The Grey NATO - Ep 86 - Quartz Concerns

Published on Thu, 01 Aug 2019 06:00:15 -0400

Synopsis

The podcast covers a wide range of topics related to watches, diving, and travel. The hosts discuss their recent watch acquisitions, including a Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaph Hodinkee limited edition and an Oris limited edition. They also talk about quartz watches, highlighting their versatility, functionality, and the impressive craftsmanship of some high-end quartz timepieces. One of the hosts shares his upcoming plans to join an archaeological expedition in Mexico to search for the lost ships of Hernán Cortés. They also touch on topics like smartwatches and the role of quartz movements in modern watchmaking.

Transcript

Speaker
Unknown Hello and welcome to another episode of the Graynado, a Hodinkee podcast. It's a loose discussion of travel, diving, driving, gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 86 and we're so pleased to be able to say that it's brought to you by Manta watches.
Jason Heaton Welcome on board Manta. That's, that's great. Another, another fantastic sponsor, real on brand with TGN and thanks a lot guys. Yeah.
Unknown Yeah, huge respect for those team, you know, Michael and the guys there are awesome. And we've had some experience with their product, which we can absolutely chat about in the ad break in a few minutes. But really, man, we've been so blessed with the kind of brands that were willing to step up and support the show and keep the doors open. And it's been a great year. A big thank you to both brands like Manta, who are kind of like deep in the watch enthusiasm core. But then some of the like outlying brands, it's been, uh, it's been such a positive experience. I didn't, I didn't really know you and I aren't really businessmen so much, which is probably why we became freelancers. But to, to, to go this route and of course to have the support of the Hodinkee ad team is huge. It's been so much more positive and easy and, and, and, and such than I had kind of expected.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I agree. And, uh, you know, speaking of the Hodinkee ad team and, and just, uh, headquarters there, I hear a siren in the background. I take it you're back in New York and,
Unknown I am. Yeah, there's only so much I can do about background noise. I mean, I'm in my small hot box. Has it cooled off there? No, not really. Actually, sorry, that's not true. It was into the kind of mid 90s, which is pretty rough, especially at night. Oh, yeah. But right now, I think I think we're sitting like low 80s, which is a little bit easier. So, yeah.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Well, counterintuitively, I'm it's been hot here in Minnesota as well, but I'm actually headed south tomorrow. We're recording this on a Thursday. And in fact, by the time this episode runs, I will actually be back already. And I'll have a lot more to share when I get back. But I'm headed down to Mexico, to Veracruz, to join the Lost Ships of Cortes project, which is kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me, joining an archaeology expedition from the University of Miami that thinks they've found evidence of the lost ships of Hernan Cortes, the conquistador who Kind of was the first European to, however you want to put it, invade, discover, conquer, whatever, Mexico. And he famously told his crew to burn the boats after they hit land so he could avoid a mutiny and kind of commit his team to the conquest of Mexico. And so this team from Miami has been working for the past couple of summers on finding evidence of where those ships lie offshore. And Ghoshani and I are headed down there this weekend to join them for about three days of diving, take some photos and just kind of check out see what's going on. So I'm pretty excited about that.
Unknown That's great. I mean, I you know, I've had some good experiences, obviously diving in and around in and around Mexico and even snorkeling, but not a huge amount of experience kind of on that side of Mexico. Yeah. So I'm excited, obviously, that that will we could probably make the better part of a whole episode about such an expedition. Yeah. Um, so maybe, maybe some of that we'll hold onto for a future, a future episode, but that sounds like a great, a great way to spend some time. It's a, it's a quick trip. You were saying?
Jason Heaton Yeah, it is. I'll be back next Tuesday. So three days of diving, two travel days.
Unknown Oh, okay. So you're back before this goes up.
Jason Heaton Yeah. So I guess when people listen to this, this will be some explanation as to what all of my Instagram posts have been about for, for the past few days. And, uh, and then certainly when we record next, I'll give a full full download on what we found or didn't find and how it all was. Yeah, for sure. Anyway, yeah. And then you and I are both kind of been inundated with some interesting watches lately, huh?
Unknown Yeah, I've got a ton of watches in for reviews and various write-ups and some of which you can see on my Instagram. I'm going to attempt to not just list a ton of watches, so I'll only talk about ones that I've essentially written about.
Unknown Yeah.
Unknown So that there's some sort of link. Uh, if you will, um, but yeah, there's, there's a handful that are in if basically if you've seen it lately on my Instagram, I have it in for some sort of content production. Uh, but the one that went up recently was, uh, have you seen this Serica www?
Jason Heaton Yeah, I saw some hints of it on social media and then I read your post and it looks great. It looks like just sweet spot.
Unknown I mean, like it there, there, there definitely some commenters that didn't seem to get the appeal. but you know it's a it's kind of a collaborative design between Matt Hranek of the WM Brown project and Serica watches which is kind of an offshoot of a really good French watch blog called I'm definitely get the pronunciation wrong but Les Rabeliers and I'll put a link in there because again the pronunciation it's not my strong suit especially in French but I've met these guys I hung out with with these dudes at at Concorso last year. And they're like really sweet guys, really deep into watches. And they have a kind of a nice eye for design. I'd seen a kind of pre-production version of this watch a little while ago. And it's this really kind of nicely sized. It's 37.7 millimeters. It's steel. It's like, I think it's 540 US, give or take. It's somewhere around 500 or 600 bucks. And it comes with a nice strap and a NATO. And they're kind of Imagine an elegant take on a Dirty Dozen. Yes. So the idea is that you still get some waterproofness and you still get some general sportiness, but the overall design is a little bit more dressy, kind of classic mid-century design, all kind of wrapped up into a field watch. And then it's a black or white dial and you can have kind of a spear tip sort of hand or what they're calling a broad hour hand, which is closer to what like Omega uses on the current Planet Ocean, that sort of thing.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah, it looks great. It definitely has that Dirty Dozen vibe, sort of an A-11, World War II, Bulova kind of vibe. It looks, yeah, it looks fantastic.
