A Few Extremely Expensive Pocket Watches

As far as I thus far been able to determine, there are not many new mechanical pocket watches currently for sale between cheap pieces of junk whose cases can't be opened, so that they're meant to be used until they stop, and then thrown away rather than repaired, like Bic lighters, if Bic lighters sometimes cost more than $100; and extremely expensive items such as the subjects of this post.

This beautiful rose gold piece was unveiled by Panerai at SIHH 2014:

It's currently featured on panerai.com, along with a white-gold version. 50mm, which seems about the right width for a pocket watch to me. Maybe 48mm would be perfect. $61,600 for the rose gold, $65,300, which may be more money than I have earned in my life so far, for the white gold. And no second hands in sight on either one. But I still think they're beautiful.

Panerai also makes the Pocket Watch Tourbillon GMT Ceramica. $184,100.

This one was introduced in 2013, and watch lovers in general go gaga over it. There are a lot of things over which watch lovers go gaga which I didn't understand 5 years ago but understand now, as you can see if you read posts on this blog labelled mechanical watch. Ceramic cases are one of those things over which watch lovers go gaga which I still don't understand. I'd much rather have that rose gold watch, and not only because the ceramic tourbillon is 3 times more impossible for me to afford, but also because I think that the gold watch looks much nicer, and I'm about 100% certain that it's much heavier, which I would like also.

Besides the ceramic case, there's the size of the tourbillon: 59mm. That's too much, if you ask me. Getting close to hockey-puck-ridiculous size. Speaking of hockey pucks: the Vacheron Constantine Reference 57260 --

-- has been inaccurately described as being about as big as a hockey puck. Actually, it's much larger than a hockey puck: 98mm wide and 50.55mm thick, compared to a regulation puck at 76mm wide and 25mm thick. The Vacheron Constantine Reference 57260 is twice as thick as a hockey puck and 22mm wider. And there's only one of them: the photo above is a double exposure, showing you that it has one dial in front and a different one on back. It has been described -- accurately, I believe, although I suppose it's possible that the statement has been very recently outdated -- as the world's most complicated watch.

Well, wait just a minute about that: is it a watch? Call me a grumpy curmudgeon if you wish, but I say no: it's a clock. It's a very nice clock, but I don't know of anybody who could fit it into one of their pockets or would even want to try. It's closer in size to a chicken pot pie than to a hockey puck. It weighs about 2 pounds, or more than 5 hockey pucks.

But of course this isn't about me and my ideas of what is and isn't a watch. Whatever you call it, either someone liked it well enough to give Vacheron Constantine an enormous sum of money for it, or Vacheron Constantine liked someone well enough to give them a stupendously extravagant gift.

How much does it cost? Nobody's going to tell you that. Nobody's even going to say who bought it. If it's ever sold at auction, I can't imagine it going for less than 8 figures.

Some Surprising Things About Certain Watches

Let's start with the Swiss luxury watchmaker Bovet, which manufactures a variety of watches which can be converted from wristwatches with leather straps to tabletop clocks to pocket watches on chains, and back again to the wristwatches,

all in a matter of seconds, with no tools, easy as can be, just by pushing some buttons and pulling some levers. These watches by Bovet are interesting to me because I like pocket watches, and the world is not exactly swimming in new high-quality pocket watches these days. (New cheap crap pocket watches: there you got more to choose from. I think maybe because of steampunk, but I'm not sure. How much do I know about steampunk? If I weren't into pocket watches, I might still have never even heard the word "steampunk," that's how much.)

If I had one of these Bovets, maybe I would be surprised to learn that I actually occasionally preferred to use the wristwatch- or tabletop clock-configuration. But it would be a surprise if I ever owned a Bovet, because the only ones I've eve seen cost 5 or 6 figures.

I've finally broken free of The Watch Snob's disdain for watches from Panerai, and allowed myself to covet them unreservedly, although I can't afford them either. Today I came across a review of the Panerai PAM 560,

And was quite surprised to see that this beautiful thing, with a MSRP closer to 10 grand than 5, doesn't have a second hand.

Then I looked at pictures of a lot of Panerais and was surprised to see that many of them have no second hands.

Then I thought about that for a while, and had to come to the surprising conclusion -- surprising to me. It may not surprise you at all -- that many very expensive watches from some of the most top-end of top-end brands don't have second hands. For example, take another look at that Bovet higher up on the page: do you see a second hand anywhere? I don't. I see an hour hand and a minute hand, are they're both on a very tiny dial. It seems that with this model, Bovet's biggest concern about the dial was that it not interfere with looking at the movement -- what you and I might be more accustomed to referring to as "the guts." And the guts are lovely to look at, no doubt.

Something that surprises me even more about that Panerai: it's got an 8-day power reserve, but no power reserve indicator. I've seen pictures of the back of the watch, it's not there either. This is a hand-wind watch, not an automatic -- is the owner supposed to remember how many days ago he or she wound it?

