I have no shame in acknowledging my position as the resident watch nerd at WorldTempus. After all, someone’s gotta do it. Here in the office, we’ve been discussing when to start running our annual list of gift recommendations. The sensible, reasonable, logical time for this would be around the third week of November, was the common consensus. That said, the compilation of the nerd-oriented gift guide has fallen to me this year, and there are a number of watches on this particular list that are as elusive as a Christmas dinner without family disputes. They are not easy to get your hands on, is what I mean. You could have started looking for one in June and it wouldn’t have been too early. (You could have started in January and we would have applauded your foresight and sagacity.)
What is this list actually about anyway? What is a gift guide for geeks? Because there is not just one single type of geek, my dear WorldTempus family. Oh no, no, no. There are as many types of geeks as there are types of watches, and it is a glorious testament to the infinite variety and splendour of the world we live in. And here I’d like to make the distinction between geek and snob, because they can easily be confused. Both are perceived as experts, in possession of extraordinary quantities of passion and knowledge regarding their subject of choice. However, while geeks share their passion and knowledge generously, and are happy to welcome people to their circle, snobs can usually be distinguished by their tendency to use their passion and knowledge to exclude others and maintain the elite environment they prize so much.
These watch recommendations are therefore made in the spirit of the geek, which is to say they are exuberant rather than discreet. They invite discovery instead of intimidating you with their sophistication. The Twelve Days of Christmas is a Christmas carol familiar anywhere in the English-speaking world that the Christian faith is observed; it recounts a litany of Christmas presents from the singer’s true love, gifts that increase in quantity with every passing day. These gifts range from the impractical (“On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me: a partridge in a pear tree”) to the frankly annoying (“On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me: Twelve drummers drumming”). Here is my geek’s alternative to this logistical nightmare of receiving birds and percussionists for Christmas — I know which list I’d prefer.
THE PHYSICS GEEK — ARMIN STROM ONE WEEK EDITION
And on that note, we’re off with a surprising pick! While you might think that the physicist might appreciate the fascinating and cinematic spectacle of the Armin Strom Resonance watches, the new One Week Edition actually offers much more in terms of mechanical variety, with its long reserve, fast beat rate and inventive power reserve display.
THE MYTHOLOGY GEEK — GENUS GNS DRAGON
For the person in your life who lives and breathes the novels and films of fantasy fiction — from The Lord of The Rings to Game of Thrones — what could be more fitting than the Genus GNS Dragon? A hand-sculpted gold dragon makes its way around the dial in sinuous curves that form a figure 8, a magic number that represents infinity.
THE MIXOLOGY GEEK — SINGER FLYTRACK COCKTAIL TIMER
I’m not at all objective about this watch. I love this movement and the people who made it. I love the retro-vintage inspiration of the watch design. I love a good drink at the end of a long day. This is a watch that hits all the right notes for me, and I’m pretty sure you know someone who would adore this piece for Christmas.
THE MUSIC GEEK — JAQUET DROZ AUTOMATON ROLLING STONES
There’s no point getting into the debate about the greatest band in the world, but I think we can all agree that music today wouldn’t be what it is if The Rolling Stones had never existed. They defined rock music in their time; their oeuvre continues to influence it today. This watch recaptures the glory of the Jagger-Richards-Wood-Watts quartet in micro-mechanical perfection.
THE TECHNOLOGY GEEK — ULYSSE NARDIN FREAK ONE
The watch that started the silicon revolution in horology; the Ulysse Nardin Freak was groundbreaking when it was first introduced and it preserves its avant-garde spirit with its latest model, the Freak One. Silicon has always figured at the core of this watch, inseverably making it the watch of the computing generation.
THE NATURE GEEK — LOUIS MOINET SAVANNA TOURBILLON COBRA
For the person in your life who has their television constantly on the National Geographic channel. Nature is the eternal, whirling enigma that surrounds us, and the Louis Moinet Savanna Tourbillon translates this poetically with a tourbillon and dial decoration that depicts a beautiful yet fierce cobra on a trompe l’oeil puzzle dial.
THE JEWELLERY GEEK — RICHARD MILLE RM 07-01 INTERGALACTIC
You might think that watches with diamonds on them are purely decorative objects, made to look pretty on a slender wrist. You would be so wrong. There is a level of technicality to gemstones and gem-setting that would rival any high-complication, and the RM 07-01 Intergalactic demonstrates this by combining elaborate and geometric gem-setting with its iconic top-quality automatic movement.
THE MATHEMATICS GEEK — BIANCHET FLYING TOURBILLON GRANDE DATE
It’s not often that we talk about how mathematics inspires the imagination, but there are some numerical concepts that underpin the world’s most celebrated art. The Golden Ratio, for example, is the number that defines the perfect proportions that our minds perceive as beauty. This is the principle that unites all Bianchet watches in all their dimensions.
THE CRYPTO GEEK — JACOB & CO. SOLAR METAVERSO JUPITER
Before AI became the buzzword of the day, there was cryptocurrency and blockchain. Just last year, it seemed like everyone (even your grandma) had their own NFT. For that special person in your life who has as much of a presence online and offline, why not a watch that comes in both physical and NFT form?
THE ASTRONOMY GEEK — TRILOBE NUIT FANTASTIQUE SECRET
We are all stargazers at heart. Who has never looked up at the night sky and marvelled at the constellations above? The dedicated astronomer who knows the star maps back to front will surely appreciate the Secret watches of Trilobe, their dials decorated with a sequence of stars that represent a specific location, date and time of your choosing.
THE HISTORY GEEK — PATEK PHILIPPE REF. 5930P WORLD TIME FLYBACK CHRONOGRAPH
This looks like a modern watch. It is a modern watch. But it comes from a long tradition of world-time watches, beginning in 1931 when Louis Cottier first created a mechanism that would allow us to read the time across different time zones. It was a time when international commerce became the key part of world economics, and the world time complication is a snapshot of those years and what they represented in history.
THE STAR WARS GEEK — KROSS STUDIO BOBA FETT TOURBILLON
If you asked a hundred people in the street what their idea of the archetypal geek was, you can be sure that Star Wars would be mentioned in the majority of responses. Kross Studio specialises in watches that celebrate milestones in popular culture, and the Boba Fett Tourbillon is a watch literally made for the person who already has a full-size Stormtrooper figurine in the hallway and an original lightsaber prop in a glass display.
