. Before the Mark, that's their most expensive watch.
Jason Stacey	Oh, sure.
Jason Heaton	So that data exists before the Mark existed? Yeah, that's like no wonder they want to make something like the Instinct that takes a lot of that, a lot of the ability and puts it in a slightly more accessible price point, like the Fenix and the Kronos and all that. You get a better case. You get more accessories and kind of other options. You get other strap options. The Instinct's a little bit more basic from an ecosystem standpoint, but it still ties you into the same app. It still gives you the GPS, which is kind of the key. It's easy to charge.
Jason Stacey	But I think watches like this, I would prefer them cheaper because I don't necessarily want to pay $1,200. I think the Mark is now running $1,500. There's even a $2,500 one. I don't want to pay that for a watch that shows me a GPS screen on my wrist. I'll pay that for an Aorus, whereas I would argue that $1,000 or less, or even what you said, $300 or whatever for the Instinct. To me, that's a garment I can get behind. That's one I would not feel bad leaving on the desk or just wearing if you're backpacking or whatever. That's a good price point.
Jason Heaton	That's great. I'll fill in more as I get more of a chance, but after, say, a couple of weeks with it kind of on and off wrist, I think it's a really awesome kind of digital tool watch.
Jason Stacey	Nice.
Jason Heaton	Well, should we dive into some Basel-specific watches? Yeah. Why don't we just start at the top of your list and then anything that you missed or that you don't have on your list, I'll fill in at the end.
Jason Stacey	Keep it easy. Yeah. I kind of put together my list based on kind of just my favorites. I was kind of just scrolling through my Instagram feed and my photos and like, Hey, what did I like? And, um, you know, kind of in no particular order, I'll just dive in with, with a couple of the Seikos that impressed me or that, that, you know, are worthy of talking about. And I think, uh, before we get into the, um, kind of their big one that I think people probably know about the 1970 diver reissue. Right. The one that sort of surprised me was the Arnie quote-unquote Arnie reissue. So this is the SNJ025 shrouded analog digital dive watch that was made famous by Schwarzenegger in a few of his movies like Predator and Commando and some other stuff. And here's a watch that I never really cared about the original. I mean, I knew about it and it was sort of quirky and neat, but I've always been more of an Aqualand kind of citizen guy when it comes to that type of watch. But seeing this in person, you know, hats off to Seiko for re-releasing such a weird sort of quirky watch. And I think it was a bit of a follow-on to their, they did like a digital tuna sort of thing last year. I'm not sure what it was called, which- That was a cool watch too. Was a full digital display, but then it had a bezel and But this is a full-on Arnie reissue. I mean, it looks just like the original. Yeah. I think the size is slightly larger, but it's still a fairly flat watch, so it's wearable. $525. Yep. So affordable. And I think the biggest difference between this and the original is it's solar this time, so no battery change required. It's got a six-month power reserve once it's fully charged. And, you know, 200-meter water resistant. It's got screw-down pushers and crown. You know, great typical sort of Seiko strap. You know, I quite liked that watch. I mean, it's quirky enough, and you know, Seiko isn't heavy into their kind of digital stuff like they used to be, and it was kind of fun to see.
Jason Heaton	Absolutely. The bummer for me is I didn't get to go to the Seiko meeting. Oh, yeah. But this is the one that when I went over all of their press releases, I stopped, I looked at it, I was like, that's like a new Arnie. Yeah. And I immediately emailed them. I was like, look, whenever you have a press sample, like it's probably the summer or something like that, but whenever you got it, send it. I want to, I want to check this out. I love, I love a good analog digital watch.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	Uh, you know, big aerospace fan and this is kind of their interpretation of the same sort of functionality. And, uh, and I, I kind of dig its connection back to some of those funny movies from the late eighties, those kind of classic, uh, machismo action sort of films.
Jason Stacey	So, yeah. And then I think the other one that I was going to mention also has a movie tie-in. The quote-unquote Willard, as I like to call it. Captain Willard, you and I are big Apocalypse Now fans. This is their reissue of the 6105, they're calling it the 1970 Diver reissue. So it's the SLA-033 is their alphanumeric code that Seiko uses for this. you know, dead ringer for the 6105, which is a watch that I've always loved. It's a little bulbous. The strap always has looked a little bit narrow for the rest of the case, but I think that's part of its charm. It's sort of what people like about it. But they really upped it technically and sort of finish-wise. It's got the Zaratsu polishing on the case, which is very much a trickle-down from Grand Seiko. It has, I think it's the 8L35 movement, so that's Also sort of a trickle down from Grand Seiko, so the way I've heard that movement described is it's just a less finished and tweaked Grand Seiko movement, which has been used for years in the Marine Master 300 and a few other watches. So, you know, high-end movement, great case finishing. It's got a sapphire crystal, which is a step up from kind of typical Seiko dive watches. I don't remember the price exactly, but it's over $4,000. I think that was the one thing that people were a little bit tweaked about. They thought, you know, it's a little bit much for a Seiko dive watch. But personally, I wouldn't have, if I had that money and was, you know, looking for a new dive watch, I don't think so. I think it'll sell. And I would, I would happily pay that for this watch. I think it was fantastic.
Jason Heaton	People complained about the price of the SLA 017 two years ago and they disappeared and they're still expensive. Yeah. I think that this is cool because you can have the old one. You can have ones that look very similar to the old one that don't cost a ton of money, or you can have this one.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	Like the Seiko Design Aesthetic and Dive Watches is available at any price range you can imagine. So I totally understand why if they're going to produce a limited edition, especially after they gave us things like the Turtle. Right. If they're going to produce a limited edition, that's in reference to something that's right from their, from, you know, not only within the watch enthusiast space, but within the mind share of like, watches and movies and early Seiko and their role in the war, go for it. And they went for it. The big movement, the big case, the sapphire crystal, the great dial. Yeah, it's expensive. It's a really cool thing from a brand that will happily sell you a really cool thing for 400 bucks or 200 bucks.
Jason Stacey	I love what you just said about you can get any of the Seiko dive watch aesthetics for any number of prices and You know, after kind of seeing this watch, I came home and I haven't worn my SRP 777 Turtle for many, many months. And I, you know, I was kind of into that vibe and I pulled mine out and I put it on. I was like, I remembered what a great watch that was or what it is.
Jason Heaton	It's an amazing watch.
Jason Stacey	And, uh, you know, you can get a, you can get a, um, a tuna can in almost any price point from solar to quartz to automatic. You can get, you know, well now the SLA 017 is gone, but, um, you know, you could get that, you can get this one, you can get a Turtle.
Jason Heaton	SKX, two different sizes, you get a 13, you can get the 11, you get the 07, the 09, come on. If they're gonna do something cool, let them do something. I thought it was rad that they decided to go that route. I think that if you consider, is 4,000 bucks a lot for a Seiko, I guess that isn't a Grand Seiko, it has a bunch of Grand Seiko-esque bits. This is like, imagine a really great Alfa Romeo Yeah. I mean, it has an engine that's derived from Ferrari and brakes that are derived from Ferrari and, and, you know, maybe steering feel and tires and wheels. And like, you know, it costs less than a Ferrari. This costs less than, you know, some of these GS divers that are seven or $8,000. Yeah. Uh, I think it's cool. That's what it is. I think they did a nice job with it. I wish I had seen it in person. Uh, I hope, I hope to at a later date.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. So I mean, those were kind of the two standouts from, from Seiko. Um, And if you want, I'll jump into Citizen as well. Yeah, for sure.
Jason Heaton	I was at the Citizen meeting, so I'm more than happy to get into that, because I would have said the same thing you did.
Jason Stacey	When I was at Citizen, it was kind of cool. I think they know I'm a bit of an Aqualand buff, and they had this guy from Citizen Canada who was a bit of a fanatical collector of old Promasters, and he had every generation of Aqualand since the 80s to show. as well as like an old Ultacron from the early 90s. He had them all kind of laid out and he was kind of talking about them and it was really fun to see. And of course this is what they're calling the 30th anniversary of the Promaster series, which is kind of their, like Seiko has the Prospex, this is their kind of pro-level dive watches and hiking watches and that sort of thing. So they've released kind of a three-way collection to commemorate that. They've got the GPS Wave, which is sort of a pilot-y kind of watch with you know, satellite-connected timekeeping, and a bit along the lines of like a Nighthawk or a Skyhawk, but they don't call it that. And then the Altacron, which is their hiking watch with an altimeter and a compass, and then a new version of an Aqualand. And they all have kind of standard editions, and then they have these limited editions. And the Altacron came with kind of a cool bund strap, which was sort of a throwback to the original Altacron, which had a leather bund. And then the Aqualand was reminiscent of the old one in that it had sort of gold accents on the case, which, uh, which was cool. I'm, I'm still, I still lament a bit the fact that the old Aqualands were, were analog digital, which I think is a much kind of smarter design for displaying depth information. This one has this little stubby hand that points to a outer ring of depths, but you know, arguably these watches aren't being used much for, for diving and it still works and it's still cool.
Jason Heaton	So yeah, I had, uh, I had one of the ones that were later than the digital versions. Yeah. You know, with the loom dial, the gold accents on the case, the black ND strap. And it was a chronograph as well that had a depth sensor on the case side.
