Mr. Jones Sun and Moon Miyamoto

Alright, I got an interesting piece to talk about today.

It is Mr Jones Watches from UK. Well firstly, Mr. Jones is not your average line of watches.

It has an artsy feel about it with many witty designs. Most of the time (pun intended) it forgoes the usual conformity we are accustomed to seeing on a watch face. Instead it has vibrant, bold colours, artistic and imaginative designs in place.

Their unique styles make telling the time an altogether different process.

It makes time telling quirky and hip!

They have a whole Sun and Moon range, which unlike your usual timepiece that shows you ‘day and night’ through separate dial on the piece. Mr Jones, makes use of the movement of the sun and moon and they have referred to this as the “hour disc”. The hour disc is used to tell the time and the hands on the face are used to show the minutes and seconds.

So today I am going be to talking about my Mr Jones Watch.

It is a limited edition Sun and Moon Miyamoto.
This piece is inspired by the world of Super Mario Bros, and pays homage to its creator Miyamato.
Limited to 100 pieces. (or so I thought when I ordered mine)

So about 3 weeks later after my purchase, this piece seems to have been added to their regular line of Sun and Moon pieces. Which means it is no longer limited edition but a regular sale items.

 
To be honest, I am a little disappointed as I thought that I was one of the privileged 100 to be able to own this piece.

As why to this particular piece was reinstated is perhaps due to the reason it was very successful and sold out rather quickly. I have checked their website again and they have relaunched the piece to keep the vast number of customers happy. This is one of those times where the collaboration done by the watch maker, seems to have been done right.

To be fair, Mr Jones probably saw it as an opportunity too good to pass up.

Mr. Jones has managed to leverage on the vast number of Mario fans out there, whom by now should be in their late twenties to early forties. Indeed a good target market and with the style of the watch being so androgynous that it appeals to both man and woman (another plus point for sales and style). The team behind it did a great job, this would be somewhat like their golden goose.

Let’s face it, it is definitely a great piece but also a cash cow for now.

I am sure it would outsell may of their other pieces, just due to the fact that it is somehow linked to Super Mario. Well done and good move by Mr Jones, to bring it back to both satisfy the cravings of customers (definitely more than a hundred) and ring in the profits.

Only difference is that, when I got mine it read "No 45 in an edition of 100". (as you can see from the picture below)

For the regular pieces on the back case, the ‘No XX in an edition of 100’ words on the backing are no longer there, as shown below.

 

Taken from: http://mrjoneswatches.com/sun-and-moon-miyamoto/

As I have mentioned, there is a unique or unusual way of time telling on this watch.

The sun and the moon are the indicators for telling the time, sort of like your hour hand.

Before I get onto my take of this peice, let me share some info from their website.

The website explains it in detail how you can read the time properly. (Taken from http://mrjoneswatches.com/sun-and-moon-miyamoto/)

“The position of the sun or moon in the crescent shape indicates the hours.

The crescent shaped sky represents 12 hours with the time running from left to right.
At 6am the sun 'rises' on the left of the dial. The sun slowly climbs in the sky until it reaches the apex of the crescent noon.

The sun descends until it reaches the right hand marker at 6pm.

After 6pm the Sun ‘sets’ and disappears from view, meanwhile the Moon ‘rises’ on the left.
The position of the Moon in the sky shows the hours from 6pm until 6am.”

As for the minutes and seconds, it is displayed in the middle and tells the time in the conventional type of way.

So let us get down into this piece.

The first thing that definitely stands out is its cool Blue and Grey strap with pink stitching.
The strap surely is something funky and cool, the metal buckle also has a nice crisp finishing. The watch has a nice clear sliver lug with a mostly white face, with the hour disc having the day and night designs of the Mario world.

The design on the hour disc is not too complicated, it is done simple enough to be admired and I feel it makes use of the space flawlessly, without making it too congested with over complicated graphics, it is perfectly balanced.

It would look nice both on the wrist of men and women. It is nicely assembled to look good nice on a man's wrist not too small, and neither too big for a woman's wrist.

It feels good on the wrist, not heavy or bulky, just nice.

Since all the detailing was on the hour disc, the main point was to visualise the landscape moving along as time ticks on. They left it at that, leaving minimal details for the markers around the minute and second hands.

Having done a range of sun and moon pieces, the balance in this piece is perfected harmonised.
 
Thought it is a nice piece, when looking at it I must admit the finishing looks a tad bit shabby.