Unknown Yeah, and there's no branding on the dial, which I really like, and it has a nice hand-wound movement, a screw-down crown, which kind of like this Oris LE that we had recently, you know, people seem to take issue with the idea of a manual wound movement with a screw-down crown, but I could see it being a problem if it's the only watch you wear every day, but I've been wearing, we can get to this as well, I've been wearing my AORUS LE basically constantly since I got it. And I don't really find it that big of an issue every couple of days to quickly unwind the crown, unscrew the crown, wind the watch and screw it back down. People say it adds too much wear and tear. I don't necessarily agree. I also typically don't wear watches, one watch constantly. So almost like once I get over the kind of honeymoon period with this oris and it becomes part of my normal rotation almost every day i pick up a new watch that's dead and i pick it up and i set the time so that's kind of this in the same vein as winding like i don't really necessarily see that argument maybe over a large span of time it's more wear and tear on the threading i i don't know i don't i generally am not concerned with it well and i'd like to
Jason Heaton if there's a listener who's a watchmaker more knowledgeable than us, I'd love to kind of hear if that is an issue. Because, you know, for kind of general commenters, not to take anything away from anybody, but, you know, for those of us who are just sort of armchair, you know, watch fans or collectors, you know, I'm not sure that I'm qualified to even make a judgment on that. I'm assuming that if an old brand like Aorus, who has a whole team of watchmakers working on their products, thinks it's okay, I'm kind of okay trusting them on that.
Unknown Yeah, and I'd also say that It would come down to how hard the user is on that interface.
Unknown Yeah.
Unknown Um, but we can also very easily, um, I'll make a note and I'll just ask Jason Gallop. He can let us know for the next episode. If it's the kind of thing we're like over the span of time, does this actually add that much wear and tear assuming you're gentle? Right. Right. Yeah. It's kind of like that thing where a clutch in a car can last technically forever. It depends on how you use it. Right. Um, and I think that could be the same thing with the threading on your crown. just be gentle with them, learn how to do the back pressure so that you always get the threads to sync up. And I think that you can probably mitigate a lot of that, but I am more than happy to defer to an absolute professional, and that would be Mr. Gallup in this case. So I can send him a note and let everyone know on the next podcast if the idea of a manual round watch with a screw-down crown is really as big an issue as some people have made it between something like the Serica and something like the Oris.
Unknown Yeah. Cool.
Unknown And quickly with the Oris, it's, I love it. I'm absolutely obsessed with it. Yeah, that's beautiful. I have it on the Bonetto Cinturini rubber NATO because it is quite hot here. Yeah. It's all I've been wearing since I got it. And yeah, I'm absolutely thrilled. I'm thrilled to have an Oris to call my own. I'm thrilled that it's something that's tied to, you know, a brand and a company that I've spent a lot of time with and have developed a lot of important relationships here and people I love and respect and that sort of thing. And to have that all kind of tied up in one watch means that it almost came out of the box being pretty special. Right. Which I like quite a bit. And I think, you know, I think it's something that you also understand given a watch that you recently got.
Jason Heaton Yes. Speaking of Hodinkee Limited Editions, I was absolutely floored the other day when I received a big package from FedEx and turned out to be the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaph Hodinkee LE. Which, I had not ordered, but I did have some part in the photoshoot for the production of the launch site. My wife and I were out in California in the kelp beds doing some photography for that campaign, if people recall that. And I have a significant birthday coming up, and I guess I'm approaching my 10-year anniversary writing for Hodinkee, which makes me one of the longest-standing, if not the longest-standing, non-Ben Clymer in the mix. I guess this was just a really heartfelt gift, extremely generous from the Hodinkee team with a nice note from Ben and came out of the box. I absolutely love this watch. I loved it when we had the prototype for the photography. What more can I say about it? It's a 38mm Blancpain, a watch I never thought I would own just due to price and kind of life priorities and that sort of thing. It's one that I'm really going to treasure, and I guess the side benefit is it's at 38mm, my wife can wear it as well, and we're both divers, so there's some real meaning to this one. And yeah, just thanks a lot to the whole Hodinkee team, and again, this literally came like two days ago, so I'm still a bit flabbergasted, sort of speechless about the whole thing, but it was really a generous gift. Just so excited to wear it for a very, very, very long time.
Unknown Yeah. I mean, as someone who's, who obviously read all, all of your posts way back in the day, and then we became buddies and now we're colleagues, partners, all that kind of thing. And then into the modern context of Hodinkee, I honestly think they couldn't have picked a better owner for one of those hundred. I think it's an immensely cool watch. It is probably my favorite, flat out, my favorite LE. Um, it's outside of my price range. I don't think I would like it any more or less on my wrist than I do the Aorus. And I just bought the Aorus. So even more so another watch would have been further from my purchasing decision, but I think it's, it's an immensely cool watch. And, uh, and to know that one of those went to you, uh, I don't know. It makes me happy. Yeah.
Jason Heaton And I got number 50, which I thought was great. 50 fathoms, uh, my 50th birthday next spring. So really, um, really significant. And it was nicely engraved on the, on the case band. It said, uh, H for JH. So really kind of a neat sort of insider inscription. So yeah, it looks great on NATO. It's a very stealthy watch, but you know, if you know what it is, it's, um, spectacular movement, great technology, beautiful looking. So, yeah, thanks. Thanks to everybody. And, uh, you'll see a lot of, a lot of photos of this one on, on Instagram in the coming weeks, months, and years.
