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Category: Watches
Today I just got a shipment of Rolex’s. And in this shipment we received the new Rolex Explorer II with a black dial. We have had this watch before (and have it with a white dial), but the black dial in particular seems to be difficult to obtain these days. Probably because the watch is absolutely gorgeous. When you see it in person it really is a breath-taking piece from Rolex, and I am certain that we will not have it in stock for very long. I first saw this timepiece at Baselworld in 2011 and I mentioned it here.
Rolex created the Explorer originally in 1953 as a tribute to Sir Edmund Hillary’s climb of Mount Everest; Sir Hillary was the first person to achieve this feat. Almost 20 years later, the Explorer II was launched in 1971 and in 2011 we received the new Explorer II pictured above. Since it’s release, we have only received a few of these models as they are quite popular.
Canadian Retail Price: $8200
Diameter: 42mm
Movement: Automatic Mechanical featuring a second time zone indicator.
Available in a black or white dial. As of this writing both are in stock. Call 204.774.5544 for more details and ask for Jonathan or Jeremy.
Watch companies love to make incredible intense and complicated watches. When a watch enthusiast uses the term “complication,” he/she is talking about specific features. For example, date indicator is a complication, a chronograph, day indicator, alarm, etc. are all complications. And in mechanical watches, the more complications, the more expensive and impressive the watch becomes.
I was recently in Vancouver visiting the owner of a jewellery store I know and he carries a line of watches by the name of Franck Muller. He showed me in a magazine the watch that he got to handle when he visited with the folks at Franck Muller. This watch, which is considered to be the worlds most complicated watch, sells for approximately $2.7 million dollars. Pictured above, the watch is made in platinum and has 36 complications including a tourbillion and a 1000 year perpetual calendar. Perpetual calendar’s on mechanical watches are extremely difficult and complicated to design, and every watch brand that I have heard of that makes perpetual calendars are only good for 100 years. The fact that this is good for 1000 years is incredible! I know you are thinking that nobody will have a watch for 100 years let alone 1000, but it is more the engineering feat of being able to track time for such a long period that is marvelous.
For more information, click here, or read about it on Franck Muller’s website here.
We have just received a used Rolex Submariner Date, circa 1997. The watch is in excellent running condition, and has a few minor nicks and scratches. The watch was overhauled in November of 2009.
Asking price is $4500 plus taxes. *****SOLD*****
Rolex Calibre 3035
I have been fortunate in the past few days to be able to completely dismantle a Rolex movement and reassemble it.
A big thanks to Louis, our Rolex technician. He is truly a watchmaker in every sense of the word, and has the ability to fix many different types of watches, not just Rolex’s. And as it turns out, he is VERY patient!
It was through Louis’ guidance that I was able to disassemble this movement and then put it back together. Many people like to say that Rolex is overpriced, and you are paying for the name. I wish everyone could have the chance to fully disassemble a mechanical timepiece because then I think they may very well appreciate the technical aspects of the watch and realize just what it is you are paying for.
Look at the watch on your wrist. It may be a Rolex, it may be a Timex, but regardless of the brand, for a moment try to understand how it is keeping time. If it is digital, or battery powered, it will have a circuit board and a battery in it. If, however, it is mechanical, you may have absolutely no idea how those hands move around, and how they move around in very precise intervals (seconds, minutes, hours). There are so many parts that have to come together it is quite incredible, especially how delicate these parts are. And the fact that the movement must stand up to all kinds of beatings that the wearer will put it through, how they keep time at all seems almost like a miracle!
The many gears, tiny screws, springs, bridges, jewels, and oils, all working together in perfect harmony is really…well it is art.
I cannot believe this will be my 3rd visit to Basel! How the time flies…(pun intended).
This March I will be making the trek to Basel, Switzerland, to meet with some of the most prestigious brands in the world. The trip will be very short, and packed full of meetings and dinner parties, but should be quite enjoyable.
I’m quite excited to have the opportunity to sit down with a few new brands that Winnipeg does not have. I do not know if we will bring these brands to the ‘peg, or if we can for that matter, but it will certainly be great to physically handle these watches. What brands you ask? Well I think for the time being I’ll keep that secret safe with me…I’ll let you know how it goes after Basel.
I will be posting information to our Facebook fan page, so if you haven’t “Liked” us yet, please feel free too. There will be lots of pictures going up, assuming the iPad/iPhone doesn’t fail me while I’m out there. Also, if you want to follow us on Twitter, I will be “Tweeting” as I go.
We are very proud to have just received the Omega De Ville “Orbis” Hour Vision timepiece. This is a special edition watch which, though not numbered, will be hard to get; I don’t expect to get another one into stock.
The cool thing about this timepiece is that proceeds from it’s sale will go to help the organization known as Orbis. Omega has guaranteed $1 Million U.S. to go towards funding this organization.
What is Orbis you ask? Orbis is an international not-for-profit organization that helps countries that have issues with preventable blindness. They help by providing training to people in the countries themselves, as well, they have a flying eye hospital that goes in and will physically help people who suffer from blindness. For more information on Orbis click here.
After a month of renovations, we have just rebuilt our service centre! We are fully equipped to repair almost any watch, and our Rolex technician has taken additional training so he can now repair every Rolex watch currently in production (except the Yachtmaster II).