Jason Stacey	Yeah, I know that one.
Jason Heaton	And I took that, that was one of the first watches I ever specifically took underwater. Snorkeling in Grand Cayman. Oh man. 13, 14 years ago, something like that. Yeah. It was a really cool watch. It was super fun. The depth sensor worked. I mean, the needle moved while I was attempting to dive down. Yeah. This itty bitty orange hand. Right. If that had been digital, it would have been... Yeah, definitely. I agree. At their classic core, it is those kind of aqua and anti-digi is pretty rad.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. I think that was sort of the big... This was the big release for Citizen, this. And then, of course, there's the most accurate watch in the world that Jack wrote up recently, the Calibre 0100, I think it's called. And we certainly don't have to get too deep into that one, because I think Promaster is a little more TGN, but... That was kind of my takeaway from Citizen.
Jason Heaton	Yeah, same. I would agree.
Jason Stacey	Very cool stuff. You know, we can, I guess in the Citizen family, you know, this was a year, I think, that Bulova had a pretty strong showing. And what was interesting was they had, you know, kind of another set of colorful oceanographers, which was neat to see. They had kind of a neat green dial one that I know our friend... Yeah, our friend Cole really liked. Yeah, Cole liked the blue, the greenish one, yeah. But the really funky watch, and I thought, you know, kind of along the lines of where some of your tastes have been over the past year, was this Computron, which was this, you know, flat sort of driver-esque sort of shape watch on a bracelet that was a throwback to something they made in the seventies that had this, you know, LED, you know, red or blue, just very crude sort of digits that, you know, you can only see when you push the button on the side of the case to display the time. Um, just, just funky, you know, and it's like 295 bucks for the steel or the black IP case. Um, and then there's like a gold tone one that's, that's three 95. And I think, I think it, it sort of almost took, took Basel by storm a little bit. I mean, I saw a lot of people just really jonesing for that watch.
Jason Heaton	Yeah, the Computron is cool and weird. You know, it has this kind of vectored sort of case shape. It's very faithful to the original. Yeah. It has a button that turns the screen on. So you press it and it lights up for a few seconds and you press it again to see the seconds. You press it again to get the date. That's all you get. It's like a little segment. It's a little segment screen LED system, just almost like an alarm clock you might've had when you were younger. Yeah. And the all black one they had on a rubber strap. It sits really well on wrist. The other two, the two metal ones, the gold tone and the silver tone with the blue screen, they were both on bracelets, and I bet you they'd be great if you sized the bracelet.
[unintelligible_label]	Sure.
Jason Heaton	But this black one, it looks like something kind of Darth Vader-y. Yes. But also kind of like a... What's the Spirit Bomber, like a B2? It kind of has like a stealthy vibe to it. Right. And, you know, I liked it. I thought it was really cool. I could see the gold one kind of slotting in with the same sort of fascination people had for the gold plated G-Shock last year. Yeah. And, you know, maybe these things find a hold in the street wear kind of world. You know, they have kind of a distinctive style and they don't really look like a watch.
Jason Stacey	They're like anti-smart watches. I mean, they're the perfect antidote to kind of an Apple watch or a, you know, Android watch or something. They're just like, they're so crude that they don't even attempt to have many functions. It's just, they're just neat.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. Neat is a great word. I thought they were cool. And, and, uh, rightfully so, Bulova understands that people are going to like this price point.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And it's accessible. It's fun and fun and accessible. You don't often get, um, and yeah. So, I mean, the, you have that, I'd like you, you mentioned the oceanographers, a few new colors. I like the, the kind of Caribbean blue orange. Yeah. It was pretty rad. That's a great watch for $800. Yeah. From a brand that people know that has a history that's still operating in the U.S. And that's a nicely sized watch. It wears well. It kind of has a Doxa-like charm to it. Right. And it connects right back to the same sort of era, you know, that we all love for Doxa and for dive watches in general, which is pretty great.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. And speaking of Doxa, I mean, I think the elephant in the elephant of Baselworld.
Jason Heaton	Solid gold elephant.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. The Teagraph. Yeah. You know, I think a lot of people have asked opinions. A lot of opinions have been expressed about this. We talked about it on Hodinkee Radio and you wrote it up for Hodinkee. And I, you know, now that it's had time to kind of sink in with me, I still feel as, I guess, uncomfortable about that watch as I did when I first saw it. I was blown away when I saw the press release about, you know, the price. And I think price, you know, $70,000. Let's just set that on the table and let it sit there. But I think price aside, that watch felt a bit tone deaf from kind of what Doxa, how they've built their reputation and fan base and kind of the majority of their dive watch sales for the past 15 years or so have been through this very loyal fan base that has been very passionate about these $2,000 steel, very well-made diving watches that are made in limited numbers, but certainly not only 13 like this one. And I think aesthetically it was off a bit. I think the sub-dials weren't, you know, someone who owns a couple of these, the old ones. Right. I felt like, you know, you certainly don't have to reproduce exactly, but I felt like the dials were a little bit off. And then I didn't care for the bracelet much. And that rubber strap was a really bad fit for the watch. I mean, you know, I don't want to get overly negative here, but I just, I didn't, I didn't like it. I was really disappointed.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. I think disappointed is the right word. I think in a vacuum, If you just take the watch for what it is, I think that it's interesting and the gold on the bracelet is really fun on wrist. But as soon as you start to have the watch exist within the context of being a watch as a product, 70 grand is ridiculous. You could get any number of incredible Pateks for 70 grand. A solid gold Nautilus is less than that.
Jason Stacey	Two Speedmaster Apollo 11s.
Jason Heaton	There you go, two solid gold Speedmasters. So there's the price is part of that. I think what's more upsetting for me is it just seems like a move that's almost tone deaf to what's been great for them. And they kind of ignored what people were waiting for. Just like you said. And yeah, I think that if they made 13 of these and sold them for 70 grand, but also made 600 in steel for, I don't know what, 3,500 bucks, something like that. Right, right. Whatever it would have been for a new Teagraph. Do the 200 Pros, do 200 Sharkys, do 200 Sea Ramblers.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jason Heaton	But instead, they did this, and this is what it is. And I think, OK, I don't get it. I don't see the consideration for their flock in this product. Whereas you look at the last gem that they put out, really, was the sub-300 recreations, of which you and I both own. Those were just like loving fan service. They were romantic and wearable and so fun.
Jason Stacey	Yeah, so it was a shame. I mean, they also released what they were calling kind of the pre-sub, which is a Doxa, they call it the Sub 200. So it's a watch that had sort of, if you can picture like a Seamaster 300 case from the 60s with those sort of twisted lugs and not the usual Doxa sub aesthetic with the asymmetric dial and the no deco bezel, but more of a standard vintage-y looking diver from the early 60s. They released a limited version with an orange hand and some orange writing to commemorate the 130th anniversary of DOXA that they were going to sell for $1,100, so entirely more reasonable. And then a non-limited version or a non-special version for about $900. Hits a good mark. I thought those were nice looking, but I think, you know, in terms of what people like in a Doxa dive watch, not quite as compelling as kind of a classic, you know, sub 300 or 1200. A thin case.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. I know what you mean. I thought they looked pretty good. Yeah. I thought they looked pretty good. I had only a moment with those. Cole was helping me cover that. It was a very quick meeting. So I had a few minutes with the gold watch and we had a few minutes with with that one. So I spent a few minutes with it. And I think at the $900 one especially, just because I'm not really a limited edition guy, unless you have like, if there's a choice just to buy the standard model, that's typically the direction I would go. Because none of these are so limited to have been remarkable in their number, I guess, except for the 13 in the solid gold. But for the 200, I think that's at 900 bucks, that's a cool watch. It says Docs on it. references a specific thing that they've made in the past. I still think that to do the 50th anniversary of the Teagraph and not put out a kind of loving tribute to the Teagraph like you did with, like what you established, like what they established with the Sub 300 50th anniversary is a bit of a missed opportunity. And from a brand that you and I love very dearly. Yeah.
Jason Stacey	And maybe that heightened our sort of disappointment.
Jason Heaton	I think it absolutely. I think this is one of those ones where like, there's a lot of brands that I can talk about from a sort of clinical position. I don't, there's nothing clinical about their appeal. Right. It's this romantic, nostalgic, old, like, like your poster, like your Doxa poster, right? When, when, when diving was safe and sex was dangerous or, I'm sorry, the other way around. Yeah. Yeah, that's now.
Jason Stacey	When sex was safe and doxes were cool.
Jason Heaton	Yeah, exactly. So I mean, yeah, I mean, I think all of this, like, I don't mean any of this to be critical to say that they couldn't come out with a different 50th anniversary later in the year or, or that there's something like specifically like that, like that, like that they've lost their way or something like that. I just don't get this, the choice to make. Right. So few of a solid gold watch at such an insane price when your sweet spot and all your enthusiasts operate between $2,000 and $4,000 and are ravenous for the product. Yeah. Yeah. So.
Jason Stacey	With that, I mean, you know, let's move on to a couple of other sort of TGN darling brands. Absolutely. I'm not sure if you had a chance to visit Zinn.
