Business & Industry
WatchPro
Rolex CPO watches outsell new and unworn on the grey market
Secondary market watch sales hit $10.5 billion in H1 2026 (up 37.2% year-on-year), and within Rolex's $4.3 billion slice, CPO sales jumped 101% to $385 million, overtaking the $335 million grey market trade in new and unworn Rolex. The certification premium has compressed to 22.6% over the open market (down from 40%-plus in year one), with The 1916 Company undercutting rivals at roughly 15% and turning inventory fastest, a signal that brand-backed certification is converting directly into liquidity and share gains that slower retailers like Watches of Switzerland and Bucherer will have to price against.
Worn & Wound
Louis Erard Partners with Brilliant Earth on the Jeweler’s First Watch Collection
Louis Erard has quietly ceded the dial to a jewelry partner: the Solstice Collection, its first watch line with Brilliant Earth, puts "Brilliant Earth" at 12:00 and relegates Louis Erard to a "Manufactured by" caseback credit. Built on the La Petite Seconde platform (39mm steel, Sellita SW260), the two-piece Summer ($3,995, 65 pieces) and Winter ($4,995, 35 pieces, with baguette lab-diamond markers) target Brilliant Earth's jewelry clientele rather than watch enthusiasts, a telling pivot for a brand whose relevance was rebuilt on enthusiast-facing indie collabs.
WatchTime
46 Watch Brands Join the Lineup for WatchTime New York 2026
WatchTime New York returns to Gotham Hall October 16-18 with its largest lineup yet: 46 brands, from maisons like Blancpain, Chopard, and Piaget to independents including MB&F, Voutilainen, and Urwerk. Friday VIP access runs $250 with single-day tickets at $50, and the scale signals how much the US collector market has become a fixture on the industry's event calendar.
WatchPro
CORDER’S COLUMN: Citizen Spiderman swings into Watches of Switzerland
Watches of Switzerland is now marketing a Citizen x Marvel Spiderman watch to US customers, a striking signal of how far the luxury retailer has stretched its portfolio, which now spans indies like Daniel Roth, Ressence and Armin Strom down to sub-$500 Citizen and Timex pieces (online only, and absent from the UK site). The commercial logic: expensive independents at the top and affordable Asian brands as the first rung on a ladder to a horological habit, even as in-store space narrows toward Rolex, Cartier and Patek. With online reportedly around 20% of group sales and growth swinging from 4% (2024) to -5% (2025) before accelerating in 2026, adjacency and omnichannel are now the retailer's central bets.
WatchPro
Micromilspec signs big-air world champion Liam Whaley
Micromilspec has signed big-air kitesurfing world champion Liam Whaley as a brand ambassador, a partnership the Norwegian brand casts as an easy fit given Whaley's obsession with timing his runs to the millisecond. Notably, he passed over the brand's chronograph and GMT complications for the Field Test Unit, its most stripped-back time-only model, and there's no fixed campaign roadmap: projects will be announced as they develop.</parameter> <parameter name="categories">["field"]
Community & Culture
Revolution Watch
The Bovet Family: Pascal Raffy on Craft, Integrity and the Human Hand
Wei Koh sits down with Bovet owner and CEO Pascal Raffy at the manufacture for a wide-ranging talk on integrated high watchmaking, tracing the pivotal 2006 acquisition of Château de Môtiers and the Tramelan facility, and covering in-house capabilities from hairsprings and regulating organs to hand engraving and assembly. Watches discussed include the Virtuoso XI, Récital 28 Prowess 1 and Récital 30. The subtext: Raffy is making the case that vertical integration and the human hand are Bovet's competitive moat in a market where "in-house" is claimed loosely, a positioning play as much as a philosophy.
Revolution Watch
Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph: Why The Beast Still Matters
Wei Koh and Constant Kwong revisit the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph, tracing "The Beast" from its disruptive 1993 debut through its blacked-out, titanium and forged-carbon variants to the latest 42mm Selfwinding Chronograph powered by the integrated flyback Calibre 4404. The retrospective is a reminder of how much of the high-luxury sports-chronograph category AP effectively invented, and why the Offshore remains a template rivals still chase.
Revolution Watch
Rare Finds & Hidden Grails: Inside Ponti Collection
Revolution Watch visits Stan Ponti, the second-generation dealer behind Geneva's Ponti Collection, for a video tour of rare vintage timepieces and two-plus decades spent curating important collections. A reminder that the vintage trade's real value sits with the quiet, long-established Geneva middlemen who move grails privately, some of the featured pieces already sold before the video aired.
Monochrome Watches
Twelve on Time – MB&F’s Maximilian Büsser and his Personal Relationship with Time and Watches
Monochrome launches "Twelve on Time," a conversation series putting industry figures through twelve questions about their personal relationship with time, creativity, and craft, kicking off with MB&F founder Maximilian Büsser. For a brand built almost entirely on Büsser's persona and storytelling, the format is a natural fit: this is founder-as-marketing done through a friendly outlet.