Unknown It's killer. I can't, I can't wait to, uh, whenever it is we do do the eventual TGN summit we've been talking about for the past two years. Uh, borrowing it for a day or two.
Jason Heaton They're super fun. Yeah, let's swap. I haven't seen the Aorus yet in person, so that'll be fun.
Unknown Yeah, I mean, I think that Hodinkee knocked it out of the park with both of these. I can't claim... Neither of us can really claim any footing in the design or the inspiration or any of that for these things, but I know that both of these watches represent designs that came directly from our team. Yeah. Internal. So these weren't something that a watch brand had that they had just decided not to make a commercial product. And we made a few tweaks. These were designed by us and then fulfilled essentially at a business level. And I think both of them are absolutely killer dive watches that represent kind of right into the TGN space. So I'm glad we each ended up with one of them.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I agree. I think we should switch gears entirely and jump into our main topic, which has nothing to do with either of these watches. Nope, not at all.
Unknown Yeah, so as people would have guessed by the title, as they always do, there's never any real surprise with these topics. We're chatting about quartz watches, which I think should be a pretty fun topic, and one that both you and I really like, but kind of have different kind of footings.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I'm surprised we actually haven't talked about quartz in the past, given we're at episode 86. We've talked about quartz watches, but not as a main topic. I think we both have
Unknown something of a love for quartz watches. Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, like for me, and I'm sure yours, this is where we're probably, we probably start at a similar point. It's like most people, their first watch or their first few watches are quartz. Right. Unless they happen to have a friend like us, uh, kind of help them or, or a watch nerd as an uncle or a dad that, that gets their first, uh, their first sort of watch going. Do you remember a quartz watch that led you to liking an automatic more or even the inverse? Maybe you bought a few automatics and then went back to a quartz for a specific reason.
Jason Heaton So I remember in high school being a bit of a watch nerd. Um, and you know, I've told the story before about that Seiko dive watch that I bought, which was an automatic. Um, but before that I had a, I wouldn't say an equally cool watch, but it was, it was a really neat watch to have at that age. And it was a Swiss army, Victorinox Swiss army renegade. I don't know if you remember this one. It was, it had like a, what would you call it? Like a plastic or polymer case and it was black. Um, and then it had this perforated kind of stiff rubber strap and I doubt, I'm sure they don't make it anymore, but it was, you know, this was, this was in the eighties and there was a lot of kind of glitzy tag Hoyers and stuff floating around and cheap armatrons and stuff like that. And, and this was just a really cool watch and it was quartz. And of course I didn't know any better. Um, but, but it, it perked up my interest in, watches in general. And I think that kind of led me into, okay, what's the next step? What, you know, just wearing that watch kind of had me hooked on, on watches in general. Of course, it was Swiss made, which at the time I probably didn't resonate with me, but, um, you know, then I moved into the, to the Seiko automatic, uh, and then, you know, uh, history goes on and, and, you know, here we are today. But, um, so that was kind of my first, and I had a couple of Swiss armies over the years. And, um, that, that was sort of my, my starting point for, for watches was, was just sort of a general sort of field-style quartz watch, which was perfect for kind of the lifestyle I had at the time, and I guess I suppose I still do. But how about you? I mean, I'm sure, you know, back in teens and 20s, you had ample quartz watches.
Unknown Yeah, I mean, like my first few watches, like obviously I've spoken about it specifically, but my first couple of watches were Iron Men, like Timex Iron Men. And I will always have a sweet spot Like even up until the last quartz watch I bought was one of those like $16 versions of the F91 Casio.
Unknown Yeah.
Unknown It's on this black Silicon strap with like a fake gold. It's not even metal. It's a plastic case. It's weightless. It's actually, it sits at the bottom. So, you know, like the camera insert in my Tenba bag, it just sits loose under that in case I ever like need another watch or, or if I ever find an excuse to gift it to someone. Um, like I always, I always dream of maybe having like a little grip of F 90 ones. You get stopped on the street and someone goes, Hey, what time is it? And he goes, you know what fella for 14 years, this is the cost less than the coffee I'm going to drink all day. Like, Hey, go. Um, but I, so I keep one of those and there's, there's something about it, especially that one that I bought a couple ago, which is that, um, it's on a gold, gold, gold colored bracelet. It's the little world timer Casio. I wrote about it and I'll put it in the link. I don't remember. It's an A5000 or A500W, something like that. That thing was like less than 50 bucks. I think it was like 36 bucks. But there's still something really fun about putting that on and then just cycling through the functions. That never gets old to me. It doesn't get old to me on a Garmin Instinct. It doesn't get old to me on an old Timex Ironman. And as I, you know, became an adult and got back into fitness, a digital watch made a lot of sense. Yeah, because you could, you know, it's a chronograph. You don't mind if you sweat in it, if you're running and you fall, or if you're biking and you fall and you break it, who cares? And I still, you know, I have that weird mechanical sympathy where like, I can't ride a bicycle with a mechanical watch. Yeah. I, the vibrations feel so specific to that point in my hand and wrist. It would be kind of like, um, like the different, like I could, I feel like I could mow a lawn with a watch on, but then if I went to do like weed whacking, that super high frequency vibration would just all I could think about is the fact that I'm vibrating all those 70, 80 little pieces around, right? Right. Yeah. It's it's it's it's crazy. I'm not sure that's sensible, but, you know, way, way back in the day, it was those those two early Timex Ironmans, one of which I still have, one of which was broken through. I tried to toss it to my mom. And of course I didn't throw it correctly because I'm me and it like fell in the little plastic resin case, like shattered one of the lugs.