Jason Heaton	I sure did.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. Zinn was actually my first appointment at Basel. It was on that Wednesday a couple of weeks ago. Always fun to see Tim from CIN. Yeah, Tim's awesome. You know, they're doing a commemoration of their kind of financial district watch, which I was really surprised to learn is like their best-selling family of watches. Me too, I was blown away. So, cool watches, but what I want to skip to is the reissue of the Arctis. So, it's their cold weather resistant or survivable diver chronograph. They're calling it the 206 Arctis II. You know, if you remember, I think he said it hadn't been produced for 11 or 12 years. It was a while, yeah. But the Arctis was, you know, this steel dive chronograph with a kind of a sunburst-y blue dial, and kind of its claim to fame was the use of certain lubricants that would remain flowing, I guess you'd say, down to minus 45 degrees centigrade.
Jason Heaton	Maintain their viscosity, yeah.
Jason Stacey	Right. Down to very low temperatures and also at very high temperatures. And so this was kind of a spitting image of it. I know they've tweaked the push pieces, so they're not screw-in push pieces anymore, but still water resistant to, I think, 300 meters. Again, the low temperature resistance on an H-Link bracelet. I believe the size was changed.
Jason Heaton	I think it was, it's larger now. Yeah. I want to say the original was 41 and now they're at 43. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds right. It's, it's such a faithful tribute to the one and then this size change. Yeah. And should have been 41. Yeah. Right. You know, the, the old one was kind of sweet. No, no. My guess is that that Zen knows stuff that you and I don't know, like 43 is the number that sells.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And they have all this data and they will move more of these watches. For me, as soon as they were like, oh, we redid it and we redid another chronograph, like we made a kind of non-Arctic version of the same one, but they're 43, I instantly think like, I don't know, 43 is just kind of big now. Yeah. I really like 40, 41, and Zinn still... Luckily, Zinn still makes a ton of watches at that size, so it's not a big... And they made a new watch at that price point as well, this green dial 104.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that was cool.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. Isn't that cool. So it is cool. Green dials are definitely a thing. Everybody in, and I would say that Oris is one of the first to kind of swing into that fence a couple of years ago with green dials. And, and now, now is the end has this one Oh four a S T S a G limited edition. And so it's 500 pieces and it's a one Oh four, which is a fantastic watch. It's a, you know, sort of a, a pilot's day date with syringe hands.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And, uh, and a nice bezel, a nice rotating bezel. It's 41 millimeters. It's 11 and a half millimeters thick. And, uh, and I mean, like watch buys has this for 1400 bucks and that's limited to 500 pieces. Like that's pretty good. What's interesting with this. Cause you can buy lots of one Oh fours. Um, is this one has a green dial, but it's metallic green. Yeah. Um, and, and I have photos of it and I'll see if I can get one of the photos ready and I'll throw it in the post. because it is almost like British racing green. It has this high metallic in it that almost has a little bit of orange peel. Right. It's kind of remarkable because you see a lot of flat greens, you see a lot of like military or camo inspired. This is not that.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	This is like gas tank on a Triumph, you know, hood of a Jaguar. It's like a deep forest green with a distinct metallic nature. Yep. And I think it's really rad. Yeah. It's a nice way for them to do a limited edition of a watch that they have of several versions of now. And you still get the fully polished case, which works really well with the piloty aesthetic. And the more I see them, and maybe it's with IWC going so hard on pilot's watches in the last couple of years and really finding a sweet spot at 39 to 40 through 41 millimeters, pilot's watches just have this style that other watches don't have.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	You know, it's kind of that like leather jacket, a bit dusty, super versatile. I think you can wear them with just about anything. You know, we saw that with that incredible IWC that Hodinke designed, you know, that with the 39 millimeter serratanium case and that kind of field watch slash pilot's watch design. And I think, you know, for fourteen hundred bucks, this is from an awesome brand that's like really well in the in the TGM wheelhouse. And you're you know, you're swinging for less money than like the Docks that we talked about previously. Right. And if you're not crazy about the green, they make a handful of other 104s. They make a handful of other watches at 41 for that matter.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. Yeah. The thing I like too about CIN and before we move on is that, you know, you go to the appointment and it's, it's very refreshing because it's very compact offering. They have about four watches that they pull out. They have a lot of information about them. They're very thorough and you can tell they've thought them through. And it's like, you take a few photos, you take your notes and it's like, that's all we have. And it's, it's all great. You know, and you walk away. I love it.
Jason Heaton	I absolutely agree, yeah, that Tim had one tray of watches, he kind of showed them to us one at a time while explaining the story and the thought process behind whatever changes they made and that sort of thing. And I mean, Tim's a sweet guy, they run a great brand, they're a bona fide German watch manufacturer, and some of the best cases in their price point, some great dials, obviously very tech forward in terms of the you know, anti-fogging nature of the watches and using great crystals, sometimes using very fancy metals, the tegimented steel, those sorts of things. And yeah, always nice to see Zinn. And I think even at 43 millimeters with the new 206 and the new Arctis, killer, killer watches.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. You mentioned Aorus, let's jump into them. I mean, I think another strong showing. I mean, I think overall, you know, Basel felt a little bit subdued this year. I mean, I think everybody kind of felt that, but there were some gems. I mean, some brands really came strong this year, and I think Oris, which typically does, had some really good stuff. The two, I guess the three that stood out, you made a note about the third one that I forgot to mention, but first of all, I think the Aquus GMT was one that really struck me. I have gone on record as saying that- That's probably my favorite sport watch of the show. Yeah, and I have not been an Aquas fan. I've mentioned that. I mean, I think some of the special editions with that kind of internal ring for the date.
Jason Heaton	The radial date display is cool. Yeah, I love that. I love those editions. The staghorn had the day one and then the source of life two maybe or something like that. Yeah, I know the one you mean.
Jason Stacey	They're rad. But this one was great. I mean, I think it felt like it had existed for a long time.
Jason Heaton	I so agree when they brought it out and they're like, oh, we have an
Jason Stacey	This is new. I was like, it feels like this is, I loved it. I love the 24 hour bezel. It just works on that watch. Um, and then with such a smart integration of the, the 24 hour scale on the, on the dial makes it incredibly usable.
Jason Heaton	Um, anyone who doesn't, who hasn't seen the pictures I had a write up. It is probably the best sport watch of the show in my opinion. Uh, it's a great price point. It's a, a nice modified Salida movements. It's a Swiss movement. It's not like a local jumping GMT. It's not like the Black Bay GMT or a GMT Master from Rolex. But to your point, Jason, because they put two 24-hour scales on it, one on the dial with the 24-hour hand and one on the bezel, you can use it like a GMT Master to run offset from a 24-hour scale. Yeah. I think it looks great. It's their normal 43-millimeter steel case. You can get it on a bracelet or one of either a navy blue or a black rubber strap. It has a blue dial that's quite iridescent, has a little bit of purple in it.
Jason Stacey	They also offered a leather strap on this too, I think, didn't they?
Jason Heaton	Oh, I didn't see the leather. Okay.
Jason Stacey	Yeah, which I think first time on an Aquus, which looked good.
Jason Heaton	That could be really good. And to your point, I'm like, I find the Aquus is, is, uh, an interesting thing. And there's two other Aquuses that I really like, which is, or Aquus adjacent, the, the Durmeister Talker, which is, uh, you know, uh, not an Aquus proper, I guess, but it's probably from the same, um, sort of genealogy. And then the one that we saw in Colorado with the steel bezel, I thought was quite handsome and wore like more of a dive watch. It kind of felt great. But this one, that 24-hour bezel is so balanced and really suits the overall aesthetic. And then it's got a nice... It's a good ceramic insert. The bezel feels great. I've dove with a couple Aquas before. That's what we had on Clipperton, was the bigger 45-millimeter you know, Hammerhead and then the Durmeister Talker, which is titanium at 43 millimeters.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And both incredible dive watches, super easy to dive with. The Durmeister Talker is just the most charming dive watch because it's so eccentric.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And that's one that I regret not keeping. Yeah. So, I mean, that is what it is. Really, really, really great watches. And to see this GMT, you know, to see a dive GMT that basically makes this like your ideal adventure watch. Perfect. If you're into diving and travel and that sort of thing. Yeah. I loved it. Really, really great stuff from Oris with that, and then we've got a couple others here as well. You liked the bronze steel Diver 65?
Jason Stacey	Not on the bracelet, but interesting to put a center link in bronze on a metal bracelet, which probably is the first time that's been done, I would think, by somebody. On like a leather strap or NATO or something, I think it would look really cool. I think Oris does a nice job with their bi-metal watches in general, where they incorporate bronze.
Jason Heaton	I'd love to see one after it tarnishes. Yes, I would too. Because I don't love two-tone, and we saw a lot of two-tone this year. We'll get to Rolex, I'm sure. Yeah. But I think that one will look really cool when the bronze has all colored out. I agree. I think that could be really rad.