 


Especially 2 particular points. First it is the block markings (see in above picture) on the face along the "hour disc", there are 12 blocks which are used to help tell the hours as the sun or moons are directly below it. The colours of these markings seem to look faded, as though a poor printing method was used. It gave it an overall poorly finished look. If the colours were more saturated it would have come out looking more vibrant and eye catching, unfortunately this finish seemed to be below par.

The second point which I have to highlight is the print finishing on the back case of the timepiece. Once again here, the printing looks mediocre and somewhat like a childish finishing. It does not look good and professional. If the printing would have been more sharp and perhaps a shade darker to make it stand out a little more, that would have been enough to make it look more satisfactory.

Lastly, another confusing point was that on the back case of the piece, it says “Made in London”. Though when the item came and on the parcel box, country of origin was declared as “China”. This is perhaps another point to ponder on? I would not really think too much into it but it makes you wonder if the watch was indeed pieced together in London or not?

The specs of this piece shown below;

Case: brushed stainless steel

Strap: navy and grey leather with pink stitching
Mechanism: Ronda 515-24H single jewel quartz mechanism
Width (3 o'clock to 9 o'clock): 37mm
Height (from lug to lug): 46mm
Waterproof: 5ATM
Smallest strap diameter:150mm
Largest strap diameter: 205mm

Now let us delve into the story of this piece, so we know the inspiration came from the graphics of the highly popular Nintendo game Super Mario.

The image of the hour disc showcases the landscape of the scenes from the game. If you played Super Mario while growing up I am sure it would strike a chord with you.

Remembering the times you had to run pass the turtles and trying to get your mushrooms. It shows both the day and night landscape or 2D background as we would have known it back then.

So why is it called the Sun and Moon Miyamoto, is basically because this piece pays homage to the designer of this game Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto.

As I have mentioned Mr. Jones tends to be an artsy-fartsy sort of brand. They have an explaination the story behind the design of this piece. You can read more from, http://mrjoneswatches.com/sun-and-moon-miyamoto/ in the description tab.

All in all, it is a nice piece and especially if you are a Mario fan.

 

Seiko Criteria, Chronograph.

Let’s talk about Seiko today. The game changer, the Japanese power house!

Seiko almost wiped off the existence of automatic watches back in the day. Aptly known as the ‘Quartz Crisis’ in Switzerland and the ‘Quartz Revolution’ outside of Switzerland. The invention of the Seiko Quartz watch changed watch history forever in terms of Horology. The world’s first quartz watch was released by Seiko, call the Quartz ASTRON.

From then on Seiko has never looked back, developing so many other interesting timepieces like the Seiko Kinetic as well.

Today I won’t go into deal on how fantastic Seiko has been over the years.

I am going to talk about a Seiko I own. So this is my first ever Seiko. A Seiko is somewhat a watch for the everyday man and here in Singapore I see a Seiko or Citizen on the wrist on the average man on the street. Well growing up no one in my family really cared much about timepieces and we had really basic watches on our wrist, just to tell the time. The first ever watch I had as a kid was probably a digital Casio watch.

Well since then, I have come a long way. I have had a deep interest in Horology and in the arts of fine watch making. Though Seiko may not fall into the category  of fine watch making. It definitely deserves a place in Horology history for their contributions to the Horological world.

The watch at hand is the limited edition Seiko Criteria SNDG13P1, number 2041 out of 3600.


Below are the specifications of this timepiece

 

Quartz movement.
Calibre: 7T92.
Black ion-plated stainless steel case.
Blue ion-plated stainless steel unidirectional rotating bezel and inner ring with tachymeter.
Black ion-plated stainless steel bracelet.
Three-fold clasp with push button release.
Screw case back.
Blue dial with luminous hands and indexes.
Date calendar display at 4 o'clock position. 1/20 second chronograph, up to 12 hours.
Sapphire crystal glass.
Water resistant to 100 meters.
 

Visually the piece looks amazing, I feel the colours of the dial and the bezel match together very well. That metallic shine makes this piece stand out more as compare to the other similar models which are not limited edition. The Black ion-plated steel bracelet gives sort of a gun metal finish colour which once again I find visually stunning. So aesthetically the colours are nice and vivid. There is a nice extra touch with the blue dial having luminous hands and indexes.

