Some pleasant news for us watch lovers in India

The Budget 2010 is out and from what I have read, the Finance Minister has proposed to provide an outright 4% exemption from special additional duty to goods imported in a pre-packaged form for retail sale.

Exciting weekend up ahead (Hopefully!)

I'm not embarrassed to admit it... I'm the kind of person who gets really excited when I spot a good watch on someone's wrist (it's pretty rare to spot even a Seiko, leave alone a Tag/Longines/Omega/Rolex, etc). So when I learned, that an uncle of mine, invited my entire family to the 'Poonawala Breeders' Million' on the coming Sunday, it really piqued my interest! For those of who that don't know much about it (including me), it's basically a prestigious and upscale horse racing event . For me it means a lot of people, wearing nice watches (hopefully).
I've ridden a few horses before (including thoroughbreads) but never been to a derby. I'm not really intrigued by horse racing but my folks really want to check it out. And also, I don't wanna pass up an opportunity to try my hand at betting, and at the same time, be surrounded by people wearing some really nice watches!
So, Crazyfingers and I will be there, armed with a nice camera, and hopefully get to snap some nice pics of the watches we see there (and yeah, a few pics from the race as well :p)
Wish us luck!

Flipping a watch may not be as easy as you think! (by Bio)

Ok, so there comes a time when you fall out of lust with a particular watch and no matter how hard you try, it just doesn't get much wrist time (also, you could use the cash!) So, even though you may not like it, you have to take a call and sell off the watch.
Well, it just so happened that I recently found myself in the exact same situation! The watch in question was my Guess Collection 45003G. Here's a pic from the web:
I had picked up this watch on impulse, sometime in December '08. I had seen it in a shop window and decided that I had to have it. I knew nothing about watches at the time, and even though this watch is quite a stunner on the wrist, had I known that the value of the watch was going to tank, I would've probably gone for something else.
Anyway, after having no success on ebay, I listed it up for sale at Qickr.com, along with a few of Crazyfinger's watches. So about a couple of months and a few Nigerian scammers later, I got a call from a guy, saying that he was interested in the watch. I acted quickly, and arranged a meeting with him so that he could have a look at the watch. Now, I've sold a few watches before this, but this one proved to be really difficult to sell. You see, more than any one else, my girlfriend had taken a real liking to the watch. She said that it was her favourite watch out of my entire collection and even insisted that she'd rather buy it from me, than having me sell it to a stranger.
Thing is, like me, she's pretty broke herself at the moment (tax cuts really do screw you up at this time of the year) and I know for a fact that she'd never be able to pay me back without sacrificing a great deal herself. Had conditions been more favourable, I'd have given the watch to her for free, without a moment's hesitation. I did feel really guilty about it, but I had no choice and finally sold the watch today evening. I've never been so down after selling a watch before. I know its usually hard the first time and gets much easier with time, but it's going to be a while before I get over selling this one. To top it off, its Valentine's Day today, so not really a good day to have your girlfriend depressed (even if its over a watch!) I guess I'll use some of the cash I got, to buy her something nice :)
Who knew selling a watch could be so difficult.

PyroLume 43mm Steel & Carbon Fiber Prototype Watch#12 quick review

I did this review last year but thought I'll post it here too. Click on the pics to enlarge.

First Impression
The watch came in nice wooden box which really helps make an early good impression

Also included was a soft polishing cloth

The watch looks quite different from my other watches with its sterile dial and big luminous markers. Quite a lot of people at work asked me about it and wanted to try in on. The textured dial really looks sweet and goes well with the over all industrial look of the watch.

Case
According to the eBay listing, the dial is made from good quality cast steel. Its 43mm but looks bigger than my 44mm PAM homage. It has a canteen crown protecting system at 3'o clock similar to ones found on U-boat watches. It really helps enhance the look of the watch. The steel has a nice brushed finish and looks great.

Dial
As you can see in the pic above, the dial has a nice textured pattern which looks really nice. Honestly this photo doesn't do justice to it. According to the listing, 'Pyro Pilot V12 dial CNC machined from 0.25mm thick 2x2 Twill Weave Carbon Fiber sheet using mid sized 1 .375mmcuts'

The Luminescence
Yes, this is what I bought the watch for. The famous Pyrolume compound. It has a mixture of green and blue lume for the indexes and green lume for the hour and minute hands. The seconds hand is red in colour without any lume on it. The Doc says that 'these compounds are my own mixture of Swiss luminescent compounds in a proprietary mix of solvents, binders and dyes for the day/dark effects'. I can honestly say that I was blown away by how bright the lume was. I did expect something good, but this was much better. Again, the photos don't do it justice. These pics were taken after exposing the lume to light for 10 secs:


Movement
This watch comes with a Japanese Miyota quartz movement. Here I have to say that this is the only part of the watch that I wish could have been better. No its not the quartz that I am complaining about, it keeps real good time and over a period of 24 hours hasn't lost a second. What I didn't like was that when when the crown was pull out to set the time, the hands shifted a bit when I tilted the watch a little. Also the dial moved a bit while pulling out the crown. Once the crown is pushed back, its totally fine and everything is intact i.e. the dial and the hands dont move or wobble with even the roughest of jerks.