Jason Stacey	And then to me, it's funny because this was a year, I didn't mention it, but Bulova had some kind of neat dress watches, kind of this Joseph Bulova collection. But then I liked a couple of Nomoses, which we can talk about later. But this Oris Pointer Date with the burgundy dial, like, it was kind of a year when I was, like, really drawn to sort of dressier watches. And that Oris Pointer Date that you listed here was superb. I love it.
Jason Heaton	Strong. Really, really good. I mean, the same watch, but with that kind of blue Corbusier dial last year. Yeah. Was one of my favorites of the show. Cause it's like, it's kind of traditional, but it's a little bit weird with the color.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And then this one, and I don't know why I can't, I haven't quite figured out why, but normally I really, and I do really like their leather straps. And in this year, the leather strap for that pointer date is a deer skin. Oh yeah. It's much more ecologically friendly as far as it's a source. Yeah. And a lot of what they're operating in terms of like Oris is changing all of their packaging so that it doesn't have like papers and plastic and that kind of thing in it. Yeah. But that red dial pointer date on the bracelet, you know, that kind of Jubilee five links sort of bracelet is, it's really cool. I mean, like with these press things and these meetings, none of the bracelets are ever sized. Yeah. Right. So you can't get like a perfect idea for how it fits, but you know, you kind of like lay it on and hold the bracelet against your wrist. And it's something about the red and all that steel. And then there's darker tones in the red. That's kind of like a more of a blood color. And then with more light, it's a little bit richer, like a burgundy. I mean, they nailed it. I mean, like, you don't see a lot of red dials and definitely not dark red dials. And to follow up the greens, the blues that we saw last year with something kind of as left field as a red dial and to do it, to execute at such a high level is, you know, very, very Oris. I mean, they're just one of the best meetings that you get at Baselworld.
Jason Stacey	Truly, truly. And I left this comment on, I think it was Time and Tide, posted a little wrist roll of the same watch. and I had left a little comment on it, and I totally think that this watch is, it's such a timeless watch. It has a very throwback quality to it, but it feels like a watch that you'd see on Indiana Jones or something. It has that sort of 40s, 30s, 40s, 50s. Pre-sports watches. Pre-sports watches, but like a watch that people actually did stuff in. You could almost picture a guy flying across the Atlantic or discovering some jungle kingdom or something, you know, like archeologist or something like wearing that watch. It just has a, it has a rustic quality, especially on the deerskin strap or a leather strap. For sure. And with that, I guess they call them like a cathedral hand or something, but it just, it has this perfect mix of, I wouldn't even call it sporty, but just sort of a masculine, um, dressy yet versatile sort of look to it that I've just really bewitching. I love the, that watch.
Jason Heaton	I agree. Killer killer watch. Really great showing for Morris this year. You know, it's a year where. a lot of people are saying, Oh, it's a down year, you know, Rolex and everybody kind of took a, took a year to catch their breath from last year. And I don't really agree. Cause Oris had some great stuff earlier this year when we saw them in Colorado. Yeah. And, uh, and, and they had some great stuff now and, and, you know, we've, we've got some previews of some stuff we should see later in the year. And this is a big year for Oris. So, uh, always nice to see them put the show to good use. And, and certainly they did that this year and that Oris Aquis GMT is killer for sure. Yeah.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. Um, Breitling. I mean, I think, uh, I didn't get to see Breitling.
Jason Heaton	I missed him.
Jason Stacey	Tell me about it. They had, they had some new super oceans, which I've never cared for the super ocean. I love the super ocean heritage. They had some new super oceans in different case sizes with different dial colors, orange. They had like a light blue and like a smaller kind of more women, uh, focused, uh, watch, whatever. So I'm kind of going to glance over the super oceans. And of course the big one for them was the, The Navitimer 806 reissue. It's like a 1959 re-edition that former Hodinkee man and Breitling friend, Louis Westphalen. Yeah, Louis. Had a big hand in the Navitimer. It's arguably one of the best reissue, sort of faithful reissue watches we've seen in the past decade, I would say. They really nailed it, took a lot of pains to even get the the marker color correct. You know, people were saying, oh, it's Fotina and whatever. And Watch Fred, who's their Fred Mendelbaum, who's their kind of historical consultant, chimed in and said, nope, this is the color that the markers were when the watch was made. You know, the size is just right. They even fitted it with a brand new movement. So it's their B09. It's a hand-wound chronograph movement, which, you know, hats off for not sort of taking the easy route and putting an automatic in there to kind of stay true to the original You know, I've long been a Navitimer, Cosmonaut fan. Um, can't say I'll ever own one. I'm just not sure it's fits my lifestyle, but I love that sort of fifties pilot-y sort of real tool look to it. And, uh, and they nailed it with that beaded bezel and the size and everything. So just really, really nice job for them.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. I mean, I've only seen this one, you know, we, we did like an introducing post that went up during Basel. So I didn't get a chance to see this in person. Yeah. It's 41 millimeters. It's not quite 13 millimeters thick. It's a limited edition, has a hand wound in-house chronograph and it's $8,000. Yeah. Like if you're on board for the aesthetic, which I would argue you should be, it's gorgeous. It's also the Breitling, like that's absolutely their... Yeah, totally. ...their design. Yeah. And within that realm, I mean, they're limiting them to 1959. There's a little less than 2,000 of them. I think it's an impressive offering and a really good looking watch.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	They're just very cool.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. So that was the highlight for Breitling. I think another one I'd like to talk about, I want to get your take on this, because it was a bit of a disappointment for me, was the Tag Heuer, the new Octavias. They call them the Isograph collection.
Jason Heaton	Yeah.
Jason Stacey	Do we talk about this on the... I think we did talk about it on Hodinkee Radio a little bit. I was really underwhelmed by this watch. It just felt a little generic. I mean, high quality watch, certainly great. You know, it's got this, what is it, carbon fiber derived balance spring. Yeah, it's got some extra tech in the movement.
Jason Heaton	Some cool tech.
Jason Stacey	But boy, that watch just aesthetically just did very little for me.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. You know, I thought it's better on wrist than in pitchers because it is very nicely made. Like it feels like a really nice, even among a Tag Heuer, it feels like a very nicely made watch. And the bronze has a great weight to it. Yeah. They have... The quality of the dial is very high as well. They have these gradient dials that have a texture to them, which is kind of remarkable. The lume is incredible. I had a chance to mess around with that during my time with shooting the watches. But as like a total product, one, it doesn't feel like an Octavia. It doesn't feel like it's in the same space as an Octavia. But two, even if you disregard or for the moment ignore the Octavia element, it just seems like it was like partly a pilot's watch, partly a dive watch, but then didn't want to really commit to being either. Right. Yeah. If they want to expand the line, you know, something like this product could be refined into a very interesting offering. Yeah. But from the get go, it's not something I fully understand.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. It kind of felt like, do you remember the Navitimer 8 when Breitling came out with that, the time only one, which I think is a better executed watch visually. Right. But the Octavia, this Octavia feels a little bit like, like it was derived from a sort of a marketing study or something. Like we need a watch at a certain price point that's sort of a general sports watch and we'll put our kind of our iconic name on it rather than following up what they did with the, that Octavia reissue, you know, the chronograph with the 12 hour bezel. Like what a beautiful watch that was. And this just feels like a bit of a letdown in that name. They should have just named it something else and I probably would have been happier.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. Even if it was just the Tag Heuer Isograph or... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess I have less of an allegiance to the idea of an Octavia. I'm not like a Hoyer collector or that sort of thing. But I do understand the point. And then beyond that, the other thing that struck me is how much it feels like a Breitling from about five to ten years ago. Just on wrist, like the smaller Super Oceans, the Colt, Yes, you're right. The steel fish, the... Very much, yeah. It fell right in there as far as having the big kind of numerals with the sort of shadow on them and the big hands and kind of a... Totally. A punchy sort of dial. And I don't mean any of this as a dig, just that it seems like if you made another generation, but it says Tag Heuer on it. Yeah. It's an interesting thing. It'll be interesting to see how well it sells and if we start to see them around. Yeah. But certainly well-made. All of the various details are great. The bezel's lovely. And like I said, things like the lume, it is a solid sports watch. I think it could look really cool, the bronze one, again, with some time on it. Yeah. Could be pretty neat, but it is a weird... A lot of Hoyer aficionados don't really get the Octavia time only with a date sort of thing in a dive watch as well. So... It is what it is. And then other than that, they had like a golf version of their connected watch. So I think, you know, we're not playing any golf, you and I. Right, right. Never say never. Yeah. I mean, give us time. I mean, you know, give us time at this phase.
Jason Stacey	Let's talk about Tudor. Yeah, for sure. You know, the big one everybody talked about was the Black Bay P-01. Yep. Now that we're a few weeks out, how's it sitting in your brain?
