Friday Watches - June 2023

[Wimm]

I think I have published in time for you to enjoy with your Bank Holiday afternoon tea. If am too late then perhaps that cuppa and plate of finger sandwiches deserves a cold beer chaser.

June. It feels like another time, another place. Full of hope and expectation (well for a lovely summer and an Ashes win at least). By the end of the month our hopes and dreams and been tempered, if not quashed. Such is life. And so we retreat to the comfort of this strangely absurd hobby and the myriad of shapes, sizes and manufactures of these infernal machines. Friday's are the weekly snapshot of our ephemeral watch related whims, so lets see what June's quintet of Fridays tells us about ourselves.

June's fifth Friday had me fooled and, as a result, I ended up prematurely totting up the scores and writing the review before realising I was missing something. So the correct results for June are as follows. A nice round 630 watches were worn which translates to a weekly average of 126, sadly the lowest his year. Examples of a healthy 128 brands were worn at least once over those five Fridays. Diversity was down to a new low for the year of 0.203. Sadly I have to announce the breaking of the longest standing record of these counts. That of the lowest number of watches worn in a week. On the last Friday of June (I knew I should have ignored it) only 104 watches were worn. This is one lower then the 105 worn on the first Friday of January 2020 which, as it turns out, was the first Friday I ever counted.

Seemingly stung by their low in April, Rolex have bounced back. A decent score in May has been followed by a new high for the year in June. This was achieved by taking the top spot each week (although they kindly shared it with Seiko on the twenty third). Seiko took second except when sharing first and Omega came in third each week except when sharing second with Seiko on the thirtieth and when being bumped down to fourth by Timefactors on the second.

With no surprises from the top three lets see what can be gleaned from the brands left behind. CWC have escaped from two months of anonymous mediocrity with a new weekly high for the year (seven) to reach a cracking eighteen. Tag Heuer, for so long seemingly the ugly duckling of the LVMH stable (at least on this forum), has now soared into the monthly top ten on freshly plumed wings. Their new monthly high of fourteen greatly exceeds their previous high of eight (which was last attained in November 2020). With the help of 100thmonkey and friends Bremont reached a new weekly high of seven and a monthly high of thirteen, which also sees them making their first appearance in the monthly top ten. Sinn seem to have fallen off a cliff somewhat, having reached a record high in March they have dropped all the way down to thirteen, a new low for the year and not far off their all time low of nine. Will they be able to arrest this fall or will they crash through their old floor to find a new, lower one?

A reasonable 128 brands were worn in June, of which 20 were making their first appearance this year, with only four making their debut on the Friday thread. Returners included Poljot (unsurprisingly twelve months after their one and only showing of last year), A. Lange & Sohne, Le Jour and Chronoswiss. The four debutants were AK Geneve, Islander (mattcantwin's colourful Northport), Oliver and, surprisingly, our first ever Orvis.

This month saw the first appearance of the contentious Bremont Viper which seems to have both fans and detractors in equal measure. Overall I really like it except for one thing, I can't get on board with the stripey hands. Other notable watches include tenpasten's mango dialed Halios Seaforth, Seiko7a38's SAA005j "Vulcan", Dapper's square Bulova Accutron and Rajen's pixelated WMT for which I cant' seem to find a reference.

As it is half time for the year I will throw in a few charts and check in with the Bit on the Side but before that, here are the individual results:

1 Rolex 79
2 Seiko 62
3 Omega 46
4 Panerai 31
5 Timefactors 30
6 Tudor 22
7 CWC 18
8 IWC 18
9 Tag Heuer 14
10 Bremont 13
11 Grand Seiko 13
12 Sinn 13
13 Longines 12
14 Christopher Ward 9
15 G Shock 9
16 Zenith 9
17 Audemars Piguet 8
18 Citizen 8
19 Hamilton 8
20 San Martin 8
21 Swatch 8
22 Damasko 7
23 Breitling 6
24 Garmin 6
25 KMK 5
26 Mathey-Tissot 5
27 Pagani Design 5
28 Bulova 4
29 Oris 4
30 Patek Philippe 4
31 Tissot 4
32 Universal Geneve 4
33 Blancpain 3
34 Casio 3
35 Doxa (modern) 3
36 Farer 3
37 Fortis 3
38 Heuer 3
39 Muhle 3
40 Nomos 3
41 Scurfa 3
42 Squale 3
43 Vacheron Constantin 3
44 A. Lange & Sohne 2
45 Airain 2
46 Davosa 2
47 Dornbluth & Sohn 2
48 Eterna 2
49 Glaschutte Original 2
50 Gruppo Gamma 2
51 Junghans 2
52 Le Monde 2
53 Marathon 2
54 Ming 2
55 Seestern 2
56 Smiths 2
57 Steeldive 2
58 Steinhart 2
59 Stowa 2
60 Yema 2
61 Zelos 2
62 Zodiac 2
63 Addiesdive 1
64 AK Geneve 1
65 Alpina 1
66 Anonimo 1
67 Apple 1
68 Aquastar 1
69 Artya 1
70 Ball 1
71 Baltic 1
72 Baylor 1
73 Bedat + Co. 1
74 Benarus 1
75 Beuchat 1
76 Boldr 1
77 Breguet 1
78 Bulgari 1
79 Cartier 1
80 Certina 1
81 Chronoswiss 1
82 Ciga Design 1
83 Dailos 1
84 Deep Blue 1
85 Dekla 1
86 Dunhill 1
87 Fit Bit 1
88 Frederique Constant 1
89 Gruen 1
90 Halios 1
91 Helm 1
92 Heritor 1
93 Hrudoland 1
94 Hublot 1
95 Incipio 1
96 Islander 1
97 Jaeger-LeCoultre 1
98 Le Jour 1
99 Linde Werdelin 1
100 M B & F 1
101 Maurice La Croix 1
102 MGM 1
103 Mido 1
104 Nite 1
105 Norqain 1
106 Olivier 1
107 Orient 1
108 Orvis 1
109 Oscar 1
110 Pequignet 1
111 Poljot 1
112 Revue Thommen 1
113 Rotary 1
114 Seagull 1
115 Sterile 1
116 Studio Underd0g 1
117 Sugess 1
118 Swiss Military Hanowa 1
119 Synchron 1
120 Tactical Frog 1
121 Tactico 1
122 Unidentifiable 1
123 Vantage 1
124 West End Watch Co 1
125 WMT 1
126 Wolbrook 1
127 Xeric 1
128 Zeno 1
129 ZRC 1

Well lets see if we are any more adventurous with our dial colours:

on Flickr

Nope, we are not. We are still very fond of black dialed watches although the percentage has dropped, for the first time, below sixty to fifty eight. This seems to be down to the increase in popularity in white and silver dialed watches.

Next up are the top ten watches for each month, both in overall numbers but also as weekly average for the month compared to the total weekly average. I can't really remember why I chose to measure this, I think it was to get an idea of whether or not the changes in numbers were related to the change in numbers posted on a Friday or a change in popularity. I think there are probably better ways of doing this. Anyway, I need to prepare for my least favourite cooking method. The Barbeque. Not that I don't like the food, it's all the faff. Still, chicken wings for the Boy, prawns for the Wife and mosakiky for all of us should do the trick.

on Flickr

on Flickr

[EBB21]

Wonderful stuff. Look forward to this each month. Thanks

[MartynJC (UK)]

Good work! I can see I need to pull out the Pateks to boost the numbers next month.

[learningtofly]

Good work! I can see I need to pull out the Pateks to boost the numbers next month.

I hope that’s not a euphemism.

[Quality Man]

Brilliant as always, many thanks.


Sent from my iPhone using TZ-UK mobile app

[Sinnlover]

Thanks as always
Good to see CWC having a bit of love.

[Wimm]

Having said what I said earlier this seems to have turned out alright.

[greasemonkey]

Thanks Wimm for a great and entertaining read as always.

[Bonny Marco]

Thanks Wimm. Always a good read.

Sent from my DN2103 using Tapatalk

[Griswold]

Great write up and a very enjoyable read. Thanks for taking the time to do this.

[Raffe]

Buying the dip with Tudor, shorting some Rolex against that as they look a bit toppish up there.

NFA, DYOR.

[unclealec]

Will, do you work as a scriptwriter for AI?

[Senninha]

Always an interesting read, thanks!

How long do you have this dataset going back? Would be interesting to see year-to-date averages (for as long as available) for the main brands, see which of them is rising as a proportion of watches shared in the Friday threads.

Also might be interesting to see by groups - Swatch, Richemont etc.

Thanks for all the work - a chart tells a lot

[Wimm]

Will, do you work as a scriptwriter for AI?

I am the AI. Just bee fed a poor data set to learn from.



But you have given me an idea for a future write up.

[Wimm]

Always an interesting read, thanks!

How long do you have this dataset going back? Would be interesting to see year-to-date averages (for as long as available) for the main brands, see which of them is rising as a proportion of watches shared in the Friday threads.

Also might be interesting to see by groups - Swatch, Richemont etc.

Thanks for all the work - a chart tells a lot

My data set goes back to Jan 2020 and so I can certainly do that. I am a bit behind with the count but once I have caught up I will have the time to collate all the data.

Good idea about the parent group, I will look into that.