On November 22nd, 1950, the Fort Wayne Pistons tipped off against the Minneapolis Lakers in a game of NBA basketball. The league itself was only four years old, and the game barely resembled what we know of it today. Shorts were short. Shots were stiff. Rolex have mastered in-house gem-setting and Patek Philippe have wisely partnered with the Swiss company Salanitro, a leader in the gem-setting world. But few other watchmakers are really in the game. MB&F now joins the list of top-tier players. Panerai introduced eSteel last year in the bezel-less Luminor Marina. With the Submersible line Panerai uses ceramic that's been polished to a glossy finish for its trademark unidirectional rotating dive bezel. The dial also wears a gradient pattern; light at the top and dark at the bottom. Inside is the ever-present P.900 that's used in over a dozen Panerai models. The typography on the dial is all custom-drawn for the Model 1, by the way, and is inspired by survey maps that the brand founders liked. It's a little bit reminiscent of the Bauhaus-style numerals you'd find on something like a NOMOS Tangente, but with a bit of added whimsey. I really dig both the type and the dials – they get better the more you look at them, which is always a good sign. The basic idea behind the tourbillon is that if you put the escapement, balance, and spring in a rotating cage or on a rotating platform, you get a single average rate for all the vertical positions. You need only adjust this rate to match the rate of your watch in the flat positions, and you should, theoretically, have a perfect timekeeper, though as Dr. replica panerai watches Hosted and organized by Ahmed Seddiqi and marking the retailer's 75th anniversary, the show, which welcomed a true 'who's who' of watch industry executives, included more than 90 brands and attracted more than 49,000 visitors, a 113% increase over the previous edition in 2023.

And, put simply, that problem is: How do you make a vintage-inspired chronograph that lives up to modern watchmaking standards and can appeal to modern customers? Vacheron Constantin has opted to update as little as possible, ensuring that the watch exceeds expectations in terms of construction and finishing, but without losing any of the historical elements. One of the things I like most about Vacheron these days is their complete calendar complication – it's not something anyone else in the haute horlogerie range does, and it offers an interesting look, as well as the pleasure of interacting with the setting pushers, for quite a bit less than a perpetual calendar. He further said these C07 movements are "highly serviceable." Tissot service fees tend to be quite reasonable, and Tissot is transparent about it: you can find a partial fee schedule on its website here. Sometimes the movement will simply be exchanged when sent in for service to speed up turnaround times, while the old movement is sent to Tissot in Switzerland for full servicing before being used again. I had the pleasure of introducing Davide to one John Goldberger early on in our relationship, and we can see so much attention to detail paid to many of Davide's products, at Tudor and Montblanc. Davide is also often seen sitting in the first row at the Geneva auctions not because his job mandates it, but because he wants to. However, as this watch was made early in the life of the 16753, it retains my favorite visual elements from its predecessor – specifically, the matte brown dial and the smaller "nipple" dial markers. A point of interest, the early steel and gold GMT-Masters had an applied coronet but by the time 1980 rolled around, Rolex seemed to think that painted logos were the way to go.

(George Daniels famously wrote that it was difficult to make a complicated watch that doesn't have a dial that looks like a gas meter – a fair remark, even today). Some prefer a more rapid tempo while others gravitate towards a more leisurely pace.