Jason Heaton	Oh, yeah. I mean, like I've feel exactly the same way as I did with it at Basel, which is like, I didn't understand it when I saw pictures of it. I didn't understand their explanation of it when I saw photos of it. I didn't understand the mechanism of the claw that kind of maintains the bezel integrity. I didn't understand, it looked like it was like 60 millimeters lug to lug, like it would be unwearable on my wrist. And then I saw it in person and it has this weird charm. It feels like a prototype. It feels like you're buying a prototype. Like it's an idea that didn't need to exist, this kind of claw system, but it's well-implemented, it's beautifully made. You know, I don't think this is going to be competition for any other Black Bay or Apelagos or whatever. I think this is just Tudor saying like, hey, look at this cool thing that deep Tudor nerds were all about the backstory. Yeah. And we're going to make it. And I guess I was surprised that it wasn't like limited in any way because it is kind of like an esoteric offering. Right. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. It's way better on wrist than I expected. It has this like hinged lug system that fits into the claw system. And then as soon as the hinge part is finished, it transitions into a leather lined rubber strap. So there's no stiffness anywhere in the strap. So you put it on, it feels like a watch that has already broken into your wrist.
Jason Stacey	Sure.
Jason Heaton	So yeah, lug to lug is long. I didn't measure it, but it's not unwearable by any stretch. You can with one hand, open and close that little claw system and turn the bezel. I would say two things to wrap up my side of the... And I'd love to hear what you think of it. It was much better on wrist than I expected. Please read Cole's hands-on, which we will link. It goes into the backstory and the reference to the actual prototype. And I think it makes the product a little bit more transparent. And it goes from being this thing that like, Why would someone make this and why is it a Black Bay? To being like, oh, this is the pro prof of the Black Bay, or it's not meant to be the core of the product lineup. Yeah. And yeah, I think that's... Oh, and I'll add a third thing. I really hope that they take that bezel and put it on a Black Bay.
[unintelligible_label]	Oh, yeah, right.
Jason Heaton	Just give me a Black Bay steel... I mean, hey, let's swing for the fences if we're wishing, maybe someone at Tudor's listening. I know one gentleman at Tudor's probably listening. I would love a Black Bay 58 in full steel with a steel 12-hour bezel.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah, that'd be cool.
Jason Heaton	I think everybody would like that. I mean, they're already hard enough to find the normal, the first Black Bay 58, but maybe somewhere down the road that happens. You know, a kind of travel-friendly Black Bay in the 58 case would be pretty rad. So what did you think of the P01? You had a chance to check it out?
Jason Stacey	Yeah, I mean, you know, First of all, my personal opinion of the watch was, I actually was a little confused when I saw the photos. Like you, it didn't sit well with me from the photos. And then when I tried it on, I was like, yep, this works on the wrist. I still can't say I care for it much. But I think in general, what I found humorous and then sort of a little frustrating was the incredible passion that people have when it comes to these watches, that they have this sort of backlash of vitriol for, um, for, you know, a watch that, you know, you don't have to like any of these watches. I mean, there's a, there loads of watches that I didn't care for or that people won't like. And to kind of just dismiss it as a Seiko SKX, which is ludicrous, just because it has a four o'clock crown and makes it nowhere close to to a Seiko, and that's not a dig at Seiko, it's just it doesn't look anything like a Seiko other than that. And I guess for me it wasn't even so much the claw mechanism or the case shape. I don't care for, and I can't remember what other examples I've seen of this, but watches that have that sort of hinged strap attachment mechanism. I've never cared for that style of strap attachment. I'm much more of a classicist, I guess, when it comes to, you know, attaching a strap to a watch. I kind of like just traditional, you know, whether it's a C case, you know, sort of a Doxa case or a standard sort of oyster case watch. I just sort of liked the strap to be up close to the dial and the case itself. So that was probably my biggest reaction to it was I didn't care for the way the strap attached. It felt a little limiting and a little bit, you lose a lot of the strap under the bottom of your wrist because from the top it's so much steel that's visible.
Jason Heaton	Yeah, you basically don't even see the strap.
Jason Stacey	Also, that dial didn't... I think it kind of got lost in all the steel, but that sort of matte dial with those sort of flat, sort of painted markers, I felt like it felt a little bit... I think when you look at a standard Black Bay, it just has a richness to it, whether it's the color or the size of the markers, and I felt like the dial got a little bit lost amidst all of what was going on around it. So, ironically, you know, it's the strap and the dial that were kind of my least favorite parts of this watch. The actual piece de resistance of it, this locking bezel mechanism, was the least offensive to me. I thought that was quite innovative and interesting, and hats off to Tudor for trying this stuff. I mean, while my preference would be, you know, hey, let's come out with, like we've argued for the past few years, like a GMT Pelagos or something. Oh, yeah, please. Yeah, please, you know. Please. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'd love to see them put their efforts into kind of refining the Pelagos a little bit. But, you know, they can do what they want, and if people like it, it'll sell, and if not, it'll just disappear and become one of those rare birds that collectors will be kicking themselves in 20 years for not buying one.
Jason Heaton	Yeah, and I mean, last year they arguably destroyed the whole game with consumer-friendly product between the BBGMT and the BB58. So I think this year, this year, and we can talk about a couple of the other things that they came out with, but I mean, if they want to make the PO and the big one this year, which was going to be, you know, kind of a weird year for the fair. So maybe it was time just to get some publicity for making a watch. That's noteworthy. Yeah. Um, even if it's not like a, going to be some huge mass market success, like, like a BB 58 or, or a BB GMT, uh, then, then so be it. I mean, the, the other thing I saw that I liked, and, and this is, you know, I've already said on the show that I don't like two-tone that, um, That two-tone Black Bay Crono on a leather strap? Yeah. Get the bracelet. The bracelet's too much two-tone for me. It's too much tuna fish, as they'd say. But that's too much two-tone with the bracelet. And just on a standard leather strap, or I imagine on a NATO, it's really cool. It was cool. It's like super 70s. I thought of you immediately when I saw it on the bun.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	I was like, Oh, they made, they made like a, a heat and dress chrono.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. That's one two-tone I would wear. It was beautiful. Isn't it cool? Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was my tutor of the year. I mean, for this year.
Jason Heaton	I think so.
Jason Stacey	Just in terms of PO1 I got all the talking points, but the two-tone chrono was fantastic.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. I totally agree. And, and, and where I think it, where I think it kind of hits the zone is that the black dial with the gold sub dials. Yeah. Really. And so you actually get like a proper, you know, gold pushers and crown, and then the, the bezel and then, you know, all of the sort of scales and everything are gold. The hands are outlined in a gold tone. And then you get these kinds of gold sub dials and on a strap, I think it just sings. I think it's cool. It has this like, like, it kind of feels like something you could sit next to one of your T graphs.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And they'd be like, they're from the same sort of era.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	I like it.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	I shouldn't like it. Cause I'm not crazy about, uh, you know, steel and gold. two-tone and it's not, I doubt we're going to see a, I mean, we could have said this about the Doxa too, but I doubt we'll see a solid gold Tudor chronograph or otherwise a solid gold Tudor of any type, you know, from that sort of scenario. But, you know, it's 6,800 bucks. So again, your in-house Breitling based chronograph movement. I think this design is weird, but good. The BB chronograph, you know, it's not. It's getting better. Every time I see it, it gets better. Yeah. Not so much of a dive watch, it's more of a chronograph, but it has some elements of dive watch. And I think that they blend those two things in a compelling way that makes it kind of interesting.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And different from the heritage chronograph and those. And yeah, this one on the right strap, I think would be so stylish and fun and kind of just charming. Being that two tones always kind of an outlier between whatever's really popular, whether it's solid or Right. Or steel. And I think, yeah, I think it's kind of fun. You know, we saw, like I said, a handful of Two-Tone this year, and this is one of the entries. And I would say it's probably the most fun of the Two-Tone stuff that I saw.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. And speaking of that, let's look at the other elephant in the room for this year, which was that Two-Tone Sea-Dweller. TTSD. The TTSD. Yeah.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. I like it. I don't get it, but I like it.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't even know what to say about that watch. When the Sea-Dweller 4,000 disappeared and they came out with the 43mm Sea-Dweller with the Cyclops. I was prepared to not like it. I think I said I didn't like it. Then I wore it. I kind of liked it. I kind of understood the reason. You know, like, upsized. They've got to fill kind of a size niche. You know, you can't have something so similar to the Submariner, et cetera, et cetera. Now, two-tones, like, well, if you're going to go that far, why not? I mean, again, you know, people get very passionate with their response. Commercial divers are the guys that This watch was originally targeted for and, and they're well-known to make a lot of money and like their watches. So I wouldn't be surprised if, uh, you know, you do get some, some, uh, saturation dive guys in the North sea making, you know, pulling down lots of, lots of dough and coming home and buying one of these. I mean, what a, what a cool piece.