Hodinkee
Talking Watches: With Michael Friedman – Former Head Of Complications At Audemars Piguet And Founder Of Pattern Recognition
Hodinkee's Talking Watches sits down with Michael Friedman, the former Head of Complications at Audemars Piguet and ex-Christie's specialist (he once advised Eric Clapton), who this year launched his own independent venture, Pattern Recognition. Its debut, the B Theory, is a triple-display piece with a fixed lab-grown-diamond moon, a visible tourbillon, and a case inspired by vintage Movado Polyplan curvature, built in a run of thirty with help from former AP colleagues. Friedman also walks through his personal collection, including a $740 eBay AP ring watch, a 1938 platinum AP made for the New York World's Fair bought at Clapton's 2003 Christie's sale, and a 1972 Royal Oak from the first 100 made.
WatchTime
Vintage Spotlight: Revisiting the Omega Constellation Perpetual Calendar
WatchTime revisits the Omega Constellation Perpetual Calendar, a 1990s piece with an integrated design and a mix of steel and gold. It's a reminder that the era's Constellation, long overshadowed by Omega's dive and dress icons, is quietly ripe for vintage reappraisal as collectors hunt for integrated-bracelet complications outside the usual suspects.
Reviews
SJX Watches
Berneron Quantième Annuel
SJX Watches goes hands-on with the Berneron Quantième Annuel, the brand's third release and first complication: a rigidly symmetrical, regulator-style jumping-hours annual calendar in a 38mm platinum case with replaceable steel bumpers, priced at CHF140,000 (24 pieces per color annually over 10 years). They praise the obsessive legibility, effortless date-setting, immaculate finishing and the efficiency of the 476-part cal. 595, while noting the divisive steel-bumper construction and a price more than double the Lange Saxonia Annual Calendar. For the trade, it signals founder Sylvain Berneron's deliberate refusal to be typecast, pivoting hard from the Mirage's organic asymmetry to a symmetrical complication while keeping gold movements as the through-line.
Worn & Wound
Owner’s Review: the Ōtsuka Lōtec No. 8
Worn & Wound delivers an owner's review of the Ōtsuka Lōtec No. 8, a 31mm x 47.7mm x 10.8mm rectangular jump-hour regulator inspired by Abbey Road mixing consoles, built on a Miyota base and priced in line with the rest of Jiro Katayama's catalog (unlike the six-figure in-house No. 9). The reviewer, already a No. 7.5 owner, is smitten: they praise the industrial "raw and unintentional" aesthetic, the milled single-block sapphire crystal, and the impossible-to-misread jump-hour "knob" hand, while faulting the angled crown as "jarring" and the retrograde minutes as harder to read precisely (30m water resistance). The trade takeaway: the No. 8 signals Ōtsuka Lōtec staying at accessible retail after fans feared the No. 9 marked a move upmarket, a reassurance for a brand whose hype is real and whose resale runs hot.
New Releases
SJX Watches
TAG Heuer’s Latest Carrera Taps Team Ikuzawa
TAG Heuer, Bamford Watch Department and Japanese racing squad Team Ikuzawa reunite for a second collaboration: the Carrera Chronograph x Team Ikuzawa, a 150-piece limited edition bringing the red-and-white livery to the 39mm "glassbox" case for the first time, priced at US$10,500 before taxes. Powered by the cal. TH20-10 with an 80-hour reserve, it drops applied hour markers for a chronograph-first dial and ships in an Ikuzawa-red toolbox with two extra straps, available from TAG Heuer boutiques and authorized retailers. The collab extends TAG's motorsport identity deeper into racing culture, a familiar playbook after last year's Fujiwara streetwear tie-up.
Monochrome Watches
The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Selfwinding Flying Tourbillon in “Bleu Nuit, Nuage” Ceramic
Audemars Piguet has rendered its Royal Oak Selfwinding Flying Tourbillon (ref. 26730CD) entirely in "Bleu Nuit, Nuage 50" ceramic, case, bracelet, crown and all, marking the first time the deep-blue ceramic (introduced in 2025) has been applied across this model's full architecture. The 41mm, 10.6mm-thick watch runs the in-house calibre 2950 flying tourbillon (21,600vph, 65-hour reserve) and joins the permanent collection at price-on-request, expected around CHF 210,000. Ceramic remains AP's most labor-intensive material trick, and stretching Nuage 50 across a full tourbillon build signals how far the brand is willing to push its ceramics capacity for its top-margin references.
aBlogtoWatch
The Luminox Adventure Watch Brings Vintage Expedition Design Into The Modern Era
Luminox has released the Adventure Watch, a Swiss-made field watch with a 43mm steel case, IP Antique-bronze unidirectional bezel, sapphire crystal, screw-down crown and 200m water resistance, running the Ronda 515 quartz movement with up to 60 months of battery life. It carries the brand's signature 16 tritium micro gas tubes (LLT) for 25 years of constant illumination, ships on black or brown leather straps, and is priced at $795. An expedition-styled play at the affordable-tool-watch buyer, where Luminox has always lived.
