More than a few fellow cigar smokers are watch aficionados. They’ve admired pieces from the likes of OMEGA, IWC, Porsche Design and Rolex. None got the time or attention of the Humism Rhizome. The most common reaction: whoa! Whoa indeed. A reaction you can’t fully appreciate until you see the Rhizome in action . . .
The Sinn 556i isn’t the blackest watch money can buy. That honor belongs to the H. Moser & Cie. Endeavour Perpetual Moon Concept and MCT’s Sequential One S110 Evo. Both timepieces incorporate vantablack, a man-made substance that’s almost as black as Satan’s heart. While the Sinn 556i’s dial doesn’t absorb 99.96 percent of visible light or condemn its wearer to the fiery pits of hell, the watch is very, very black . . .
We can have a debate about what makes a great dive watch. We can have a debate about whether or not dive watches are a dead genre walking. But there’s no argument that the TUDOR Black Bay 58 is the world’s best [traditionally styled] dive watch. Having spent some quality wrist time with the watch the market finds simply irresistible, here’s why . . .
Back in the day, hippie activist Abbie Hoffman published a best-seller with the most appropriate title in the history of literature: Steal This Book. Wikipedia is silent on the percentage of people who stole Steal This Book, but it was a lot higher than zero. The Hoffman DIVER 40 is only offered online – frustrating light-fingered counter-culture warriors. The question remains: is it a steal? Let’s start where we usually end: price . . .
In the modern era of watch-as-cultural-phenomenon, a timepiece can be reviewed in at least two different fashions (pun intended). You can focus on the actual merits and faults of the thing, or look at it in the greater context of social messaging, group identity, resale value and long-term desirability. In this case, we’ll do both to the Swatch Sistem51 Hodinkee Generation 1986. One of these reviews will be extremely, almost brutally, short.