For all the stories we write about Seiko here at Fratello Watches, we spend that exact opposite amount of time talking about Citizen. There are some reasons for that: namely, they're a tough company to track down and they almost solely focus on non-mechanical watches these days (despite owning Miyota, one of the largest suppliers of mechanical movements). On the vintage side, we're guilty of havin

On the 25th of December 2018, the man who probably had the biggest impact on Seiko's modern history, and possibly the story of the modern watch industry in the 20th century, passed away.Tsuneya Nakamura reached the age of 95 years and a funeral service was held on the 4th of February in the city of Suwa, in Japan's Nagano Prefecture, where Nakamura san spent most of his life serving local industry

A little while ago we took a closer look at some of H. Moser & Cie's 2019 SIHH novelties. I'm talking about the Endeavour Centre Seconds Concept Blue Lagoon, a beautiful and low-key albeit 100% Haute Horlogerie timepiece. If you are familiar with the brand H. Moser & Cie you probably know that they can be a tiny bit more daring from time to time. We all remember their huge marketing succes

What an installment of This Week in Watches we have for you. So much exciting news reached us this week. Let’s get to it! I’ll start with a watch which was presented last week, but exclusively in Japan. It must have taken the news a little while to travel to our region, but trust me, it was worth waiting for.Grand Seiko SBGA421We haven’t been able to find any official press infor

As one of Germany’s most important watch and jewelry fairs, tickets for Inhorgenta Munich were hot property. A bustling atmosphere and fine array of brands ensured a stellar success for the organizers. Fratello deployed a trio of intrepid fair-goers to check out the novelties on show.And yes, we tried to photograph the pieces for you. As anyone who has ever been to a watch fair will know, ta

The first time I saw the Tissot PRX, I was ambivalent. It looked exciting on the renderings, but the quartz movement was a turnoff. Since then, I managed to snag one for a few weeks, and my feelings have changed.I enjoyed wearing the watch, and the fact that it is quartz did not bother me at all. Furthermore, if you wished the PRX was a mechanical watch, don't worry, we have good news for you too.

The last time we heard about Nivada, everything was about the Chronomaster. It was the first model the resurrected brand released to the market in many iterations. Now, it is not a secret that in the foreseeable future, we’ll see some more renditions of iconic models from Nivada’s past. This week the Depthmaster, a classic diver from Nivada, will hit the shelves.For most of us, the Dep

You may have recently read my collector’s week article from last weekend. If you did, you’d know that I got into this hobby by collecting microbrands, and I still follow the microbrand sector very closely. Why? Well, there are some great brands out there making excellent watches and having a positive impact on the industry as a whole. One of those brands is Zelos. Today, I am looking a

Our recent article about one of our readers and his Speedmaster Mark II inspired some others to share their stories with us. This week, we feature stories from Stuart Lees and Mark Talbot about their Speedmaster Professional watches.Both stories have one thing in common: it took quite a while before both authors finally purchased the Omega Speedmaster. But it was due to very different reasons, I m

As watch enthusiasts, we all know and understand that transporting our precious watches can be logistically challenging. Watches are generally tougher than we give them credit for. Nevertheless, they can easily sustain aesthetic or superficial damage if not properly protected. Most of us wouldn't just throw a watch into our backpack unprotected; keys, pens, coins, and other objects could potential

Your weekly installment of Fratello On Air is here. This time, Balazs and Mike handle a reader question about a few rather different chronographs.

Seiko’s “The Black Series” is back, now featuring four of the brand’s $1,000+ professional divers. The first three in the new lineup are the Mechanical Diver’s Modern Re-interpretation models SPB253J1, SPB255J1, and SPB257J1. The watches take inspiration from some of Seiko’s classic diver’s watches from 1965, 1968, and 1970 respectively. The fourth and cro

As a watch aficionado, you must have noticed that the Equation Of Time (EOT) is found on some of the most complex and expensive watches, so it must be important, right? Unfortunately, when googling Equation Of Time, one finds dazzling formulas and lengthy pieces of scientific text. But what does it mean to those of us without a degree in astronomy? Although I must admit the foundation is complex,

Whenever Fratello works with a brand partner on a limited edition, it’s always something with a story of how and why it came to be. Fratello is a business at the end of the day, but we don’t treat watch collaborations as purely commercial enterprises. All of us on the Fratello team are watch lovers and watch enthusiasts like you, the Fratelli. That enthusiast-first ideology helped crea

Does anyone know the infinite money cheat code for us watch geeks? I cannot recall how many hours my best mate Tim and I played GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64. It was the 1990s, and we had nothing but time. The system of cheat codes was one of the many great things about that game. We looked up complicated button combinations in gaming magazines - L+left, L+R+right, L+right, R+down, and so on. And b

“Hey Daan, instead of only reviewing brand-new watches, wouldn’t it be cool to also review pre-owned watches every now and then?” said a guy to me at a recent get-together. And then he went on to say, “Why don’t you give it a go with my Aquanaut that you’ve been wearing for the past 45 minutes?” It’s not every day that you get such an offer, so, of c

Baltic is on a bit of a roll with its releases. The young brand seems to have its finger firmly on the pulse of the horological community, continuously offering affordable alternatives to vintage watches with modern build quality and sharp pricing. Better yet, Baltic’s designs have a type of “effortless” style that seems to resonate with a large audience. So when I heard about th

The Sicura Smoke Watcher has been around for five decades, but I discovered it only a few months ago. At first, I thought it was a joke, but it’s not! The Sicura Smoke Watcher is one of the most peculiar 1970s weirdos I have seen so far. And I have seen quite a lot of them…Let’s frame the story with some context. During the 1960s and extending into the ’70s and ’80s,

It’s funny to think that, at one time, digital displays were seriously advanced technology. On top of this, items that featured such readouts, like calculators and watches, were incredibly expensive and seen as a luxury. Today’s new Casio Casiotron TRN-50 pays direct homage to this period because it’s a 50th-anniversary reissue of a similarly named watch from 1974. If you’r

Christiaan van der Klaauw (CvdK) is a brand known for its astronomical complications. Its watches feature miniature planetaria, small three-dimensional versions of the Moon, and entire star systems on the dials. More often than not, the celestial bodies on CvdK’s watches are part of an ingenious complication. That’s still the case on this new limited-edition stAriadne developed in coll