Strap
The watch has a nice and an extremely soft 22mm black rubber strap with a steel buckle and feels really comfortable on the wrist

Wrist shot

Final thoughts
This watch is truly an eye catcher and the lume is to die for. The case and the dial is really top quality and you have to give credit to Pyrolume for the amazing lume compound he had developed. It will look great in any collection and fetch you a lot of compliments. Definitely worth more than what you pay for it!

HMT Catalog

Just took a few quick shots of the automatic watches in the HMT catalog. Click on the pics to enlarge them.

15th International Watch And Clock Fair – Samaya Bharati 2010

Finally! The day I had been eagerly waiting for (or so I thought) the past few months had arrived. And like their banner said, …Its Time For - 15^th International Watch And Clock Fair. I am not kidding, look…(by Crazyfingers)

Bio and I, took a day off from work, grabbed the camera, put on our watches and were off!

I have to point something here, there was almost no or very little advertisement done for this fair. So not knowing what to expect, we were trying to rate the fair on a scale of 1-10 , with 10 being something like Basel World. Bio said he expected it to be a 4. I being a bit more optimistic gave it a 5.

On our way...

The famous Bandra-Worli Sea Link :p

Finally, we arrive at our destination - the Nehru Center

Seiko I think had the best setup. It was the first thing you saw when you entered the building.

They had a lot of watches on display and I was really happy to see the Spring Drive Spacewalk. This watch is stunning! The lovely lady there proudly told us some fact about the watch and proceeded to show us the other new models, all of which I have never seen before. I was however a lil disappointed not to see any Grand Seiko watches there. I believe they are sold only in Japan and I was really hoping to see one.

Titan, India's leading watch manufacturer, had a nice walk-in booth where you could see some of the the machines and tools they use. They even had a machine to laser print your name on the case back. Unfortunately, none of the automatic watches were on display.

They also had this machine to check the accuracy of your watch. The guy manning it said that if the reading was under 1, the watch is accurate. He demonstrated with his watch. The meter read just about 1, indicating that his watch was just about accurate, though it didn't mention anywhere how many seconds a day, the watch looses or gains. We both decided to give it a try anyway-

My Rolex Sub

and the result - it barely moved - highly accurate!

next was Bio's Edouard Lauzieres Tuscany-

and the result - again, the needle didn't move - "highly accurate" said the guy grinning

Also on display were some of the Titan Edge watches, which claim to be the slimmest watch in the Universe

Time for a quick wrist shot

It was a pleasant surprise to see Orient here. After hearing such rave reviews about the Mako, we immediately rushed over and asked the guy behind the counter whether they had one on display, and sure enough, they did!

The guy at the booth was pretty surprised that we knew about Orient watches and was really happy when I told him about all the good things I heard about them. From what I learnt, Orient as of now, have no plans of launching the brand here anytime soon. They were really interested in knowing what kind of watches do people normally wear here and whether Indians prefer bracelets or leather straps. I told him since its pretty humid here, we normally prefer bracelets. He immediately started taking notes about everything I was saying. I really hope they launch the brand here, although I am not sure how successful they will be. People generally prefer quartz movements, which was a bit of a concern to them.

I also asked the guy which watch he had on at the time. He pulled his sleeve back and proudly showed us his World Timer

There were a LOT of fashion brands here

I was told by the people at the Paco Rabanne booth that their watches are directly imported from France and have Swiss quartz movements.

Somewhere amongst all those fashion brands, we were able to find the Victorinox booth where they had the 500 Mecha (which is on my wish list)

Ah! HMT! With my recent fascination with this brand, I really wanted to check out all the new models they had to offer. They also had some larger sized dials (maybe 38-40mm) which might interest a lot of people.

Citizen was there too and no, they did not have the Campanola :(

Some more fashion brands

One such brand that caught our attention was Ice Watch. The are something similar to Toy Watch, with the colourful Submariner styled watches, running on the Miyota quartz movement. They were looking to launch their brand in India soon. With a price range of $80-$300 USD, they are in league with the other fashion brands and I honestly feel will do well if launched here.

Hey, what do we have here? Straps! They were very nice and available in all sizes and colours. The prices were pretty good too with the rubber straps going for Rs.350 ($8) and the leather ones from Rs.250 ($5-$6) to Rs.800 ($17). Unfortunately, they weren't selling any at the time so I had to make do by taking their business card to contact them later.

Apart from all this, there wasn't really something to get interested about and before we knew it, we were at the exit. We felt a bit disappointed and asked around if there was something else to be seen. There was! There was another section to be seen! We quickly headed over there only to find another small area full of clocks - the ones you have already seen at gift shops and some homes. There was this one neat mechanical clock but the guy at the booth was against me taking a pic of it :(

This was an interesting looking clock which is suppose to be very expensive but the price was not disclosed for some reason.

Thats pretty much about it. We were really hoping to see some big manufacturers like Rolex, TAG and Omega, which are pretty popular here, but they were nowhere to be seen. My optimistic rating of 5/10 now changed to 3/10. We decided to call it a day and grab a few drinks with friends before heading home.

Cheers!