For the technical side, the Calibre 7T92 has the sub dial at the 6 o’clock has the hour and minute hands that track the chronograph elapsed time up to twelve hours. The sub dial at the 12 o’clock is the 1/20 second indicator. The interesting this is that the second hand does not measure the time but is used to measure the second for the chronograph movement. Where else, the sub dial at the 9 o’clock is actually the one which shows the seconds for the time.

On the bezel there are Arabic markings and seconds hands in multiple of fives.

Inside on the dial there are more markings for the Tachymeter function.

This is a nice weighty piece, as for me I like big heavy pieces that has a little more weight on the wrist.

The steel bracelet does surely add more weight on this piece. Making it a little bulky and stand out slightly more.

So overall this is a nice piece with great chronograph and
 tachymeter functions.

With stark colours to make it shine, it has a nice sporty feel like an aviator or motor GP watch.

This can be worn both with your suit to work or for a game of golf.

Take a look and judge for yourself.

My Batman Timepiece

If anyone of you out there are a batman fan, then you would have known that in 2014, was the 75^th anniversary of Batman.

Hence a whole range of products were launched and labelled limited edition. These items included some gnarly looking timepieces.

This isn’t your usual lovely classy timepieces, it’s the Dark Knight we are talking about here, so it has to be quintessentially dark, rugged and manly. Everything that encapsulated Bruce Wayne’s alter ego Batman. Also did I mention, I am a huge Batman Buff.

I am a fan, so yes you are right, I definitely had to get my hands on some kind of Batman Limited Edition merchandise, sadly yes I am a sucker for such memorabilia.

Firstly, let me say that Romain Jerome was the right choice for this collab project. As few of their other timepieces have a rather sinister and alluring look about it. Go check it up and you'll see what I mean. 

There was the big hype about the release of the Romain Jerome collab with DC comics timepiece, it matched the dark side of Batman, as shown in recent years with the image portrayed in the Dark Knight installment played by Christian Bale. The watch looked so sweet, it was in the distinctive matt black, nice scratched edges looking somewhat carbon fibre-ish. Topped off with the newer batman logo seen in the recently Dark Knight movies. It was lovely, plus the strap looked perfect all crumpled and crackled like the batsuit or cape after a night long of vigilante chasing.

 It was only limited to 75 pieces and cost roughly 19,000USD, you can see a picture below.

(taken from : HTTP://blog.luxurybazaar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/RJ-Batman-front-3.jpg)

Well, that wasn’t the timepiece I got, since I did not have 19,000USD lying around.

What I got myself wast the HCG Batman 75^th Anniversary Chronograph.  So more details into the watch, the back case logo was designed by Jim Lee, with a serial number, limited to 100 pieces. It is a quartz movement made ny Miyota Japan. It came in a nicely packed comic stlye book style box.

The features are as follows;

 - Case: 46.5mmx 55mm
- Movement: Japanese Chronograph JS50
- Super Luminous : C-3
- Water Resistance: 200m
- Band: Anti-Alergic Silicone
- Limited to 100pcs worldwide

 

So my watch was numbered 25, pictures above. From the way I see it, this was released to target the Asian Market and I have been seeing it mostly on websites in Singapore, Malaysia and Hongkong. Though I would say little was really done to market this watch or advertise it as it would should have been done. With the correct marketing, I am sure this timepiece would have been snapped up in a heartbeat. As I myself wasn’t really aware of the release of this timepiece until much later and am glad to be able to still get my hands on it.

I must admit, I got the watch because it was a Batman colletor’s item and it only looked alright to me.

Since I have gotten it, I must say it has grown tremendously on me. The more I look at it and wear it on my wrist the more I love it.

The way it feels and the bulkness of the timepiece feels just right. I like that rugged look, yet I feel they did not go overboard, which actually makes the timepiece look quite contemporay. What do I mean by that, well it feels like a timeless Batman classic, meaning it matches the entirety of Batman from begininng till date. It did not lean nor focus too much on the recently darker image of Batman due to the Dark Knight series movies, like the Romian Jermoe piece. This piece stuck true to the original batman logo and yet managed to keep the look of the face current and all around as well. I though that the Silicone strap was a good move in making the piece look sporty, current and active to go along with the theme.

The chrornograph was a nice added feature to add some complexity to the face of the timepice, which I could compare to Batman’s utility belt.  You can time how long your batarangs take to hit your target if you’d wish.

The surface is entirely black and has that nice smooth matt finish. With 3 nicely sized knobs for the time setting and the chronograph features.

I really like the feel of this timepiece plus it is a collectorable Batman memorabilia, what’s not to like.