Reply With QuoteI love these posts Wimm, a great measure of what's popular.
Being a Fortis man, and given their 100 years history of watchmaking, I'm always surprised how little of the populus their watches hold.
As the snows of March are behind us and the April downpours dilute the effluent in the rivers it is high time that I give you the results for March. As far as 2023 is going it is very much another month, another surprise. Indeed we have a first, so have patience and all will be revealed.
March was our first five week month of the year so the total number of watches (656) flatter to deceive as the weekly average of 131.2 nestles neatly in between the figures for the previous two months. The great news is that the number of brands for the month is up to 134, a number which hasn't been exceeded since July 2021. Diversity stayed steady at 0.204 BpW however that hides some respectable weekly diversity scores which were all over 0.4 apart from the 24th (down to it having the highest number of watches in a week this year (146) which would have watered down the diversity a little).
March started off pretty much same old, same old with no hint of the drama to come. Rolex came first with fourteen, Seiko followed with ten and Omega was just behind on nine. A glitch in matrix occurred on the tenth. Omega came first (not unusual), what was unusual was the margin. With twenty one there were more Omega than Seiko (nine) and Rolex (eight) put together. This set the tone for the rest of the month. On the seventeenth Rolex managed to claw back one off the lead that Omega had leapt into. Seiko (seven) slipped further out of the race as as Panerai (eight) pushed them into fourth. On the twenty fourth there were enough Rolex to leave them level with all to play for on the thirty first. Doing the count for that day was quite exciting. Omega took an early lead and added to their numbers steadily during the day. Rolex, as they tend to, cropped up in clusters to keep them in contention. A result was only achieved in the dying minutes of the day. At ten past eleven that evening Shuggy#1 posted his watch which created history.
Moving our steely gaze to the rest of the brands we see that there weren't many that had a bad month. Seiko's seven equaled their lowest ever weekly total but there was overwhelming good news elsewhere. New all time monthly records were achieved by Gruppo Gamma (seven), Helm (seven), Junghans (five), Panerai (thirty seven) and Sinn (thirty four, two more than the previous record set in October 2020). Christoper Ward continued their purple patch equaling February's record score of thirteen.
Of the 134 brands we wore in March, ninety four had already been seen this year, thirty three were making their first appearance of the year and seven were new to the Friday thread. Notable returners were Roamer, Lorier, Favre Leuba (yes Toshi's lovely Deep Blue), Cuervo y Sobrinos and ArtyA. The first timers included Gruen, Singer Reimagined (gladders' singer LE Flytrack On The Road) and Norqain.
So what caught my fancy during March? Well we started off with two extremely minimalist watches of totally different styles. The almost brutal nothingness of vertex's Boldr Singularity opposed to Gunner's classically elegant Vratislava Conceptum Formmeister (which, incidentally, was the first Vratislava we have seen for two years). The tenth had more of a dive theme with greasmonkey's KMK subproof with a second hand which has cool, shark shaped counterbalance and we also had tictac37's lovely LeCoutre Deep Sea Alarm. Gold was the order of the day at the end of the month with Pacifichrono's lovely vintage Gruen Curvex and peterdo's outstanding VC Perpetual Calendar.