Jason Heaton Oh yeah. I was kind of into Nike watches for a while. I was really heavy into kind of competitive cycling back in my twenties and I, that was around the era when Lance Armstrong was winning tours to France and there was a line of Nike watches that were, um, they made digital watches, um, kind of, The ones that he wore and kind of repped for Nike. And then there was a time when they came out with a limited edition Lance Armstrong collection or something. And there were two Nike watches. And one was an analog quartz chronograph in a titanium case. And it had this big wide bezel, beautiful soft rubber strap. And then they also sold it, I think, with an all black digital version. And I think it was like a two for a pack. And I remember buying it. And I picked it up from their distributor like in Louisville, Colorado, because I was working out there for a while. I loved that watch. And I, you were asking earlier, like, was there a quartz watch that maybe tipped me over into mechanical watches? And it might've been that watch because the analog chronograph had something of a classic look to it. And it kind of perked me up to like, okay, previous to that had been a lot of, you know, been a couple of Swiss armies and then a lot of digital ones like Iron Man and Sunto and things. But that one was like two pushers, a crown, three sub dials, I think it had like a yellow sweep hand or something. I was like, okay, wow, that's really cool. I kind of like that look. And then from there I kind of moved more into the mechanical stuff. But I've always been of the mind, and I think you are too, of a watch as, most watches, as sort of a piece of gear or part of your kit and something that you can use and it can be useful, whether it's a dive watch or your turnaround time at the summit of a mountain or whatever. you know, it's no great secret that around about the eighties, um, the quartz watch became state of the art for that function. And so you, you started to see militaries and divers and climbers and things moving from mechanical watches, which were inherently largely more fragile and more expensive to quartz watches. And I think that to me still sticks with me that if, if I, of course I love mechanical watches. We just talked about this, spectacular Blancpain that I just got and that I love and I'll wear a lot, but I guess I don't have a prejudice against quartz like a lot of people do. I think maybe a lot of people come to watches as more of a collector or an appreciator of the art and craft of watchmaking, and I get that and I have that element to me as well, but I think I just kind of come from a different background in my days of riding for gear patrol and kayaking and skiing and that sort of thing. And so a quartz watch is just kind of a natural extension of that. So I wear my CWC quartz dive watch quite a bit because it fits a purpose. It's great for, like you said, cutting the grass or weed whacking or riding a bike or kayaking. I don't hesitate necessarily to wear a mechanical watch, but the quartz is just part of the rotation just like anything else. And it might serve a purpose a little bit better than maybe my Rolex sub on the bracelet.
Unknown there's something about a mechanical watch that speaks to the romantic side of me. And I don't mean romantic necessarily in terms of like, uh, like love, but more the part of me that enjoys art for its creativity or the colors in a movie or the decor in a Wes Anderson film or whatever, like just the part of the part of me that speaks more to the idea of romance and appreciation for appreciation sake. Right. And then the court stuff, whether it's my absolutely beloved Aerospace or Garmin Instinct, or what else have I loved and like owned and really loved? A couple of great Citizens, an early Aqualand with a lume dial, which was the best and I really wish I still had. It was such a fun watch to wear. And then I also had a Citizen BL5250, which was like their flight timer perpetual with a solar. Oh, yeah. It was a really nice size. You can still get them on Amazon. I constantly recommend that to people who write me and they're like, I want a watch. I want it to be like light right on my wrist, but I also want it to have like some other features. I needed to have an alarm for my job or I needed to have a chronograph for this reason. And I'll recommend that watch because once you deal with the, I prefer my digital watches or you know, you have to deal with the user interface of these watches. And that's why I like stuff like the aerospace or the Garmin because sure they're quartz, but the digital makes it very easy to move through the various functions.
Unknown Yeah.
Unknown And then with your CWC, there's not really any functionality to be concerned with. It's quartz because that makes it more functional, period. Right. I also like that quartz makes it possible for someone to buy a chronograph for a hundred bucks, not fifteen hundred bucks. Yeah, true. Like I mean, a chronograph with little hands, like an analog chronograph. Sure, you can get an F91 for fourteen dollars.
Jason Heaton Yeah, you can buy a very classic looking again, going back to Victorinox, a Swiss army, you know, I think they call it the chrono classic or something with three sub dials. And for all intents and purposes, it looks just like a classic mechanical chronograph, but it's, it's quartz and it's $800 or $700 instead of whatever we're paying these days to two grand or whatever for a Valjoux.
Unknown Let's face it. We're probably speaking or preaching to the choir here. I would say that most people that are into TGN either Primarily wear a quartz watch because that's the lifestyle that they're into is something that may not be akin to a mechanical scenario or They do both and and and I think that's like if there's a takeaway from this conversation. It's simply that all of it is good There's no there's there are definitely bad like I don't even bad's not the right word. What's the word? I'm looking for Boring, they're definitely boring mechanical watches. Mm-hmm, and there's definitely lots of boring quartz watches like tons, most of them.
Jason Heaton I think that's what skews people's view about quartz. There's just such an overwhelming number.
Unknown They're boring. They're casual. Really bad ones. Yeah. They're Daniel Wellingtons. They're Skagans. There's Michael Kors. Like we don't, none of that's of any value, but those aren't enthusiast products. If we stay in the mind space of like the warm confines of the watch enthusiast space, then I think you find things like that CWC, like the aerospace, Like that crazy, was it a B55 that you reviewed, the connected Breitling? Oh, right. Yeah. I mean, that's a $10,000 quartz watch.
Jason Heaton Right. This isn't even to speak anything about like Grand Seiko quartz watches. I mean, they make a Grand Seiko.
