Friday Watches - February 2024

[Wimm]

Salubrious. It rolls off the tongue like a marble off a poorly installed kitchen surface. It isn't a word I would use to describe February which, temporally, is a while ago now, however meteorologically it seems to have made a bit of a come back.

The month didn't start off too well as the idiot who started the first thread of the month (and who really should have known better) didn't get the date correct. Perhaps they were a little tired and emotional after a night out with good company. Numbers for February remained steady at 512 (weekly average 127.25) and 117 brands. The Brand to Watch ratio was a healthy 0.229.

Seiko topped the table in the first week with seventeen with Rolex next on fourteen and Omega a long way behind on eight. The following week the top two brands switched places and Omega scraped together enough fans to drag them into double figures. The flip flopping continued on the sixteenth as Seiko came top with twelve. This time Rolex and Omega both scored ten. Seiko retained the top spot on the twenty third, this time Omega, with ten, inched past Rolex who had to share third place with Grand Seiko, both of which had nine examples that week. Surprisingly, of the 28 brands on the first page of the thread, Rolex was not one of them (if you really want to know the first Rolex was watch number 59, Verv's Daytona). The result of the weekly too-ings and fro-ings was, for the second month running, Rolex had to make do with second place in the monthly rankings. This time Seiko were the ones to beat them.

The four Bulova shown on the sixteenth were a new record for the brand. Four is also the new monthly record for HGP But the most impressive monthly record is twenty two. As pondered in January IWC have gone two better than their previous record. I sense that they have still further to go this year. Outside of the records it looks like Breitling had a good month with ten as did Citizen with twelve (only two lower than their high of last year). Grand Seiko stormed out of nowhere to reach twenty six, only two off their record of twenty eight set way back in January 2022. In a classic case of "the mockers" Fortis's strong start of six stumbled as their February score was half that of January.

The 117 brands recorded over February were seven fewer than January. Forty four brands made their first appearance of the year. The most notable of all of these was Precista (in the form of Sinnlover's Royal Navy Diver's) who we haven't seen on the Friday thread since November 2022. The searchers amongst us dug out a further five brands that had yet to appear on the Friday thread. Last year we averaged 5.3 new brands a month with nine in a single month being the highest. I am still surprised that there are still brands to add, I look forward to seeing what this year can unearth. These first timers included Garrick (Slamdoor's green dialed regulator), Riehl (more of that later) and Biatec which is probably the first Slovakian made watch to grace these pages.

Looking at my notes there seemed to be a preponderance of watches that caught my eye this month. I can't mention them all but sish101's revived Accurist, Sharky's lovely electronic Swiss Emperor and the lovely dial of Filterlab's Bell and Ross Golden Heritage all stood out. However the cream of the crop was Caruso's Riehl Synchronar. The futuristic styling of this watch was not just a a design connivance. As the worlds first solar powered watch it was the future of watches, blazing the way for Citizen, Seiko, Casio and even some of today's smartwatches. It is well worth a search on the net for the history of this ground breaking watch.

And here I shall leave you to peruse the numbers.

1 Seiko 53
2 Rolex 50
3 Omega 40
4 Grand Seiko 26
5 IWC 22
6 Timefactors 22
7 Tudor 20
8 Sinn 19
9 Panerai 17
10 G Shock 16
11 CWC 15
12 Citizen 12
13 Longines 11
14 Breitling 10
15 Hamilton 9
16 Damasko 8
17 Zenith 6
18 Heuer 5
19 Jaeger-LeCoultre 5
20 Bulova 4
21 Ming 4
22 Tag Heuer 4
23 Universal Geneve 4
24 Yema 4
25 Bell & Ross 3
26 Christopher Ward 3
27 Di Milano 3
28 Doxa (modern) 3
29 Fortis 3
30 Helm 3
31 HGP 3
32 Squale 3
33 Airain 2
34 Ball 2
35 Blancpain 2
36 Bremont 2
37 Credor 2
38 Depth Charge 2
39 Eterna 2
40 Farer 2
41 Garmin 2
42 Meraud 2
43 Nomos 2
44 Oris 2
45 Pagani Design 2
46 Serica 2
47 Steeldive 2
48 Traser 2
49 Ulysse Nardin 2
50 A. Lange & Sohne 1
51 About Vintage 1
52 Accurist 1
53 Aerowatch 1
54 Apple 1
55 Aquastar 1
56 Audemars Piguet 1
57 Aviator 1
58 Baltic 1
59 Benrus 1
60 Biatec 1
61 Blondi 1
62 Boldr 1
63 Caravelle 1
64 Casio 1
65 Certina 1
66 Chronoswiss 1
67 Cortebert 1
68 Dailos 1
69 Davosa 1
70 Deep Blue 1
71 Dunhill 1
72 Eberhard 1
73 Edox 1
74 Emperor 1
75 Garrick 1
76 Ginault 1
77 Glaschutte Original 1
78 Glycine 1
79 Halios 1
80 Hanhart 1
81 Hublot 1
82 Incipio 1
83 Kentex 1
84 KMK 1
85 Laco 1
86 Lemania 1
87 M B & F 1
88 Marnaut 1
89 Montblanc 1
90 MWC 1
91 Nivada 1
92 Nivada Grenchen 1
93 Nove 1
94 Orient 1
95 Peren 1
96 Pinion 1
97 Porsche Design 1
98 Precista 1
99 Pulsar 1
100 Revue Thommen 1
101 Riehl 1
102 Rotary 1
103 San Martin 1
104 Scurfa 1
105 Senraw 1
106 Smiths 1
107 Steinhart 1
108 Stowa 1
109 Studio Underd0g 1
110 Suunto 1
111 Tornek-Rayville 1
112 Tutima 1
113 Vacheron Constantin 1
114 Vantage 1
115 Victorinox 1
116 WMT 1
117 Yobokies 1

[unclealec]

One of the TZ highlights for me; many thanks yet again Will.

[twhp101]

Goodness me, there's a Garrick on the list! Haven't seen it, but who has one and which model is it!?

[tobywatches]

Goodness me, there's a Garrick on the list! Haven't seen it, but who has one and which model is it!?

Read the post!

Thanks, as always, Wimm, for your work on this.


Sent from my iPhone using TZ-UK mobile app

[Quality Man]

Thanks Wimm!


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[earlofsodbury]

Witty, erudite and informative - a fine way to ease into Sunday evening! Thanks Wimm

[Griswold]

Thanks for making the time to do this Will, witty and informative at the same time. I always look forward to these summaries,

[SteveDSSD]

Thank you for all the work in these summaries, always a great read.

[Sinnlover]

Thanks for collating the stats, they are always interesting to read.

[Christian]

Agree with everyone else…thanks for this, I’m thinking it would be interesting to check through previous to see the trends and which brands go into/out of fashion.

[twhp101]

Read the post!

Thanks, as always, Wimm, for your work on this.


Sent from my iPhone using TZ-UK mobile app

Ha, serves me right for speed reading

[YCymro]

Excellent and thoroughly enjoyable. Many thanks Wimm

[Carlton-Browne]

Many thanks, Wimm

[MartynJC (UK)]

Thanks

[RAJEN]

Great work. As usual.