I feel that I have strung you along for long enough so here are the results:
1 Omega 66
2 Rolex 66
3 Seiko 52
4 Panerai 37
5 Sinn 34
6 Timefactors 32
7 Tudor 26
8 CWC 19
9 Grand Seiko 14
10 Christopher Ward 13
11 Breitling 11
12 Damasko 11
13 Longines 10
14 IWC 8
15 Zenith 8
16 Doxa (modern) 7
17 Gruppo Gamma 7
18 Helm 7
19 Heuer 7
20 Tag Heuer 7
21 G Shock 6
22 Hamilton 6
23 Blancpain 5
24 Cartier 5
25 Citizen 5
26 Garmin 5
27 Glaschutte Original 5
28 Junghans 5
29 Tissot 5
30 Universal Geneve 5
31 Bulova 4
32 Credor 4
33 Jaeger-LeCoultre 4
34 KMK 4
35 Synchron 4
36 Tutima 4
37 Yema 4
38 Halios 3
39 Pagani Design 3
40 Vacheron Constantin 3
41 Airain 2
42 Alpina 2
43 Apple 2
44 Aquadive 2
45 Artya 2
46 Bremont 2
47 Ciga Design 2
48 Dekla 2
49 Dornbluth & Sohn 2
50 Dubey and Schaldenbrand 2
51 Eterna 2
52 Farer 2
53 GWS 2
54 Mappin and Webb 2
55 Ming 2
56 Moser 2
57 Nodus 2
58 Nomos 2
59 Patek Philippe 2
60 Pequignet 2
61 San Martin 2
62 Scurfa 2
63 Singer Reimagined 2
64 Squale 2
65 Stowa 2
66 Swatch 2
67 Ulysse Nardin 2
68 Unimatic 2
69 Vostok 2
70 WMT 2
71 Wolbrook 2
72 Alsta 1
73 Ancon 1
74 Animal 1
75 Audemars Piguet 1
76 Autodromo 1
77 Baltic 1
78 Baume et Mercier 1
79 Bell & Ross 1
80 Boldr 1
81 Caravelle 1
82 Casio 1
83 Certina 1
84 Cuervo Y Sobrinos 1
85 Daiso 1
86 Dunhill 1
87 Eberhard 1
88 Enoksen 1
89 Favre Leuba 1
90 Fortis 1
91 Gigandet 1
92 Girard Perregeaux 1
93 Glycine 1
94 Gruen 1
95 Habring 1
96 Hanhart 1
97 Horloscaphe 1
98 Huawei 1
99 L U Chopard 1
100 Lorier 1
101 Luminox 1
102 Mido 1
103 MkII 1
104 MMI 1
105 Morgenwerk 1
106 Norqain 1
107 Nove 1
108 Ollech & Wajs 1
109 Olma 1
110 Orient 1
111 Oris 1
112 Oscar 1
113 Roamer 1
114 RZE 1
115 Schaffen 1
116 Seagull 1
117 Sewills 1
118 Siduna 1
119 Smiths 1
120 Spinnaker 1
121 Steeldive 1
122 Steinhart 1
123 Sterile 1
124 Sturmanskie 1
125 Suunto 1
126 Technos 1
127 Traska 1
128 Tressa 1
129 Victorinox 1
130 Vratislavia 1
131 West End Watch Co 1
132 Yobokies 1
133 Zelos 1
134 Zeno 1
Although we had our first ever draw in overall numbers, in the tradition of major sporting tournaments, we have to have a winner. Omega did so on count back, as they had recorded the highest weekly score of the month.
I feel we need some graphs so I will knock some up over the weekend but now it is time for (another) beer and some food (I forgot to order chips so tonight it is Saumon au gaufres de pommes de terre).
Last edited by Wimm; 21st April 2023 at 20:24. Reason: SPAG
I love these posts Wimm, a great measure of what's popular.
Being a Fortis man, and given their 100 years history of watchmaking, I'm always surprised how little of the populus their watches hold.
Always a highlight 👏👏👏
Thank you always fun reading.
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We've got a tie!
Lovely work, This reminds me I must get Nivada Grenchen back on the board!
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great read as always Wimm,thanks for the mention.
Entertaining write-up as always Wimm, thank-you
Top work as always Wimm.
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Quality effort as ever Wimm
Thanks for spending the time collating
As promised, albeit a little later than I had hoped.
I'll start with a quick update on the Little Bit on the Side.
on Flickr
As you can see not much has changed since January. Black dialed watches are still accounting for around sixty percent of the total with blue even percent and white with seven percent.
The monthly top ten makes for slightly more interesting viewing:
on Flickr
Thirteen brands have made into the top ten so far this year and the top three are still scoring much more than the others. However, comparing with last year's serves to highlight the falling numbers of the top three as seventy watches had already been exceed three times but April last year,bu t only once this year. The numbers for the other brands seem to be holding steady.
And just for you, the Fortis Worms:Originally Posted by Filterlab
, on Flickr
Just a quick question, is Nivada Grenchen an earlier name for the modern Nivada or were they different brands under the same stable? I may have started counting them both as just Nivada a while back as I was under the impression they were one and the same but happy to separate them again.
The suspense!
Someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.
Superb! On the up.And just for you, the Fortis Worms:
Thanks Wimm!
Nivada Grenchen is the full name of the brand, I believe in the late 60s or early 70s they started using just Nivada. They were sold in the U.S as Croton which was a partnership between two separate companies (NG and Croton).
The Reissues are pretty faithful so the name on those usually depends on which version the historical models had.... its difficult to tell which ones are vintage and which aren't! (Mine is a reissue).
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