Unknown The 9F stuff's insane.
Jason Heaton Yeah. And if you want to go sports watch, they make a 9F based quartz Grand Seiko dive watch, which to me might be, you know, I personally, the aesthetics of it aren't to my taste. It's a little too dressy for a dive watch, but let's face it, that could possibly be the most capable and rugged dive watch there is these days.
Unknown Well, and if it isn't, then it's cousin in the Tuna. Oh, yeah. With the quartz movement that doesn't need it. So those watches are so tough that they don't even need a helium escape valve for saturation diving. Right.
Unknown Yeah.
Unknown They have like a special fitting, an L-shaped fitting for the crystal that's just tight, helium tight, not even airtight, helium tight. Right. They're really, really immensely cool things. And I think that there's a time where I'll look at I'll look at a watch on the subway and I won't quite know what it is. And then if I can't quite tell what it is, it probably means it's not generally in the enthusiast space. So then my next thing is I look to see if I can see the second hand. Is it ticking? And if it's ticking, I'll be honest, I disregard. Yeah. If I don't know what it is and it's ticking, I don't care. Yeah. That much. Right. If I get really excited when it's an Autodromo or a Neat Citizen or or if I saw something like the CWC, like then I'd be like, that's just as exciting as seeing, like, I don't want to see another Submariner or whatever. Like in the last couple of days, I've seen some fairly interesting watches on people's wrists. I saw a Richard Mille in the wild, which is pretty rare. I've seen, you know, like you walk around or you spend some time in a big city and most people wearing Apple watches or I see an unbelievable number of garments. Oh yeah. It doesn't matter where I go in New York. I see people wearing garments. like in business attire and they have a Phoenix on their wrist. And every time I see it, I go, that's awesome. Nobody made that watch thinking a guy in a suit or slacks in like a, uh, a tucked in button up, whatever, put it on. But my guess is that that guy had a few watches, got the garment and then realized that it had some level of functionality for everything he does. Whether it's notifications when he or she are in the office that you know, when your next meeting is like Apple watch sort of stuff. And then on the weekends, you go up to Hudson Valley, you go hiking, you have your route, you have your, your distance, you have all that kind of stuff. And then, and then it does your running or your workouts. It does like the, the level of functionality that can be attained there really. I think that's the key to quartz is like, if it's leveraged for greater functionality, I get it. And I like it. Yeah. It also means that you can have like a lot in a small package, whether it's a little Casio for 50 bucks or an aerospace, I don't actually know what the running cost for an aerospace is these days, probably $800 to $1,000 on the used market for like, I'm talking the 40 millimeter that's like eight millimeters thick with the kind of like wobbly bezel like mine. I love it. That's a perfect example of a quartz watch where like, if I ever have to pare down my quote unquote collection, that would be probably one of the last quartz watches. Uh, that would be in there. I'd love to have that and an instinct because I really do love the GPS stuff for the running, but I could deal with just a chronograph so that I knew, well, I run at this pace roughly. Then you could do the work or, or, or just start running for time, which is what I did in Vancouver for a long time. I just say I'd run 30 minutes in one direction, turn around and run back.
Jason Heaton Well, I have to wonder just to interrupt here, like whether we need a separate episode for smartwatches or connected watches and people might groan to hear that, but I'm I actually don't know if those are actually quartz powered or quartz timekeeping.
Unknown Oh, that's a good point. They may just be syncing occasionally with the GPS.
Unknown Yeah.
Unknown That's fair. I guess I'd lump that into a quartz as a digital, but that may be totally unfair. Right. And I know that a lot of people really like their day-to-day watch is an Apple watch. You see them everywhere.
Jason Heaton I'm so tired of seeing them though. I mean, again, that's a separate topic, but it reminds me of some sci-fi movie where everybody has to strap on the same little gadget on their wrist that keeps track of them. You know, they're all the same little shape, the little sort of, you know, lozenge shape thing strapped to their wrist. And I see them just everywhere, especially when you travel. Um, but again, separate topic, but yeah.
Unknown There's more interesting things out there. And I think that there's a lot of really interesting, cool things in quartz, even from like, you can go back into the nineties and the eighties.
Jason Heaton There's some pretty fun stuff in there, you know, to your earlier point about like the watches you see in the wild, especially in New York. Um, and whether you see the secondhand ticking or if you recognize Can you imagine if you were on the subway or walking down the street there and you see an Oysterquartz, a Rolex Oysterquartz on somebody's wrist? I'd be so, so excited. That's the ultimate deep watch nerd watch.
Unknown I think so.
Jason Heaton Yeah. It's incredible.
Unknown Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like it's a, they're rare. They're very cool for a while. They weren't that expensive.
Unknown Yeah.
Unknown Uh, you could say that about a lot of Rolexes, but, um, I, yeah, I think Oysterquartz is, especially when you go back to that story, which I've talked about before, where like Rolex quietly essentially field launched the Oysterquartz with, the first ever Ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen by Reinald Messner and Peter Habler. Thank you, Peter Habler. And that's such a flex for everyone involved, because that was going to be a quartz watch meant for probably a banker or like a finance guy who wanted to have this like highly lauded, cool technology of quartz, which is what it was at the time. It was this thing that everybody had. Suddenly watches were crazy thin. If you go into the recent volume of Hodinkee Magazine, Joe Thompson, the amazing Joe Thompson, whose birthday is actually today, but Joe Thompson has wrote a piece on the kind of war for the thinner and thinner watch. Oh yeah. And how like there was an interest in quartz watches that was so high because it was brand new. And maybe that's what we have with smartwatches. And maybe people, there'll be another renaissance of smartwatch owners going, I don't actually need all this functionality. Or the functionality is already built into my phone or some other device on my person. And like a lot of us who might've been deep into quartz at one point, whether it was a Timex or some crazy two millimeter thick Concord, roll back the timeline and dip back into mechanical. But I definitely think that the overall point is like you can have both.