WatchTime
Hamilton Adds Tropical Colors to the Ventura Quartz S
Hamilton has added two tropical colorways, turquoise and pink, to the Ventura Quartz S, each with a yellow-tipped seconds hand nodding to the Hawaiian hibiscus and the model's signature asymmetrical Richard Arbib case. The steel case measures 24mm by 36mm and 7.8mm thick, running the ETA F05.115 quartz movement with up to 94 months of battery life and HeavyDrive shock protection, on a tool-free EasyClick bracelet, priced at $1,075. A summer-season play on the Elvis-linked icon, pitched squarely at the accessible, design-led buyer where Hamilton makes its volume.
Monochrome Watches
Chronoswiss Unveils the Small Second Stone Collection
Chronoswiss extends its Small Second line with two natural-stone dial editions: the Jasper, with a German jasper dial in a steel case (CHF 11,500 / EUR 12,700), and the Serpentine, with a Swiss serpentine dial in a two-tone steel and red gold case (CHF 16,900 / EUR 18,500). Both use the 40mm, 11.5mm-thick case with 30m rating, the automatic calibre C.6000 (55-hour reserve, 28,800vph), and are each limited to 50 pieces. The stone-dial play nods to the brand's Munich-to-Lucerne, German-to-Swiss story, a tidy bit of heritage packaging as Oliver Ebstein keeps repositioning Chronoswiss around colour and material spectacle.
Also at: Fratello · Time + Tide
Fratello
Heads Up For A Japanese History Lesson: The Roger Dubuis Excalibur The Kabuto Legacy
Roger Dubuis extends its miniature-figure Excalibur franchise from Arthurian knights to Japanese history with The Kabuto Legacy, a 28-piece limited edition depicting Edo Castle and 12 samurai commanders via their kabuto and kamon. The 45 x 16.87mm pink gold watch runs the in-house automatic RD821 (48-hour reserve, 14 finishing techniques, Poinçon de Genève) and is priced at €413,500 / US$385,500 / CHF 339,500, ex. taxes. It's a reminder that Roger Dubuis has quietly built a repeatable high-margin playbook: lean on métiers d'art and a cultural narrative to move six-figure objets to a small collector base rather than chase volume.
aBlogtoWatch
Actually Affordable: Marathon CeraShell Navigator Pilot’s Watch
Marathon has rolled out the CeraShell Navigator, a 2026 refresh of its 1986 Kelly Air Force Base pilot's watch that swaps Fibreshell for a bio-sourced plastic-and-ceramic CeraShell case, adds an aluminum 60-click bidirectional 12-hour bezel, tritium tube lume, and (finally) standard springbars in place of fixed bars. The 41mm quartz watch runs an ETA F06.105 (time-only NAV) or F06.115 (date NAV-D) with roughly 68-month battery life, priced at $550 for the NAV and $590 for the NAV-D. The move keeps Marathon in its sweet spot: a Swiss-made, mil-spec-adjacent tool watch that stays under $600 even as it creeps upmarket generation over generation.
Monochrome Watches
The Panerai Luminor Marina PAM01707 in Lightweight Carbotech
Panerai has released the Luminor Marina PAM01707, a 44mm dive watch with a full Carbotech case (bezel and crown protector included), DLC-coated titanium caseback and buckle, and a weight of around 100 grams with 300m water resistance. The date-free sandwich dial leans vintage-military, powered by the three-day automatic P.9010, and it ships on a brown calf strap plus a black rubber strap for EUR 15,200. Another entry in Panerai's steady push to spread proprietary case materials across the Luminor line, where Carbotech's marbled finish does the differentiating work.
Also at: Fratello
Podcasts
Revolution Watch
Masters of Chronometry: Resonance | EP 2
Episode 2 of Revolution's "Masters of Chronometry" has Wei Koh and Constant Kwong trace the history of resonance in watchmaking from Huygens through Janvier and Breguet to F.P. Journe's Chronomètre à Résonance, using the record-setting "Souscription, No. 007" as their entry point and comparing Journe's pure-resonance approach with modern watches that rely on more direct mechanical coupling.</parameter> <parameter name="categories">["complications"]
aBlogtoWatch
ABlogtoWatch Weekly Podcast #232: Swatch Rejections, Freak X Sticker Shock, And Day Versus Night Watches
Rick, Ariel, Ripley, and David break down Swatch's messy MoonSwatch 1984 application process, the pricier Ulysse Nardin Freak X, this year's GPHG nominations, and Fossil's Incredible Hulk watch, plus Ariel's case for owning separate day and night watches.