That Bovet, with the tiny dial and no second hand: I'm sure it's accurate to within a few seconds a months, that's what that pretty movement is there for. But it's seems to me that you'd have to own it for a year or so, and pay very close attention, to know for sure if it really was that accurate. But many of us have to re-set our watches every 6 months to change between Standard Time and Daylight Savings Time -- clearly, some people are prepared to pay huge amounts of money for watches, huge in part because they are extremely high-accuracy and high-precision instruments, and are content not to be able to check that accuracy.

Well, glass houses and stones: there's no need to have any kind of watch at all these days.

Now we come to a watch which I could actually afford, if I saved up for a while: the Swatch Sistem51 Irony:

Swatch is the Swiss watch brand known for making inexpensive and disposable quartz watches with plastic cases. Disposable, because the plastic cases are sealed shut so they can't be opened up for repairs.

A few years ago, Swatch introduced the Sistem51, a mechanical watch. I first heard about the Sistem51 a couple of days ago. 51 is the number of parts in the watch, a very low number of parts. Some very expensive watches (see for example Bovet, above) have as many parts as possible, are complicated for the sake of being complicated. Indeed, the French word "Complication" is part of the name of some of the most expensive watches offered by various companies. But you can go the other way, too, and see how much a watch can do with how few parts. The Seiko 5, for example, has become a legend because of its simple, and tremendously reliable, design. I've been trying to find out exactly how many parts a Seiko 5 has. I'm sure various models of the 5 have different numbers of parts. I'm pretty sure none has as few as 51.

The first Swatch51's came with plastic cases which were sealed shut: not made to be repaired, just like other products from Swatch. But then I learned to my surprise about the Sistem51 Irony, released just a couple of years ago: these are watches with metal cases which open up for maintenance. Swatch is making concessions to watch fanciers who like permanence.

At first I thought they were called Irony because it was ironic that Swatch was going in this direction. But having thought about it some more, I'm now almost entirely sure that it's because, instead of the usual Swatch plastic cases, the Ironies have metal cases. Steel cases. Steel with iron in it. Huh? Get it? Iron. The cases are iron-y. Iron-y -- huh?! Huh?! Get it?

I'm mostly interested in the Sistem51 Irony at this point because some people who seem to know watches well seem tremendously excited about it. It's like smoke and fire: their excitement is there, like smoke, which means that maybe someday I, too, will be excited about it -- like catching fire. There is a lot of excitement about the fact that the Sistem51 is entirely assembled by robots. I was surprised to learn that it is (or was? I don't know) the very first watch with no hand-assembly. Experts seem to regard the Sistem512 design as revolutionary. They think it could lead to huge, huge steps forward in watch design. (Has it already? I don't know.)

So, okay, I'll keep an eye on it.

I've read two different head-to-head reviews comparing the Swatch Sistem51 Irony to the Seiko 5. They're both about the same price. The Irony is slightly more expensive. Both reviews concluded that the Seiko 5, generally regarded as the best deal in the world of watches, is slightly better than the Irony -- but only slightly. They both suggested that if a person was really into watches and wanted to have more than one, but was poor, they might want both the Seiko 5 and the Irony.

I'm not going to get an Irony right away. Unless someone gives one to me.

Tantalum

If someone asks: what's the good of being obsessed with watches which are much too expensive for you to afford (for the moment, although of course all that will change when yr rich and famous), the answer is: you learn things.

And if they say: Oh yeah? What kind of things? you can say:

Well, for instance, just now, just this very minute, I learned of the existence of a metal about which I had not known, called tantalum or tantalium. How did I learn about it? This is how:

This watch has a case and bezel made of tantalum. I found this watch by doing a Google Shopping search for Panerai -- which is a brand of Swiss watch, and, as far as I know, unaffiliated with Panera,

the restaurant chain which is proud of its fancy bread. I looked up the watch, and saw that its case is made of tantalium or tantalum, and then I looked up tantalum.

Tantalum was discovered in 1802 by the Swedish chemist Anders Ekeberg. It has an attractive blue-gray metallic luster, and a specific gravity of 16.69, which means that it is a little more than twice as heavy as iron, about 1 1/2 times as heavy as lead, about 85% as heavy as gold and 75% as heavy as platinum, and yes I know that I said "heavy" instead of "dense" and I don't care, because I'd rather be understood than meaninglessly precise. In addition to being very heavy, tantalum is ductile, very hard, easily fabricated, highly conductive of heat and electricity, and extraordinarily resistant to corrosion by acids.

How much does Tantalum cost? That's a very good question. I have consulted many sources about this question, and they are unanimous in giving these 2 answers: "Contact us and we'll quote you a price right away!" and "Here, let us sell you some of this tantalite instead!" Tantalite is an ore which contains tantalum. How difficult is it to extract the tantalum from tantalite? I have no idea whatsoever.

They (scientists, not the merchants offering tantalite for sale online) say that there is about 2000 times more tantalum than gold in the Earth's crust, and about 700 times more tantalum than platinum. How do they know such things? Don't ask me. I still can't wrap my mind around how people tell time by looking at things in the sky, which they've been doing for thousands of years. There are lots and lots of things I don't know and/or can't comprehend, things which are very basic to some other people.

And I know all of this because of my interest in the expensive watches, and for no other reason. Can you get a brand-new tantalum Panerai right now, or is the tantalum just something they did with a few watches in the past? That I don't know.