Jason Heaton Well, and I think, you know, as we've talked about before, so much of a love for a watch is the way it looks on your wrist and the aesthetics of it and the design and the quality of the build. And you can have that with a quartz watch. In fact, the two that stand out to me that are kind of very interesting because they're actually hybrids, both use the Seiko MecaQuartz movement, and one is that I think they call it the U3, the chronodiver. And then one that I picked up not long ago, which was the Numark HS, which is the white dial version of kind of the asymmetric RAF chronograph. And both of those are, they're two register, classic looking chronographs that use a mechanical linkage for the sweep hand and for the chronograph timing. And then a quartz crystal does the timekeeping for just the time of day. And because there's no running seconds, you know, if you're running the chrono and it's sweeping, it's very smooth. Um, you know, it looks like, uh, you're wearing a mechanical chronograph and yet this is a watch that neither of them do I wear often, but they're sitting on in my, in my drawer and they're ready to go. Like I pulled them out and I'm like, okay, this is really cool. I can wear a, like an asymmetric, you know, what looks like a retro, like a, like a seventies RAF chronograph on my wrist. And I've just pulled it out of my drawer and slapped it on and nobody's the wiser. You know, Autodroma has used that movement as well in one of their watches. I think it was the Prototypo. And, you know, I think for people that maybe want to get a two-register chronograph or they can't afford to buy like a vintage CWC or Hamilton RAF chronograph, you know, for $300, $400, I don't know if these Numarks are still available, but they're great watches. They look good. They're well-made. So, you know, these fit a certain niche in a collection or Absolutely. A certain look for just not a lot of money.
Unknown And I think while we have a moment speaking of well-made, good-looking watches, probably time to jump into a quick ad break. Yeah, let's do that. So as we mentioned at the start of the episode, we are very proudly sponsored by Monto Watches. And so that's montowatch.com. And you know, Jason and I have both had some experience with their products. I remember the Ocean King from their kind of first offering, which I reviewed, you know, previous to my time. with Hodinkee, that was when I was with a blog to watch. And I don't know if I've ever been that so impressed by a brand's first offering.
Jason Heaton I remember that. You talked about that on an early TGN.
Unknown Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that every time I see one, I'm, you know, no watch is perfect. And, you know, they've made other revisions of that watch of the Ocean King and now spread into other product lines in general, like other models in general. So they're now producing a series of watches. But what I would say that kind of links them all together is you get, uh, it's a watch designed by watch enthusiasts. So the people behind Manta, these are the same folks behind Everest watch bands, which is about as nerdy a general product as you can imagine. They saw a hole in the Rolex lineup, which is there's no rubber straps and there aren't really the leather straps that feel like they were made for that watch for that case. And they went out and did all of the engineering and the design work and everything to make these really high quality rubber and leather straps for Rolex products. And I have one of those, I've worn it, I've experienced it. They feel like an OEM product, which is about as high a praise as you can give to that sort of an endeavor. And then when you dip into Monta's, you know, quote unquote, like actual watch offering, I think that with every single iteration, with every passing sort of month or year that they're on the market, the product just gets stronger.
Jason Heaton I feel like Manta is kind of at the vanguard of the new generation of what we typically call a micro-brand movement. They have really started to produce watches with the SkyQuest, the Ocean King, and lately the Atlas that are almost indiscernible in terms of quality from a lot of the big Swiss players that have been around for a hundred years. That's no small feat. The finishing of the movement, the finishing of the case, the bracelet quality, the clasp, the bezels. These are all things that have been really well thought out by Michael and by Justin at Manta, and they work very closely with suppliers. They're not just submitting a napkin sketch and having a watch built for them. They're actually taking out patents for bezels and other components of the watch, the lume and things like this that, you know, just typically kind of that first generation of micro brands wasn't able to do. And I think it's really shown a maturity of not only the micro brand movement, but I think Montez is definitely a leader in that.
Unknown Yeah, I would agree. And the fun thing is, is because these are guys that literally started the brand from their experience hanging out at Red Bar, like in St. Louis. What you end up with is like, yes, they're using, you know, quote unquote, off the shelf movements for, for the watches, which that's pretty common, not only to micro brands, but to big brands, but everything else, any touch point that you can imagine, especially if you use something like the ocean King as the example, because it has the bezel, anything you can touch is really remarkably high quality. Uh, not only for the price point, but against their own competition. Uh, so the finishing on the case is lovely. The bezel is. two or three patents deep, at least two patents deep. And it is one of the finest bezels in the watch industry. I know, I understand that's a huge claim for a $2,000 dive watch. You know, they sell the Ocean King on a bracelet for $1925. It simply is, it's an elemental dive watch in that it's a black dial dive watch with kind of sword style hands, standard markers. Like the overall design just falls into the general milieu of the dive watch. And then, you know, more recently, at least to my experiences is their latest, which is sort of an expression of the triumph, which was their take on a field watch, but iterated to a GMT, which is called the Atlas. So you have a fixed bezel, a 24 hour scale on the RIA, which is the kind of chapter ring around the markers at the very outer edge of the dial. And then it's a 38.5 millimeter steel case, which with very lovely finishing, a great, really great crown. It comes in a few different versions, a black, black dial, red accents, silver dial with blue accents, and then a blue dial with red accents, which is my favorite. I think it's absolutely gorgeous. They call it Manta Blue. And on the bracelet, it does not feel like a 16, $1,700 watch at all. Aside from the fact that maybe if you're not really deep into watches, you wouldn't know the Manta brand. Jason, what was the last one that you saw of theirs?
