New Arrival, my second Bremont
I have always been a Bremont advocate here on TZ-UK. Not always a popular thing to be, but perhaps becoming less unpopular.
It is not because I am a big fan of marketing guff, or in fact of many historically-inspired LEs that contain bits of important stuff. I am neither.
But I like their designs, being at once traditional, in their round cases, and also innovative. I think the Trip-Tick case is a genius piece of design, giving a complexity and attraction to the case that many other brands cannot match.
And their watches are very hard wearing.
I have my Alt-1P, a 2009 watch with very low serial number, and have owned it for over 11 years now. It still looks almost new (a fact noted with satisfaction by Bremont's marketing Director at a recent RedBar Bristol event).
Plus, I buy most of my watches used.
And I think Bremont present an excellent option to the used buyer. The residuals for the original owner are not that high, but the quality of the watches offered is very high, so the second hand owner can effectively punch above his/her weight, buying an excellent watch at a very attractive price.
I remained keen to add another Bremont to my collection.
So I have recently been trawling through Bremont's back catalogue to see whether there were any hidden gems in there.
I wanted a dive watch, with an external bezel, as internal ones I find of limited functionality. That ruled out Bremont's most recognisable design, the MB, and its twin brother, the U2.
I also wanted GMT. I have other dive watches, I wanted one with a difference.
And I've found one.
When the first Supermarine 500 models were introduced, I tried a couple on, and although it was a comfortable watch to wear, in terms of diameter and lug length, it felt top heavy, like it was a bit too much heft on the wrist, and the mass seemed to stand too far out above the tapered caseback.
There is not much one can do about that, and I put aside the idea of owning one.
Years later, I noted the spec of the Project Possible, which follows on from the Terra Nova, Endurance (and others), all of which address the S500's weight problem by making the case from titanium.
I tried on a Project Possible at the Bristol Bremont boutique, and it is commendably light and wearable. But I am not a big Bi-metal fan (even if the other metal on the PP is bronze, not gold). The PP is also a bit, ahem, pricey at £5k.
Plus, the S500 range has all of the anti-mag and shockproof protection technology that the MB range has, making it one tough cookie of a dive watch.
So I started looking for my perfect S500.
It had to be titanium.
I wanted a 0-60 bezel (I may just be me, but I can't abide the pointlessness of compass bezels).
No bronze.
The only cadnidate semed to be the Navy Clearance diver would be great, but they really are hen's teeth (100 total), and ferociously expensive a a result.
So, it seemed Bremont has never made a suitable combination.
But then I found the Oracle II, part of an America's Cup set of Limited Editions for Oracle Team USA.
Bremont's associations here were very short lived.
The America's Cup collection of 4 watches was announced in 2015, with dual endorsement from the America's Cup and Oracle Team USA, but by late 2016 Oracle were already sponsored by Panerai, and Bremont were no longer the timing partner for the Cup itself either.
I can see that most of these were likely to be sold into the US, as it bears the name of the US team and GB were nowhere in the AC at this stage (other than Ben Ainslie's own personal contribution later in 2017, which was massive).
But from the front, you would struggle to see that this watch is an America's Cup LE, there are just the 2 words on the lower half of the dial.
None of these models seemed to crop up on the used market.
In a Summer 2020 sale I noticed that Mr Porter still had one. New.
It was reduced, but not enough, I thought, given that it was 5-year-old discontinued stock. They wouldn't engage with any haggling on my part, and it disappeared with other sale stock at the end of the sale.
Only to re-appear 6 months later in Mr Porter's New Year's Sale.
I asked again. No haggling. I gave up.
It became an occasional search, one that I did "just in case" every now and again on Chrono24, maybe on WatchRecon too.
This kind of search rarely produces anything. You are most likely to spot the pefect watch, two weeks after it was listed, and a week after it had been sold and sent to its new owner. I have had this frustration a few times.
But a couple of weeks back, whaddya know, one popped up at a dealer in London. What's more, it was priced below what I had offered to Mr Porter.
I rang and enquired, tickled to be told that it had been bought from Mr Porter in Jan 2021. It actually was the exact same watch I had been haggling for.
What's more, the dealer had taken it in trade, and allowed a substantially lower sum against it than it was listed for. They were willing to pass it on quickly, almost at cost, because they mostly do Rolex, they had made money on the other half of the trade, and they have found Bremont to be "a little sticky".
The only problem was that after buying my Tudor FXD, the watch fund was non-existant. I had to complete the sale of my Hanhart LE, which had been listed, without many nibbles, for a few weeks.
Maybe it wasn't to be.
But literally the next day, a buyer approached me for the Hanhart on Chrono24, and the deal was done. The funds replenished, I rang the dealer.
It was on hold for someone else.
But, he said, he had tried to contact the potential buyer by phone and email a few times, to no avail, so he was ready to sell it to me.
It arrived at the end of last week, and I am delighted with it.
It even came with a copy of the receipt from the Mr Porter sale, it seemed that the original owner hadn't managed to haggle anything off it either.
The slightly anachronistic Bremont Oracle II, a 2015 Limited Edition with more than half of its 3 year warranty yet to run.....
https://i.postimg.cc/L9Y6DMKZ/IMG-2456-ol.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/5xttHCsg/IMG-2455-ol.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/TRH3n3S6/IMG-2454-ol.jpg
New Arrival, my second Bremont
Well done on a successful chase. I think Bremont make great stuff, and if my collection wasn’t so hopelessly out of control, I would add one too.
Their case work is great. I remember doing a head to head assessment of an Alt1 chronograph against and IWC Pilot Chrono, and felt the Bremont’s case work was another league, much more interesting by quite some margin.
Enjoy it
Dave
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