Jason Heaton	I think it's cool. I think, I think there, I think it's almost that like, obviously this is the post dive era. The dive watch of dive watches now going with gold.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	You know what I mean? Like this is, this is the, you look at the lineage of the, of the sea dweller as something created of diving. Yeah. At its most intense. Yeah. And then move to a world where nobody needs it anymore.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And now you have one that's two-tone.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. So I think where I would disagree is if they start making an Explorer 2 in two-tone. Agreed. I could even see an Explorer in two-tone before I could see an Explorer 2. But the sea dweller? You know, it's a natural progression. I mean, we've seen plenty of Submariners in two-tone and solid gold. Absolutely.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. I don't think it's that strange. It's kind of fun on wrist. It's very heavy, obviously. I mean, the normal one I found to be quite heavy. I think it's one of those ones where, like I complained earlier, the bracelets are never the right size. Yeah. If I'm lucky enough to know someone who picks one up and I get to try it on sized, that might be even more fun. What I did do today, and it's odd that it's today because I've written about the watch on three separate occasions. Only just today, for the first time, did I try on the new GMT Master Pepsi on the Jubilee sized. Oh. So yeah, I have the same wrist size as Henry, our COO, and he has the Jubilee Pepsi. And I tried it on today and yeah, sized is so sweet. You see the watch at Basel, it's on a huge bracelet. I borrowed it for a magazine shoot in LA and it was on a smaller size. Yeah. But it doesn't have the ability to live adjust. that buckle. Oh, sure. So I couldn't quite get it. I got it close, but it was still like I could almost get it to spin freely around my wrist. And then, yeah, with Anne-Marie's, I was able to try it sized and I get it. I mean, if you can get your name on a wait list and pay list for that watch, that is a great watch. And that bracelet is, for my money, much better than the Oyster on wrist. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It sits so close to the skin. It feels comfortable. It makes the watch feel just right.
Jason Stacey	Yeah, all those short little links that sort of just drape.
Jason Heaton	Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have now digressed. Other Rolex, I mean, speaking of the GMT, what did you think of the Meteorite?
Jason Stacey	Cool.
Jason Heaton	Yeah, cool, definitely.
Jason Stacey	From a distance, up close, you know, yeah, I mean, under a loop, Meteorite's cool. Meteorite's been arguably, I don't want to say overplayed. I mean, that's a real exaggeration. Lots of brands have done it. Lots of brands have done it. But cool to see a light dial on GMT against that bezel, I thought was neat. Agreed.
Jason Heaton	I thought it on wrist really cool. I think that if you wanted a GMT that was a flex, but wasn't like Everose or the solid yellow gold or something like that, then I think, I think this is an interesting way of spicing up the white gold with a little bit of Rolex weirdness. Cause Rolex does their core models really well, but then we have rainbows and we have the cheetah or the leopard ones and you have, you know, the ones that are all sapphires and you have ones that are all pave and all these other ones. I, you know, I think that, it's interesting for them to pull from one of these kind of extraneous, more jewelry-ish aspects of Rolex and drop it into a core model that's been getting a lot of popularity lately, which is, you know, the Pepsi.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. And it's funny. Rolex is such a kind of conservative brand when it comes to their development. And then they pop out these crazy rainbows and meteorites and leopards and it's like, um, just sort of out of left field. Um, But yeah, I liked that one. I'm getting close to the end of my list, but one that I think was actually my, I'm going to say this, favorite watch of Baselworld was the Zodiac Aerospace GMT.
Jason Heaton	You're not alone. There were definitely other people here at Hodinkee that felt that way.
Jason Stacey	I regret actually not putting money down on that watch. I want the orange and seafoam. It was such a cool watch. It was, again, my first day of the show. I had an appointment with them, and I had seen the press release before that, and then I saw it. And I've long loved the old aerospace GMCs. Absolutely. The old Seawolves and the old aerospaces, they were just too small. I mean, to pick up a vintage one, they were always 35 millimeters, which is pretty tiny nowadays. And this is 40 millimeters, it's got a 2893 movement in it, and just great use of color. Very limited. Yeah, 182 pieces in each colorway. You know, I could have picked up, I guess, the other colorway, which is sort of a muted green with the gray. Nice, but that orange and seafoam is just like, especially this time of year, coming out of a long winter, it's like, oh, I want to take that watch to Bonaire and just set it and wear it.
Jason Heaton	I think it looks great. My experience with the modern Zodiac stuff is that it's very high quality. I think that it has a charm that I would attribute to something like a Doxa, but it's less money. Yeah. I think that they make some really nice stuff. I wish this watch was not this... I wish the standard version was not limited at all. Yeah. So that they would cycle through the market and everyone could get a chance to see how sweet they are. The Super Seawolf 53 that I borrowed from them for a while, I actually have to send that back, but the Super Seawolf 53 that I borrowed from them and wrote a hands-on for was a great watch. Yeah. With great color and it wore really well. The bracelet was nice. It was just kind of hit all the points that you would want from a watch at that price point or even more. And I think you're definitely not alone on the general Hodinkee field for finding this to be the best watch of the show. My bummer is I didn't get to see it in person.
Jason Stacey	Oh yeah. Well, I think Cole might've ordered one, so maybe he'll show up with one one day.
Jason Heaton	I definitely think he's trying, he's attempting to get one in for review.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think moving on from, from Zodiac, uh, another brand that I always enjoy visiting, although I can't say they're always at my wheelhouse, but, um, was Nomos. Fun people, cool designs, maybe a little too architectural for my sort of lifestyle, but I really liked the tangente sport, which I was a little confused because it looks very much like the old Ahoy with the crown guards on like the tangente case. Yep. But of course, you know, what really was the high point for me on this watch was that cool bracelet. It's sort of, I don't even know how to describe it, but it's very drapey and very nomos, you know, just Um, very flat links, almost like a, almost like a serpent bracelet or something. Just wraps around the wrist.
Jason Heaton	Unfortunately, I was able to make that meeting, so I didn't get to see that bracelet in person. Yeah. But the construction looks incredible. The watch looks really cool. Yeah. Um, I, I, I mean the, I, I liked the Ahoy, especially in, and also in the smaller versions. Yeah. Uh, so for them, for them to go this way with the additional water resistance and.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. I mean, 42 is a little big, uh, the Tangente has always been kind of long lug to lug. Um, so 42 gets, pushes it a little bit, worked fine on my wrist. Um, and with that bracelet, it sort of ends up kind of dropping off the sides of your wrist a little bit. But, um, the overall kind of feel of it is very Nomos. I mean, you know that if they're going to do a bracelet, they're going to do a great job of it. And, uh, this, and then I think they did like that, uh, campus club sport with kind of a similar drapey steel bracelet. Um, and I think both, both were equally well received. you know, kind of the most sporty of the Nomos line and you know, always, always good quality stuff. Very, very dramatic, very minimalist Bauhaus. So yeah, that was a fun one. And then I had a chance to wander over one morning and visit with the guys from Manta. You know, they've, they've kind of been turning out a pretty steady stream of good quality, well-priced stuff that are kind of, kind of, uh, I would say near the top of the game in terms of micro brands, uh, great quality and what they, the attention they pay to the details. And this year they're offering was the Atlas. So they took what they've done with the SkyQuest, which was their GMT with the rotating bezel. And they basically got rid of the bezel and offered some, some new dial colors. There's kind of this, this really pretty sort of sunburst, uh, gray sort of slate gray dial. Um, with a GMT hand, and it sort of is a mix between their Triumph Field Watch and their SkyQuest GMT. Exactly. And worked really well. Good size.
Jason Heaton	38.5 millimeters, 150 meters, water resistant, uses a Salida movement. Yeah. Because they were able to source more of those movements more readily. It's around, let's call it $1,700. It's a little bit less if you pre-order it.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	Bracelet. black rubber or a handful of different leather straps. I tried the bracelet and the leather, all of them really, really nice.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	The silver dial with the blue accents is like really, really good on wrist. Yeah. This is a really solid watch for the money. Like we were talking about with Zodiac. Yeah. But I actually think like their attention to detail and the amount of time that they can spend on one model, it feels like the finishing is at a higher level than you'd expect for the money.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah, I agree.
Jason Heaton	I think that there's elements of something like this that would even outpace, say, the finishing on something like a Doxa, but that could also be because the Manta stuff is a little bit more... What's the right word? Ornate. Yeah. They have applied markers, they have more polishing, there's finer brushing. Right. Their use of colors is very considered. I thought the blue dial with the red accents, they call it Manta Blue. Yeah. It's 38 and a half millimeters, a really solid sport watch. It sits really well on wrist. I like the bracelet quite a bit. I think they've made yet again, like another compelling product. And then finally, did you get a chance to try the updated bezel on the Ocean King? So they have an Ocean King with no date now.
Jason Stacey	Oh, I did see the no date, but I didn't notice the bezel. What's different about it?
Jason Heaton	It feels incredible. There isn't any play. It doesn't feel like it's mounted to a bearing or anything. It feels like you're turning a ratchet. Huh. Like you're turning two gears against each other.
[unintelligible_label]	Oh, yeah.
Jason Heaton	Wow. It feels really good. I mean, they hit a lot of details really, really well. And I think that unless you want to go dive... And I mean, let's face it, you could dive with something like the Atlas. It's 150 meters water resistance. Sure. But if you want something that's your travel watch that's also a little bit on the dressier side, at least give the Atlas a look.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Jason Heaton	I think it's like, it's legible, it's nicely made, the case feels great, you get a bunch of different strap options, and it's under two grand. I like the idea. It's kind of considerably under two grand.