Jason Heaton So I had the SkyQuest at home for a few weeks, which is spectacular. And this is a watch that sort of begs to be looked at with a loop. It has this beautiful sunburst dial. As you mentioned, the bezel is fantastic. But then in these little details, like the GMT hand that is stepped so that it can reach out to the markers at the edge of the dial. Isn't that cool? But it has like a little bend to it so that it fits over the top of the raised applied markers on the dial. I mean, these are things that most small brands can't you know, they either can't do or they don't think to do. And then I met these guys, Justin and Michael at Baselworld. And one thing I'm impressed with, with Manta is they're very receptive to feedback and actually seek it out. And they're also very accessible. So they're very willing to work with not only, you know, journalists who are in the business, but also, you know, their customers and, and respond with, you know, design changes or just, just take feedback with an open mind, which I really respect. And I think that's, That's a big difference with a brand the size of Manta with guys who are truly watch nerds and not just businessmen.
Unknown I absolutely agree. Speaking to them is like hanging out at a red bar. It's talking to people who already know all of the internal lingo. You're not speaking to a PR person who knows the product brief from a PDF. You're speaking to not only the person who has to go frequently to Switzerland and see the pieces and work on the refinement and that kind of thing, but also the person who like did the first drawing. knew what they wanted on their own wrist. It's not unlike speaking to anyone from Hallios or Raven or any of these other small companies. But the level of execution is really remarkable. And speaking to the SkyQuest, the only problem I could see is I just clicked on the page and they're all out of stock. So they're clearly not having a whole lot of trouble selling, you know, a 40 millimeter, 300 meter water resistant, you know, proto dive watch come GMT for two grand. I mean, the pricing's in line. You and I wax poetic about Doxa, but the absolute truth is the level of finishing is much higher on Amanta for similar price point. Doxa's a different style, a different aesthetic. There's a history to Doxa, so that all factors into how watches are priced. But if you were just going for the stuff you can hold and touch in your hand and not the backstory or necessarily the kind of legacy design and all that kind of thing, then I think that Any watch nerd would pick a Monta up off the table at a red bar and be very impressed by what they found.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, again, as we mentioned at the top of the show, Monta is a brand familiar to both of us going way back and kind of fits the TGN vibe. And we're really pleased to have them as a sponsor of episode 86.
Unknown So, yeah, Jason and I really only have one ask for anyone listening to this is swing by MontaWatch.com, take a look at the product, take a look at some of the details and how you can customize the straps and all that sort of thing. And if you can get a chance to see one in person, you absolutely should. They're really, really impressive watches made by people who really, really love watches. So a huge thank you to the entire team at Manta for supporting the show. And, uh, Jason, you want to kind of put a bow on quartz watches? Yeah, good idea. Let's wrap this one up. Are there any quartz watches kind of right on your horizon that you think you might need? That you're still, that you're interested in?
Jason Heaton Um, you know, quartz watches kind of pop up there, they aren't you don't see as many of them kind of when you're working in the sphere that we do, you know, and the, the press releases that cross our desks and, and kind of the stuff that pops up on forums and social media. So it tends to be, you know, the ones that, that, that just sort of come out of left field, like, like the new mark that I got or when Unimatic launched that chrono diver. Um, those, those are the ones that, that I like. I do, I, you know, I'm an unabashed fan of, of CWC as I've talked about in the past. And I think that they're, they're 1983. reissue Royal Navy diver is pretty spectacular. It's a watch that I wear quite a bit. You know, one could argue that all of CWC's dive watches look alike, and that certainly is true, but 1983 was the first year that the Royal Navy actually specified quartz watches. So CWC was the brand that replaced the military Submariner from Rolex in 80 and 81, and then bled into 82 a little bit, and then they switched over to quartz. And so it has that great case, but this has this acrylic, fully loomed bezel with beautiful numerals for a sub-thousand dollar watch with fixed spring bars and kind of that classic look. It's not for everybody. I mean, it says quartz very large on the dial, but I'm quite happy with that. I always hashtag quartz proud whenever I post a picture of that because I think it is what it is. It was the state of the art at the time and that's what they're trying to recapture. How about you? Any quartz watches you're angling for?
Unknown You know, there's always one. This is the same one. I know we've talked about it, but probably not in over a year. It's that Seiko Perpetual Calendar.
Unknown Oh, right. Yeah.
Unknown It's the SBCM023 Prospex. So if you imagine an SKX007, almost identically, but it's 39 millimeters. which is literally perfect. It's a little bit bigger than an 013 and it's a little bit smaller than an 007, but it also has a perpetual calendar quartz that's high accuracy. Amazing. So it's literally one of the coolest watches Seiko made or makes. I'm actually not sure if they still make it. It's plus or minus 20 seconds a year, 200 meters water resistant, eight year battery life. And it's a simple date display. So that's the way that you can, if you can't tell the size and, good luck if you can between 39 and 41 at a distance. All Seiko 7S26 base movements have day and date. And this is just date, but it's perpetual. So stealthy. So stealthy. Yeah, really stealthy. I've wanted one of these for a while. They're really neat. They definitely have gotten more expensive. Farlius, if you're listening, I turned one down. I should have bought the one from you. Uh, we know this is how things go, but that's a really cool watch that I've been kind of eyeing for on and off for a couple of years. I believe they made one in an orange dial with gilt accents, which might be weird enough to be enticing, but I'll throw it in the show notes. SBCM 023. I think that is where if you're not so sure about quartz, you want some functionality, but you'd like the general appeal of an automatic Seiko diver. This is a pretty cool watch. It's also a great size.
