Watchfinder's central London store is in Avery Row (off New Bond St)
Of course I could have posted the watch to them, but since
taking it in myself meant I could see my new watches (although I couldn’t have
them until my watch has been checked out) and gave me an excuse to spend a day
in London, well that seemed like a sound idea to me.
So I rocked up at Watchfinder first thing (with my wife in
tow) and dropped off the Calibre 8 GMT, and I have to say I am super happy with
the new additions that are coming. Both of them look way better than the
pictures led me to believe and one of them looks absolutely mint, so that was
an excellent start to my day.
The Wonder Room in Selfridges
Next stop was Selfridges, which was somewhat underwhelming
if I’m honest. They have a reasonable collection of TAG pieces in there I guess,
and I was excited to see the new Carrera Twin Time and to try it on – but there
was no one manning the TAG stand so I wandered off figuring that by the time I got
back there someone would have shown up.
Amazing hand-finished 'Frosted Gold' AP Royal Oak
I had a look at some of the (rather gaudy) Hublots and my
wife was drooling over the ‘frosted gold’ Audemars Piguet Royal Oaks (though
she definitely can’t afford one of those), but actually there wasn’t that much
that was blowing me away. Audemars Piguet’s stand seems rather sparsely stocked
and seems rather too heavily weighted towards solid gold pieces.
CBG2A1Z.FT6157
Returning to the TAG stall there was still no one there, so I
nabbed the man on the Longines stall who quickly came over and showed me the
watch. It’s a nice watch, but if I was looking to spend that kind of money I think
I’d want a bit better customer service than that to be honest.
A short step over the road is the TAG Heuer boutique and
regular readers will remember that my first visit there was less than stellar. Quite
different this time though, I’m happy to report. Evan single-handedly restored
my faith in the Oxford Street
TAG Heuer Mikropendulum
Leaving there (reluctantly – my wife was hungry) we headed
back down Bond Street
Burgers and awesome carrot cake consumed, we caught the tube
to Kensington and walked around to the far end of Harrods for easy access to
the watch room. Last time I visited Harrods the watch room was in a state of
flux, but now it’s complete (although I’m sad to say that the Richard Mille
boutique has disappeared) and slap bang in the middle of it there’s a very
impressive 15ft high model of a Lange and Sohne split time, complete with
display back! Impressive stuff.
Lange and Sohne Split Time model display.
We headed for the Hublot store and I have to say the watches
in there were a lot nicer than the ones we saw in Selfridges. In fact my wife
was rather taken with the ceramic ‘Black Magic’ range, the simplest of which
cost about £7,000 and looked absolutely fantastic. In fact I think that might
have superceded the TAG Heuer Link Bella Hadid as my wife’s dream watch!
This Hublot is really, really nice!
There were quite a few very nice pieces in there, including
the Big Bang Unico Sapphire and also the Spirit of Big Bang Sapphire, both of
which are incredible to look at, if way out of my price range. They also had a
pink sapphire Unico as well and a ladies version with diamonds and a pink
rubber strap, all at crazy prices – but still a lot cheaper than a sapphire Richard
Mille to be fair.
Hublot Big Bang Unico Sapphire
They also had the Ferrari skeleton watches and the Depeche Mode
watch too, and actually quite a few really nice pieces – and also some really
weird ones with dials that look a bit like pentagrams… I’m not a fan of those,
they seem awfully hard to read the time on them for a start.
Moving on we wandered into the Roger Dubuis store. I remember
the first time we went in there we saw the ‘King Arthur’
watch (and several other very impressive pieces), but this time I somehow ended up trying on a watch that cost £137,000. Oddly
enough, on leaving TAG Heuer I said to my wife that the Mikropendulum (£33,000)
had taken over from the Royal Oak
The lady in the store asked me if I knew the brand and I said
I did, but I wasn’t pretending to be a customer… however, the conversation led
to me pointing to a Excalibur Spider Tourbillon and before you could say ‘this
cost more than I paid for my house fifteen years ago’ I was slipping off my
quartz 6000 Series (£300 from eBay no less!) and trying my best to hide it in
plain sight on the tray in front of me.
It’s a cool watch right enough, but I can’t say with my hand
on my heart that I’m gutted that I can’t afford it. I guess it’s so far out of
reality that in a way there’s just no point wanting it, because I’m never going
to get it, but while I do like Roger Dubuis watches I can’t help feeling it
should have been a bit more affecting…. the white rubber strap seemed a little
grubby as well!
The Fine Watch Multi-brand Room in Harrods
We had a quick scoot around the multi-brand showroom at the
end of the corridor, but there wasn’t really anything particularly inspiring in
there. Though having said that, some of the new Zeniths are pretty nice. I also
spied a pre-owned Heuer Monaco
Karl Lagerfeld Handbag
And that was pretty much it to be honest, we had a look in Karl
Lagerfeld’s store on Regent Street
*Turns out that mystery watch is in fact a WAZ1116, which oddly I can only find on a Honk Kong website called 'DFS'... (thanks to Tom and Evan at TAG Heuer for clearing this up for me - I just have to know!).
WAZ1116
*Turns out that mystery watch is in fact a WAZ1116, which oddly I can only find on a Honk Kong website called 'DFS'... (thanks to Tom and Evan at TAG Heuer for clearing this up for me - I just have to know!).
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