Jason Stacey	I like the idea of GMT watches without a rotating bezel. It adds that little element of functionality and visual interest without the predictability of the 24-hour bezel. And I just like that, it's something new, something different. I agree.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And it has this kind of step The GMT hand is kinda stepped, so it goes all the way to the GMT scale.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	But to get over the markers, it has a little bend in it, which is kinda nice. Yeah. Really solid loom, a nice movement, and a fair price. Right. And you and I have this distinctive love for, say, $500 to $2,500. Yeah. And these guys are, I would say, one of the finer watches in that price point, and they're working to become a bigger brand. Yeah. And I think that something like the Atlas offers kind of an interesting blend of sport watch and dress watch.
Jason Stacey	Right. Uh, which is fun. Yeah. It's funny you mentioned that price point because when I look at my list that we were just talking about, most of them kind of fall in that category. I mean, that's probably no coincidence. That's what you and I tend to gravitate towards.
Jason Heaton	Absolutely.
Jason Stacey	Everything from the, I mean, okay, this is in Arctic is 3,700 and, and you know, the Breitling is up there, but most of them, the ones that I like that I would spend my money on are reasonably priced. I mean, it was a good year for, for those types of watches in that respect.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. And I hope it continues. I hope it continues to be kind of a strong suit, you know, between the Doxes, the Zodiacs, the Halioses, the Montes, the, you know, there's a lot to love. And it's nice when some of it's at Baselworld, which this year it was. And obviously the king of that top end of that price point, or even the middle top end is Oris.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	Right. Killer watches. So lots to see and like there.
Jason Stacey	You had a couple of sort of outliers. I do. Now we'll blow that price ceiling right out of the water here.
Jason Heaton	Absolutely. I've got some weird stuff here. So I got a few that I added on to the end of our list. The first one's not even a watch. People who listened to our episode after SIHH will remember that I really loved the LePay MB&F Medusa, which is a jellyfish-inspired clock. Well, LePay outdid themselves. They made this thing called the TimeFast D8, and I'll be damned if I don't have one of these someday. Someday. Uh, it is so cool and so much fun and so charming and so kind of childish and all of that at the same time. So it's, um, it's a 15 inch, it looks like a little F1 car from the fifties.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	Um, so it's a 15 inch desk clock. The clock is kind of on the side flank of the car. Uh, they're making a total of 600, so that's 106 different colors, all original vintage racing colors. Yeah. Uh, so there's a Italy, a Jaguar, you know, British racing green, there's a Cunningham stripe, white with blue, there's a Shelby blue with white. There's a silver arrow, like a Mercedes-style silver arrow one. It's an eight-day movement. You change the time by turning the steering wheel for the little driver. The helmet, quote-unquote, of the driver, the driver's head in the seat, is actually the escapement in a bubble. Oh, wow. You wind the movement by pulling the car back like a toy car.
[unintelligible_label]	Oh, wow.
Jason Heaton	Putting it on a table and rolling it back, it clicks.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	I had a chance to shoot them. I don't know, you know, probably around the time that this episode goes live, my post will be on Hodinkee.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	I had a chance to shoot them. I went kind of all out on the photography. I did the absolute best I could cause they're gorgeous. Yeah. And, um, they're also like 30 grand. So like maybe someday I'll have one, but, but to see them in person and to shoot them and they're, you know, they're the, it's a steel, uh, chassis with various sorts of, um, nickel and palladium plated elements for the watch parts. Yeah. And then the actual car pieces are aluminum, as they would have been.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And then painted using the same paint. Wow. Wow. And then he even goes down... I hung out with Mr. Nicholas, the guy behind LePay, and he was like, oh, the tires are filled with foam. And I said, well, okay, like Rolls-Royce does that so that some of their cars are quieter, like the Cullinan has foam in its tires, transmits less road noise. And he's like, no, no, if we put air in them or if we made them out of solid rubber, they don't depress under the weight of the car to look like a real car. Wow. So, you know, like where a tire meets a road, it kind of conforms to the road surface. So these have foam in them so that they conform under the weight of this 15 inch clock.
Jason Stacey	Unbelievable.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. I really love, I really love this sort of thing. It really captures the, the, the like completely needless, but entirely interesting part of this world. Yeah. Um, so I mean, uh, I'll have a write up on Hodak either by now or, or shortly after. So keep an eye out for that and, and throw it in the comments. Let me know what you think, but I, I'm obsessed with these things. I don't know how I would pick one, which color. And I love that somebody made these things. And the one last thing that I'll mention, and I tried very hard to get a recording of it, but it was just impossible, is when I was setting up for all the photos, I had five of the six versions, and I had four of the five on the table were actively running, and the escapement, as you'd imagine for a desk clock, is quite loud.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And so it's a lot of ticking, right? It's four separate escapements running And the four of them running at the same time kind of sounded like had the same sort of pop and cadence of like a race car engine idling. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. And it was delightful. I had such a good time. It was probably the best, you know, definitely the best like non-sport watch meeting I had at Basel, but it was just fully charming. And I love these things. You know, I loved the Medusa and now I love the Time Fast, so. These are really cool. They're obviously very expensive, but if you had the means and this is just, it's romantic and kind of fun and whimsical and I like it. Wow. Were they at the MB&F booth or? No, they had their own thing going on. Yeah. And then to follow in the car trend and also in the trend of expensive and also in the trend of not normally the kind of thing I would lean towards, there's a Hublot that I really like. Oh, yeah. Not a sentence that I'm common to saying. It's not a brand that falls well within my wheelhouse, you know, typically quite expensive, typically very hard edged and sort of aggressive and that sort of thing. But they had Ferrari's new in-house design team do their own take on a classic Fusion, which is your standard Hublot essentially these days. Yeah. So what came out, this is the same people that made those SP1 Monza, SP2 Monza, single seater, two seater, those are like the most beautiful thing I've seen in several years. Yeah. And what they came out with is, imagine if you take like a Hublot, kind of Ferrari Hublot dial, and then kind of cross it with one of their chronographs, but a bunch of like, everything's curvy. Yeah. I really like it. They say it's 45 millimeters, and I swear if they told me it was 42, I'd believe them. It wears, because it's dished like a Nicopod, or like one of those Laco Squad divers. It's kind of dished. It sits really well on your wrist. It feels really cool. The strap's really good. It's mid-20s for the titanium. It goes up into the high 30s for the King Gold. And I'm not saying anyone should go and buy one of these. They're all limited edition. All I'm saying is like, sometimes you go into these meetings and you have these preconceived notions of like, I'll shoot this, I'll shoot that, I'll shoot this. And like, I like their, I always liked their kind of big bang chrono that they did last year in 42.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	Because it was nice and wearable. It felt sporty, but it was also, you know, it's expensive and it didn't really break a mold in any way. This wasn't what I was expecting. I saw an image of it and I was like, whoa, what's up with that case?
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	It looks like, yeah, it looks kind of like an echo pod. It's kind of like weird and curvy. And then in person, it was great. I loved it.
Jason Stacey	I think because it's roundier. I mean, Hublot is all about angles.
Jason Heaton	Angles and edges and chamfers.
Jason Stacey	And this doesn't have that, and it's very refreshing. And I would love to see, and I'm sure they won't because it's a very Ferrari-specific one, but I'd love to see this design kind of be carried forward into maybe a simpler, if they even simplified it further, maybe the dial without the prancing horse and maybe a little less skeletonizing. I don't know. I mean, it'll never happen. I'd love to see them kind of carry forward that new look a little bit.
Jason Heaton	If they could take that case and then I would say even like if they say that's 45, I'd love to feel what 43 was from that.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	It would wear like 40 or 38 or something. And yeah, give me one that's not a skeletonized dial maybe. Yeah. I think this is fun. I also like that you leave it to Ferrari and they remove a bunch of the branding.
[unintelligible_label]	Oh yeah, yeah.
Jason Heaton	So it just has the prancing horse at 12, which on a dial that complicated doesn't really seem that ornate. Right. Um, yeah, I like to be surprised by something. I like when, when something that I didn't think I would know or appreciate like a Ferrari, I have a longstanding dislike for most Ferrari watches be, be they Gerard Perregaux, Panerai or Hublot. Yeah. And that's before we get into other brands that only licensed Ferrari's name or that Ferrari, you know, puts their name on a $5 watch and sells it at Ferrari's headquarters for a hundred bucks. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of Ferrari watches out there, but the ones that come from within this big, big names in the Swiss watch industry are, they're usually like, why? Right. Right. This I like. It's cool. Yeah. Yeah. And I could, I could genuinely see somebody with a modern Ferrari with an 812 or a GTC for loose or something like that. Like seeing the connections between the designs and wanting to wear one.
[unintelligible_label]	Sure.
Jason Heaton	Especially if you were deep into the formula one side and maybe that this a 3d matrix or 3d carbon fiber would be interesting to you, that sort of thing. So. Yeah. A neat thing. And like I said, I like to be surprised, especially by a brand like Hublot, which, you know, you have all these conceptions of how they're going to wear and all that sort of thing. Right. And then I think finally, the one that definitely surprised me, because apparently it's been out since January and I didn't see the press release or something, was this Day Batoon DB28GS Grand Blue. Yeah. So this is a Day Batoon dive watch.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	It's water resistant to 100 meters. They swear you can take it diving to the extent that we're like, you would give one to Heaton.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	And he could take it diving somewhere and she's like, yeah. And I was like, all right, cool.