Jason Heaton Well, that's a great, that's a great recommendation and a really Really great one to close out on because it's... Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. I'm not going to say any more, but I'm sure there'll be a flood of them popping up.
Unknown Yeah. If you've got one, especially one that's beat up and you want to get rid of it, send me a line and I could be down. That's our main topic. We're going to jump into final notes. If you have any questions or concerns, whatever about the main topic, as always, thegraynadoatgmail.com. Jason, I am going to ask you to cut your... Oh, it looks like you already did. Cut your final note to one choice. All right. So there we are.
Jason Heaton I'm going to jump into it. Yeah, this one's pretty cool. And it's a nice tie-in, even though I'd put it in before I got my Blancpain this week. If you might recall, Blancpain has been a longtime supporter of the French marine biologist and photographer Laurent Ballesta. And I was on this expedition with him last summer to the Socorro Islands. He's just a spectacular photographer, underwater photographer. He's done stuff, photographing the coelacanth, that fossil fish off the coast of Africa. Oh, right, right, right. He did the Fakarava, you know, 700 sharks in the dark photography with the grouper spawning event. He's done Antarctica. I consider him the modern Cousteau. He's not only is he French, but he just does these audacious, really bold projects. And he calls them all Gombessa. Gombessa was the African name for the coelacanth fish, which was his first project. And so he's named all of his subsequent expeditions, Gombessa, and he's up to number five. And number five is easily his most ambitious project. And it might be just about wrapping up by now, but I've been following on Instagram.
Unknown It's amazing.
Jason Heaton Basically, he has he and his team, I think it's three of them, three or four divers have been spending 28 days or close to a month in in a locked in dive chamber and then diving the bottom of the Mediterranean. every day for many hours out of a diving bell. So they're saturation diving, but unlike commercial saturation diving, such as in The Last Breath, which is the movie I recommended last time and a lot of people have written to me about, they're not tethered. There's no umbilical that is tying them to the surface with their air and hot water and communications. They're actually diving with rebreathers, so mixed gas rebreathers, so they're free swimming, they can be out for hours at great depths, and then returning to the diving bell at the end of every day having taken lots of photos and video and research, and then returning to their habitat back on the support barge up at the surface. And I believe it's called Planet Mediterranean, I think is kind of the subtitle, but it's the Gumbessa 5 expedition. And to make a long story short, the link we're going to put in the show notes is via Blancpain's website. It's their ocean commitment section of the website. And it's a series of video blogs that if you go back and start from the beginning, you can sort of get a sense of the the scope of the project with interviews with Laurent and his team and the support staff and some great video footage of what they're doing. And it's just really exciting. It's really cool that Blancpain supports this. This had to have cost a lot of money. An insane amount of money. An insane amount of money and just lots of risk, lots of ambition, lots of equipment.
Unknown They're essentially doing it like an Apollo mission. Yeah. Into the deep. It's, it's, it's something else. I think it's so, so cool and a great choice. And he's an, an incredible ambassador, not just to watches and diving, but like for Blancpain for all of it. Yeah. Yeah. Really, really rad. Yeah. Um, okay. So mine, I'm trying to pick between my two. I think I'm gonna go with this, uh, the story from the Atlantic. Yeah. It took me a while to read it. So it's not that current of a story. You know, I read it in several chunks. So you pocket the app tells you how long they think something will take you to read. And it was like an hour, which is kind of intimidating. But it's this like legitimately one of the best things I've read in a very long time, which is called What Really Happened to Malaysia's Missing Airplane. And so it's a really, really deep dive on the efforts to find MH370, which of course went missing March 8th, 2014. There's too much to cover here, but it's, it's, it's written by this incredible aviation journalist named William Longowisha. And I really, all I want to say is please just start reading it. Cause I don't think you'll be able to stop. I think you might have to do it in a couple of coffee breaks or maybe a quiet Sunday morning, but it is an absolutely incredible deep dive on all of the work, all of the theories and all of the flat out unknowns about MH3, uh, 370. And it's, uh, Yeah, please, please read this. It's amazing work by the Atlantic. It's an amazing work by Longowisha. And, and it's super readable, despite covering a bunch of really kind of in depth, super aviation nerd topics and technologies.
Jason Heaton It's great. Yeah, I read this as well. And I'm a huge fan of Longowisha. He's read one of his books, and then he did a similar piece several years ago about the disappearance of Air France 447, which was the one that crashed in the Atlantic between Brazil and Paris, similar length. I'll throw a link up as well. And then I just downloaded an audio book by him called The Outlaw Sea, which he actually covers the high seas and shipping traffic and that sort of thing. So yeah, he's a great author, but that's a really good pick. That was a fantastic article.
Unknown Okay. Yeah. Uh, I, I think we'll, we'll put all of those in the show notes. I think you've got some reading ahead of you and definitely dig it in Gambessa. And thank you so much for, you know, listening to this episode.
Jason Heaton As always, thanks so much for listening and a big thanks to Hodinkee for supporting the show and to Manta for being a sponsor of episode 86. Be sure to go check out mantawatch.com to take a look at the SkyQuest, the Ocean King, the Atlas and the Triumph and give them a follow on Instagram as well. And hit the show notes via hodinkee.com or the feed for more details. You can follow us on Instagram. I'm at Jason Heaton. James is at J.E. Stacey. And follow the show at The Graynado. If you have any questions for us, please write to thegraynado at gmail.com. And please subscribe and review wherever you find your podcasts. Music throughout is Siesta by Jazzar via the Free Music Archive.
Unknown And we leave you this quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery. A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.