Community & Culture
Fratello
Sunday Morning Showdown: Rolex Oyster Perpetual Yellow Rolesor Vs. Oyster Perpetual “Jubilee”
Fratello's Sunday Morning Showdown pits Rolex's two headline Watches and Wonders releases against each other: the steel Oyster Perpetual 36 "Jubilee" (ref. 126000-0016) at €6,550 versus the yellow Rolesor Oyster Perpetual 36 (ref. 126003) at €8,250, both marking the Oyster case's 100th anniversary. The models are mechanically identical—36mm case, caliber 3230, 70-hour reserve, updated Superlative Chronometer certification—leaving color, materials, and price as the deciding factors. As ever with hyped Rolex, both are near-impossible to get at retail and command steep gray-market premiums.
Monochrome Watches
The ABCs of Time – Alternatives to Central Hands to Break Conventions
Monochrome runs a horological explainer on watches that abandon the central-hands layout, tracing the regulator dial from George Graham's 1715 precision clocks through Chronoswiss's first serially produced regulator wristwatch (the 1987 Régulateur) and surveying retrograde and off-center displays. The piece name-checks a broad cast — from Louis Erard, Junghans and Orient Star to Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, A. Lange & Söhne's Lange 1, Ulysse Nardin, and Jacob & Co.'s Astronomia — as case studies in relocating time indication. It's a reference/educational roundup rather than a news item, but it's a useful map of which brands own the "unconventional display" territory buyers pay a premium for.
Fratello
The Best Watch I Have Ever Owned: How My Rolex Explorer II Ref. 16570 Stumbled To Number One
Fratello kicks off a new "best watch I've ever owned" series with Thomas Van Straaten crowning his black-dial Rolex Explorer II ref. 16570 — a watch he once considered one of the ugliest before its clumsy, industrial character won him over. His path to it was serendipitous: he bought it, barely connected, then bonded only after its value crashed and he stopped babying it. It's the kind of personal-essay format brands like when neo-vintage Rolex references stay top of mind.
Reviews
aBlogtoWatch
Second Look: Why The Rolex Yacht-Master 42 Is No Ordinary Rolex (Not In A Good Way)
aBlogtoWatch delivers a scathing verdict on the Rolex Yacht-Master 42 in RLX Titanium (ref. 226627), calling it "as close to being objectively bad" as a luxury watch gets and faulting its soft, uneven bevels, rough brushing, and gouged bracelet links as unacceptable at its price — which debuted at $14,050 in 2023 and has since climbed to $16,050. The reviewer, a Rolex owner himself, pointedly benchmarks it against Grand Seiko's sharply finished titanium at $12,400 and notes Rolex arrived at titanium a half-century after Citizen's 1970 X-8, offering only "meaningless high-speak" about its "specially selected" grade 5 alloy.
aBlogtoWatch
Watch Review: Exploring The Revolutionary South With The Hamilton A250 Khaki Field Mechanical 36mm
aBlogtoWatch reviews the Hamilton A250 Khaki Field Mechanical 36mm, a semiquincentennial reissue of the rare 1970s FAPD 5101, and comes away a fan — praising its 100m water resistance, warm domed acrylic crystal, legible Vietnam-era dial, and the H-50 movement's 80-hour power reserve, while faulting the strap's not-quite-premium reinforcement. The trade detail: the 1,776-piece limited edition ($725) is already sold out, but a non-limited version is available and will be produced only in 2026.</parameter> <parameter name="categories">["field", "vintage"]
New Releases
Time + Tide
New releases from Awake, Greubel Forsey, MB&F and more
Time+Tide's weekly roundup gathers a nostalgia-heavy slate of new releases, led by Greubel Forsey's Balancier QM — which finally names the hand-finishing standard the brand has upheld since 2004 — and MB&F's rose gold LM101 EVO NYC Edition marking its first permanent New York space. The wide-ranging list also spans Awake, Straum, Louis Vuitton, Frederique Constant, Zenith, Chronoswiss, Breitling's Top Time Eddy Merckx, Parmigiani Fleurier, TAG Heuer, Sartory Billard, Hamilton, Tissot, Ollech & Wajs and The Face in Time. Roundups like this are the trade's weekly pulse-check on where the release calendar — and the industry's storytelling — is trending.
aBlogtoWatch
The Corum Heritage Coin Watches Celebrate America’s 250 Years Of Independence
Corum revives its 1964 Coin watch for America's 250th, splitting a genuine gold coin into dial and caseback around a 39mm yellow gold case housing the automatic Caliber CO082 (4 Hz, ~42-hour reserve) on a leather-effect vulcanized rubber strap. The Heritage Coin collection runs to 250 pieces total across 50 state-specific references — five per design, each with a unique engraved caseback — priced at $58,000 and sold exclusively on Corum's website starting July 4, 2026.</parameter> <parameter name="categories">["dress"]