OCT. 8, 2014
By GUY TREBAY
Photographs By Christian Hansen for the NY Times
NY Times: For Luxury Watch Buyers, One Just Isn’t Enough
Truth to tell, the Top Gun Big Pilot perpetual calendar watch is no thing of great beauty. Produced by the prestigious Swiss manufacturer IWC, it is a formidable hunk of matte-black ceramic casing roughly the diameter of a cocktail coaster.
The true merit of this ominous device is to be found on the inside, where its mechanical marvels reside. As its name may suggest, the Top Gun is a wonder of precision engineering, whose exquisitely calibrated gears and flywheels are capable of dissecting fragments of elapsed time with an elegance that lulls a wearer into forgetting the truth behind every timepiece ever manufactured. That is, with each advance of a sweeping second hand, the thing it is designed to measure is running out.
Two years ago, Adam Craniotes, a former copywriter, was determined to have the watch, even if its $38,600 price urged him toward painful Solomonic sacrifice. (continue to the full article)
Starting with his grandfather’s 1930s Longines watch, a gift from an aunt when he graduated from high school, Hampton Carney has gone on to amass a collection of nearly three dozen timepieces.
At a collectors’ gathering, Adam Craniotes, third from left, whose
determination to have a $38,600 watch led to a Solomonic sacrifice.
A display of high-end watches.
At left, the collector Hampton Carney, at right, he holds his
first watch, a 1930s Longines, which was his grandfather’s.
A 36-millimeter Patek Philippe Grand Complications watch.
0 comments:
Post a Comment