Glashütte Original Checks In With A Baselworld 2010 Preview

This is the first of 2 new watches coming in 2010 from one of my favorite brands, German manufacture Glashütte Original (GO) – the PanoMaticLunar XL.  “Less is more” and “the quintessential understatement” GO says of this watch – which I’m not sure I can agree with as it looks to me like a fairly loaded dial.  You want to make an understatment get yourself one of those boring “understated” Piaget’s or Jaeger-LeCoultre master thins.  This watch is more of an attention-getter, in my humble opinion.

The watch is 42mm diameter case in stainless steel with grey dial.  The case is primarily polished with some satin-finish touches.  Sapphire crystal on bottom so you can see all the fine German handiwork which in this case happens to be a GO Caliber 90-02.  Function-wise, you get GO’s masterfully executed “panorama” date (ie big date – and yes it is substantially larger and easier to read than many other brands), moon phase, and the usual time keeping functions.  All neatly arranged on the dial – although if you don’t like the decentralized dial concept this will not be one for you.  Comes on a cool looking gray alligator strap.  Price?  I’d say somewhere around $20,000 but no official word yet.

On a separate note, GO really has it together when it comes to their blogger and Internet outreach – “new media” as they call us and in fact they have a dedicated role to this effect.  They always provide pre-sized images and very concise press releases that get right to the point.  And for that I sincerely thank them.

This in contrast to other brands that provide very un-user frienly FTP file links to enormous and impractical TIF image files along with press releases full of absurd marketing speak and flowery, nonsensical hype that nobody cares about and nobody reads (ie something I increasingly have little patience for).  So what I am saying here is that it should be no wonder that GO will continue to get good exposure here and other websites and blogs as they not only make great watches but they know how to “present” them as well.