Jason Stacey	All right, I got to Google this thing.
Jason Heaton	It has a couple weird elements. One is it has a powered luminous system. Yeah. That uses mainspring tension.
[unintelligible_label]	Huh.
Jason Heaton	So they explained it as, you know how when you have a bike that has a lamp that comes on when you're moving? Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. They built one of those to run off of the five day power reserve from their movement.
[unintelligible_label]	Wow.
Jason Heaton	So there's a button at the bottom of the case at six that you press and the four, 12, three, six, and nine physically light up.
[unintelligible_label]	Wow.
Jason Heaton	Not that bright, but it looks like electricity is running through them.
[unintelligible_label]	Wow.
Jason Heaton	I'm in a very bright, like a really, really bright sunlit room in the Empyrean. Yeah. Or in the Hyperion. Yeah. I could still see it there. It's bright enough that I get a picture of it, so it's not not bright. I will have a write-up of this eventually, I just haven't gotten to it. Yeah. And then the version that they showed us, they were like, we have one last thing that we're changing about this, and it's we're using a special loom created by Black Badger. And he's doing the work for it. So the minute hand, the hour hand, and I think one or two other elements on the dial will have this special cobalt something or other loom. I'll get these details and I'll put it in the write up. Yeah. But the version I saw was said to be a final version, and then they made this deal with James at Black Badger. We love James, his work's incredible. Yeah. And he's worked with a handful of other watch brands, MB&F and Sarapaneva, et cetera. And so this makes sense. And I think for Dave Attoon, which is a wild company that I love, to be making a big titanium, wild, five-day power reserve dive watch. Wow. With a unidirectional bezel and a self-powered luminous system and special lume from Black Badger. Yeah.
Jason Stacey	That's a pretty cool watch. I'm looking at it. That is wild. I love the handset. That bezel is crazy. Bezel's crazy.
Jason Heaton	It's a really cool thing. It's big and it wears perfectly because of the... Wow. They have that cantilevered lug system. Sure, yeah. So the lugs are sprung and they... The case kind of floats above the 12 o'clock side, right?
Jason Stacey	Am I looking at that right?
Jason Heaton	Well, it's... So the lugs actually mount at three and six, kind of.
[unintelligible_label]	Okay.
Jason Heaton	And then they compress on a spring to literally sit as a frame on your wrist. Wow. So they're independent of the case shape. It's hard to explain. Dabatune's one of the most marvelous, super modern watch manufacturers. They don't make that many watches at all, and they're all difficult to explain and super complicated and beautifully finished, but for them to... They've done other sport watches, but for them to make one like this, I think it's an absolute laugh. I can't wait to get it in for something like you taking it diving or something, some sort of use for it, which would be fun, so... Yeah. Wow. A cool thing. Really, really fun to see that from Dave Attoon. You know, typically what they do is like fairly dressy pieces or, you know, always generally inspired by sort of the cosmos and space and that sort of thing. And with this one, serious dive watch or not, of course, it's not a serious dive watch, but it is. It's a fun thing. Well, it's fun to see.
Jason Stacey	I mean, like you said, with the Sea Dweller, we've moved. It's almost we're in post dive watch era. And so you get that MB&F I can't remember what it was called, but a year or two ago.
Jason Heaton	The Aquapod.
Jason Stacey	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	Right.
Jason Stacey	Yeah, absolutely. And then this. I mean, they're sort of deconstructed or reconstructed dive watches, sort of using the dive watch as sort of a loose inspiration.
Jason Heaton	Yeah, a concept.
Jason Stacey	For a certain form factor. Yeah.
Jason Heaton	It's definitely conceptual. I thought the loom thing was like, it makes you feel like you're five years old playing with that.
Jason Stacey	That's incredible.
Jason Heaton	You can hit it and you can feel, because it's a titanium, it's so light, you can feel the whole watch move a little bit as the spring starts to unwind. Unbelievable. To power it, it's fun. That's a cool thing. Always fun to actually go to Basel and see a few things that kind of are jaw dropping. Yeah. But that basically wraps up my list.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	So I think a pretty fun show, all in all, very strong in terms of sports watches. We've been talking for a very long time at this point. Yeah. Who knows if people are going to listen? I think you've got one final note, so I'm going to cut mine down to one as well. Sure. And do you want to go first?
Jason Stacey	Sure, yeah. This came via a listener of ours, Brent Sutton. And thanks, Brent, for sending this in. I think James and I both appreciated this one. Yeah, it was awesome. It was an article and a video link that that Brent sent that were about the Navy frogmen's role in Apollo 11. And this is something that's long fascinated me. I love looking at old photos of the Apollo missions, particularly kind of the, you know, the space stuff's cool, but you see so much of the moon, the guys on the moon. And I love seeing this stuff before and after, particularly when they splash down and kind of the role that, you know, the aircraft carrier and the helicopters and the frogmen served in the recovery of the capsule and the astronauts. This just hit the mark. It was an article from the Daily Mail. I think it was actually an older article. It was called The Extraordinary Untold Story of Navy SEAL Musclemen Who Brought Apollo 11 Astronauts Home. Some great late 60s rubber wetsuits and oval mask divers with a capsule. You can't get much better than that. You've got an Apollo 11 capsule.
Jason Heaton	Almost could have found Moki in there.
Jason Stacey	Yeah, exactly. Right. And then, and then the, I just watched the video today. I had read the article and then I was like, I got to watch this video. And, uh, you know, not, not high production quality stuff, but it's all great old footage that kind of goes step by step in the recovery of the capsule. Uh, you know, I don't know who shot it from another helicopter, I guess, of the whole recovery. And, uh, you know, after seeing that Apollo 11 documentary that I watched, uh, and that I described a couple of episodes ago, this was a great sort of bookend to that, to kind of, hit on an element that I have always been a bit curious about and fascinated by. So we'll link to both the video and the article. And thanks, Brent, for sending that over.
Jason Heaton	Yeah, that's very cool. Very kind of Brent to send that in. And mine this week is actually also sent in by a listener named Arthur. And Arthur, thanks very much for sending in a note about a podcast called the EnormoCast. Uh, which I guess is like enormous or maybe a normal is a climbing term that I'm not aware of, but it's the normal cast. It's a podcast about climbing rock climbing specifically. And, um, I would say that, you know, I listened to a handful of episodes specifically. I listened to the ones that Arthur told me to listen to, which were, uh, two from a guy named Mark Twight, the famous Alpinist and, uh, now physical trainer to the stars and punk rock writer and. Pretty, pretty fascinating guy. Not a guy that does a lot of interviews either, typically speaking.
[unintelligible_label]	Yeah.
Jason Heaton	Um, and then I did, I listened to one with Alex Honnold shortly after, uh, you know, they, they did the climb for free solo. And I listened to an earlier one with Conrad Anker and Anker's one of the best interviews out there. I could listen to the guy do an interview on every show that I like. He's a, he's always interesting and thoughtful and funny and all these things. And I would say that, um, despite the fact that this is definitely a very much an enthusiast show about rock climbing. Uh, the guy that leads it has clearly been a rock climber, uh, an avid sport climber for a long time. And, uh, there's, so there's some lingo and some, uh, kind of. General references that I don't get. I didn't detract from my enjoyment of those four episodes. So I would, uh, I would suggest, uh, obviously I'll put the link in the show notes, but, uh, check out the normal cast scroll through to find a few names that, you know, or that you'd recognize maybe from the greater world of, uh, climbing or adventuring or whatever. And if you don't know any of them, then hit Mark Twight. It's two episodes. It's a solid three hours. I listened to it in almost one go. I was doing chores around my house. I put it on. I loved it. And it's very much in-depth. It's very much about the philosophy of what they're doing and the storytelling behind some of the work that these guys do and that kind of thing. And I think a great suggestion by Arthur, and it's now in my subscription feed. So when I see a name I recognize or maybe a description that sounds extra interesting, I'll give it a listen. So that's the Enormal Cast, a climbing podcast.
Jason Stacey	I like, you know, when you're stretched a little bit, when there's something you don't, maybe aren't as deep on as someone else, and you kind of dip into that world. And so even if it's a little too technical for some of us, maybe non climbers, that's, that'd be really fun. Absolutely. Cool. Well, I'm, I've still got a voice and I haven't coughed too much.
Jason Heaton	Not bad. Probably our longest episode.
Jason Stacey	I think so.
Jason Heaton	Yeah. It's going to be real fun to edit.
Jason Stacey	Yeah. Let's see who sticks around for the bitter end here. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah. I think it was a good one. All right. As always, thanks so much for listening and a big thanks to Hodinkee for supporting the show. Hit the show notes via hodinkee.com or the feed for more details. And you can follow us on Instagram at Jason Heaton and at J.E. Stacey. And of course, follow the show at The Graynado. If you have any questions for us, please write to TheGreyNado at gmail.com or just drop a comment in the Hodinkee article with the announcement of the new episode. And please subscribe and review wherever you find your podcasts. Music Throughout is siesta by JazzArr via the Free Music Archive.
Jason Heaton	And we leave you with this quote from Jawaharlal Nehru, who said, We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm, and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.