WatchTime New York, America’s luxury watch extravaganza, is only two days away! This year’s event is shaping up to be the biggest yet, with 37 participating watch brands displaying their latest and greatest timepieces at midtown Manhattan’s Gotham Hall on October 25-26. And if you’re into gold watches, you’ll want to check out these five precious-metal beauties from top brands that will be on display.
The new, rose-gold cased model of Blancpain’s luxury dive watch, the Fifty Fathoms, sports an all-new blue ceramic dial. The 45-mm, 18k gold case, which renders the watch water-resistant to 300 meters, represents the first use of precious metal for the Fifty Fathoms collection, which dates all the way back to 1953. The ceramic dial has a shimmering, cobalt hue for the sunburst-finish center of the dial and a more matte blue appearance for the surrounding chapter ring. The use of such ceramic for the dial is also a first for a Fifty Fathoms watch, which has previously used the material only for its bezel. The watch is powered by Blancpain’s in-house, self-winding Caliber 1315, which boasts a 120-hour power reserve. More details can be found here.
F.P. Journe introduced the original Octa Automatique Lune in 2007, and in 2019 the independent watchmaker refreshed its emblematic moon-phase watch with an updated dial and crown, and new case sizes. Now available in 40-mm and 42-mm sizes , in either platinum or the 6N rose gold case pictured below, the watches feature a distinctive silk-rope motif on their otherwise flat crowns and offer dials in either silvered white or Havana brown (as below). The dials have an outer railroad-track minute ring, blue- or gold-printed Arabic numerals, and a clous de Paris guilloché center. At 9 o’clock lies an indicator for the timepiece’s 120-hour power reserve; at 7:30 is the signature feature, an updated moon-phase display with a new sapphire disk. Inside is an F.P. Journe in-house caliber, whose major parts are also made of 18k gold. Other models and more info can be found here.
The Jaquet Droz Grande Seconde Dual Time collection unveils an updated dial design in four total variations, all measuring 43 mm in diameter, including the rose-gold model here. The watch features the same figure-eight dial layout of previous Grande Seconde models, but adds a new aesthetic element with its placement of an azimuthal globe projection (a view of the Earth from the North Pole) in the bottom half of the dial. The continents on the globe are surrounded by a mirror-polished ocean in either black or anthracite. Additionally, the 24-hour home time display is split into two distinct 12-hour segments: white for daytime and black for night, making the reading of the home time more intuitive. The movement, Caliber 2663H24, includes a silicon escapement and pallet wheels and a skeletonized, fan-like rotor that allows a view of the haute horlogerie decoration on the mainplate and bridges. Click here for additional details on the watch.
The MB&F Legacy Machine 2 (LM2) launched in 2013 as a joint effort between MB&F and inventive indie watchmakers Jean-Francois Mojon and Kari Voutilainen. The model showing at WatchTime New York, limited to just 12 pieces, will be the last model in that series with an 18k rose-gold case. Following the sleeker balance bridges of its predecessor, the LM2 Titanium, the LM2 Red Gold Blue offers a more elegant take on the original LM2, with a sunray-finished blue dial plate whose rich, vibrant hue is achieved through a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process. The watch — the first to incorporate a double flying balance wheel with a planetary differential that transmits and averages the rate to both regulators — has these elements poised on the front of the dial, along with a white lacquered, off-center subdial for the hours and minutes. Click here for more details and photos.
This year’s Omega Seamaster Diver 300M Chronograph has a 44-mm case made of Sedna gold, an alloy developed in-house by the Swatch Group, Omega’s parent company, which blends gold, copper and palladium for a long-lasting reddish luster. The watch’s unidirectional diver’s bezel is made of laser-ablated black ceramic, with a single white orientation dot of Super-LumiNova at 12 o’clock; the chrono pushers are also in black ceramic. The subdials on the bicompax dial feature golden rings around their borders that match the metal of the case. Inside the case and on display behind a sapphire caseback is Omega’s Co-Axial Master Chronometer Caliber 9901, which is based on the existing Caliber 9900 but stands out with the specialized 18k Sedna gold finish on its rotor and balance bridge. Click here for more details.
Interested in going for the gold, or in checking out the dozens of other new timepieces that will be on display, many shown to U.S. consumers for the first time? Order your ticket now for Saturday’s all-day session of WatchTime New York!