We are proud to have invested in additional tools and machines so as to make sure that every repair we do is of the highest standard. Interestingly, we invested in a machine called The Fathometre. This is an incredible machine that has the capability of applying up to 1220 metres of pressure on a watch….most watches would be crushed under this weight!
Today has been a nice relaxing day. I didn’t have any appointments so I just walked the show and looked at as many brands as possible. Blancpain, a very high-end watch line under the Swatch Group, had brought in 3 Lamborghini’s (aside from the one they had in their booth) that I believed are used to race in the FIA GT1 world championship. After I stopped drooling over them, I moved on to look at watches. The show is so big, and so vast, that after awhile they all start to look the same. Some notable brands: Breitling, Nomos Glashutte, Glashutte Original, Invicta, Ebel, Hamilton, Frederique Constant, Nixon, Chopard, Concord, Corum, and Zenith (to name just a few).
I have posted more pictures to our Facebook Page. Have a look, let me know which ones you like. This is my last post while I’m out here. Thanks for reading.
Today was a great day. Started off the morning by visiting the Victorinox Swiss Army booth. They have some really nice pieces coming out for the spring/summer/fall, and the styles are consistent with the brand. I have always enjoyed Swiss Army watches, maybe because it was one of the first watches I have ever owned (thanks dad!). But the brand has always just been there, making good watches for everyday wear at very reasonable prices.
After that, I headed for my next appointment at Tag Heuer. Every year Tag Heuer comes out with some kind of new innovation, and this year did not disappoint. This year they came out with a mechanical chronograph watch that is accurate to 1/1000th of a second! That may not seem impressive to you, but the technology and engineering that goes behind a watch like this is incredible. They only had a prototype their, so unfortunately I didn’t actually get to handle it. They did, however, have another new introduction, the Tag Heuer Mikograph. This is a really cool watch, limited to 150 pieces worldwide, in solid 18K rose gold on a beautiful brown leather strap. Price tag is $50,000, so I only ordered 3 (joking of course). I got to play with the watch, and it is REALLY cool; when you start the chronograph, the large ‘seconds hand’ actually spins around, taking 1 second to do a complete revolution.
I did meet with a couple of watch lines we currently do not carry, but like I said in an earlier post, I will not be revealing names until we have made some decisions. However, Independent Jewellers will be taking up a new brand this year, the Philip Stein collection of watches. These watches are completely different than anything we carry, and have this technology called “natural frequency technology.” Now you might be thinking, ‘oh, it’s another Q-Ray,’ but this is not so. It really does work, and the testimonials are quite incredible. That, and they did this little test on me that freaked me out completely, and even now I have a hard time believing it. Anyways, we will be receiving the watches sometime in May and will be putting them in to our Polo Park location. Nobody else in Manitoba will be carrying these watches, so come down in May to try them on (and ask for them to do the ‘arm’ test, you will be sold on it). Prices for Philip Stein range from $500 to about $1500, with some going higher.
Well thats all for today. I have posted more pictures to our Facebook page. Be back tomorrow.
Day 2 at Basel has been great. Other than doing a little bit of hotel juggling which I won’t get into here, the day went very well. I met with Bulova in the morning and they showed me the Bulova Accutron line. Really quite a beautiful line, and the fit and finish is top notch!
I have taken a ton of photos which I have posted to our Facebook page. And I finally got a shot of the new Rolex Cosmograph Daytona which I will post here as well (see below). I also looked at a whole slew of watch brands that we don’t carry, and I have posted pictures of some of the watches to Facebook.
Anyways, in the afternoon I met with Omega (and I just realized that I didn’t take a single picture there! Tomorrow I’ll get some). They have some really beautiful pieces coming out this year. They have re-done the Seamaster Planet Ocean and it looks incredible; they now have it with their in-house movement, the calibre 8500. Also, Omega has released their in-house made chronograph movement (the calibre 9300) which is based of course off of their exceptional calibre 8500 movement. A surprising change came with their famed Seamaster 300M, aka, ‘The James Bond’ watch. They re-did the dial of both the blue and the black models, the main difference is really that they got rid of the waves on the dial; the blue is less of a green-blue like it is now, and the black is much richer (darker perhaps?). They are very beautifully done and I am sure they will be a hit (Omega wouldn’t do a change like this without researching it, remember the change to the Constellations a few years back?), but a bold move indeed considering how popular that watch is; I believe the appearence of that watch has essentially gone unchanged since Pierce Brosnan wore it in the James Bond movie ‘Goldeneye’ which was released back in 1995.
I finished the day off meeting with Citizen watch company. Some really beautiful new models being released which I have ordered for both our locations and we should be expecting them sometime over the summer. I also ordered a beautiful limited edition watch from Citizen that is really quite nice, and is priced very well at $850; I believe the watch is limited to 2500 worldwide and I am sure will not stay in our showcase very long once we get it.
I’ll be back tomorrow with more photos and more tales. Thanks for reading.
New Rolex Daytona in 18K rose gold on a black leather strap.
Ulysee Nardin. This watch has a price tag of $1,000,000 (I’m assuming thats U.S. dollars). Made in platinum with a specialized tourbillion movement, this beauty apparently has over 33 carats of diamonds and over 16 carats of blue sapphires. For more information, click here.
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Watches | Jonathan May 1, 2012 | 
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