27 October

The day in brief

Meia Lua, the Lisbon brand founded by Gonçalo Lopes, presented the Meridian on the Tagus: a dive watch water-resistant to 300 metres, with a 39.5 mm case and four dials inspired by antique nautical charts.

In Milan, Patek Philippe closed its seventh Watch Art Grand Exhibition with 68,000 visitors, according to WorldTempus. In Monaco, Monaco Legend Auctions will offer, on 31 October and 1 November, a steel Rolex ref. 6062 estimated at 1 to 2 million euros. In November, the Golden Hour fair brings independent watchmaking to Hong Kong and Singapore, and ALTO has confirmed that it will take the ART 02 to the Singapore edition.

Meia Lua takes the Meridian, a 300-metre dive watch, to the Tagus

Meia Lua, the independent brand founded in Lisbon by Gonçalo Lopes, presented the Meridian to the press aboard a catamaran that set off from Doca de Santo Amaro, in Alcântara, under the motto "Beyond the Known". The new model joins the Inception and Callisto collections, is designed and assembled in Portugal, and its caseback is engraved with a 16th-century nautical astrolabe, the inscription "Relojoaria Portuguesa" (Portuguese watchmaking) and each watch's individual number.

The case, in brushed 316L steel, measures 39.5 mm in diameter, 11 mm in thickness and 48.5 mm from lug to lug. The 300-metre water resistance relies on the 8 mm screw-down crown, with Viton gaskets, and on the screw-down caseback. The sapphire crystal is domed and its anti-reflective coating is on the inner face, where it is protected from scratches.

The unidirectional bezel has 120 clicks: over 60 minutes, each click corresponds to half a minute. Because it only turns one way, an accidental knock can shorten the indicated dive time but never extend it, which is the safety rule for dive watches. It has a luminous reference marker and three markers for the five-minute intervals.

The dial has a grained texture inspired by antique nautical charts and applied metal indices filled with luminescent material. There are four versions: Polar White, in opaline white, Ocean Blue, Tropical Brown and Black Sea, in anthracite; the three coloured versions have fumé gradients. The steel bracelet, with three solid links, tapers from 20 to 16 mm and closes with a folding clasp.

The movement is the Sellita SW200-1, with automatic winding, 26 jewels, 28,800 vibrations per hour (4 Hz) and around 38 hours of power reserve. It has a stop-seconds function: with the crown pulled out, the balance is halted and the seconds hand stops, so the watch can be set to the second against a time signal.

According to Espiral do Tempo, the price has not yet been finalised but should be around 1,000 euros, above the Inception (400 euros) and the Callisto (600 euros). Sales begin with an international pre-order campaign on Kickstarter and then move to the brand's online shop and selected retailers.

Find out more on the brand's website.

Watch Art Grand Exhibition closes in Milan with 68,000 visitors

Patek Philippe's Watch Art Grand Exhibition welcomed 68,000 visitors in Milan, including 400 journalists, according to WorldTempus. The exhibition was open to the public from 2 to 18 October at the CityOval, the former Palazzo delle Scintille, in the CityLife district, beneath a dome 30 metres high.

It was the manufacture's seventh grand exhibition, after Dubai (2012), Munich (2013), London (2015), New York (2017), Singapore (2019) and Tokyo (2023), and the largest of them all. For comparison, Patek Philippe reports around 60,000 visitors in Tokyo and more than 42,500 in London.

Across around 2,900 m², divided into 15 themed areas, the exhibition brought together more than 500 watches and objects, around 80 of them from the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva. It was also the first to devote an entire space to the manufacture's historical archives. As the Radar reported on 1 October, the brand presented seven limited editions reserved for Italy in Milan. The next grand exhibition is planned for 2029.

Find out more on the brand's website.

Monaco Legend offers a steel Rolex 6062 estimated at up to two million euros

Monaco Legend Auctions holds its Exclusive Timepieces auction in Monaco on 31 October and 1 November. Lot 50, in the first session on Saturday at 14:30 CET, is a Rolex ref. 6062 in steel, from around 1953, estimated at 1 to 2 million euros.

Reference 6062 was presented by Rolex at the 1950 Basel Fair and produced for about three years. It is one of the brand's two historic references that combine a triple calendar (day of the week, month and date) with moon phases; the other is the 8171. The auction house describes this 36 mm example as exceptionally rare and very well preserved, with the caseback engravings still legible.

Provenance weighs on the value. The first owner, a Hong Kong-born student, received the watch in 1955 when he graduated from Imperial College London, and kept it for more than six decades. In 2017 it was sold at auction in Hong Kong for 5.8 million Hong Kong dollars and then passed through the collection of John Goldberger.

The sale includes other major pieces: a Patek Philippe ref. 2499 fourth series in yellow gold, from 1982 (700,000 to 1.4 million euros); a ref. 3974 in yellow gold, from 1990, with perpetual calendar and minute repeater (600,000 to 1.2 million); a Nautilus ref. 3700/1 in white gold, from 1978, of which fewer than fifteen examples in that metal are publicly known (600,000 to 1.2 million); and a Rolex Sea-Dweller ref. 1665 with a red "Qaboos" dial (250,000 to 500,000 euros). Cartier also has its own section, with pieces from the collections of Roni Madhvani and John Goldberger.

Find out more on the auction house's website.

Golden Hour brings independent watchmaking to Hong Kong and Singapore

Delugs, a brand founded in Singapore in 2018, is organising Golden Hour in November, a free-entry independent watchmaking fair in two cities. In Hong Kong it takes place on 7 and 8 November, at the Delugs boutique in the Central Building; in Singapore, from 13 to 15 November, at the Raffles Hotel.

Seventeen brands will be in Singapore, among them ALTO, Czapek and Renaud Tixier. Pieces by Grönefeld and other independents will be on display without the brands in attendance.

ALTO announced on 26 October that it will be at the Singapore edition, where its chief executive, Thibaud Guittard, and designer, Raphaël Abeillon, will receive visitors and journalists from 10 to 15 November. The brand, created in 2024, is bringing the ART 02, successor to the ART 01, with first deliveries from November.

The ART 02 has a case measuring 42.3 by 36 mm and 10.2 mm thick, in grade 5 titanium, as are the bracelet and the movement's mainplate. The A02 calibre, with automatic winding, was created for this model and runs at 5 Hz (36,000 vibrations per hour), with 50 hours of power reserve. The high frequency divides each second into ten steps and makes the rate less sensitive to shocks and changes of position, but it uses more energy, which tends to shorten the power reserve. The seconds hand turns anticlockwise.

Find out more on the organiser's website.

What deserves attention

Singapore will host two independent watchmaking fairs in the same week in mid-November: IAMWATCH, from 12 to 15 November, and Golden Hour, from 13 to 15. The overlap confirms the city as one of the main meeting points between independents and Asian collectors.

Retail in Asia keeps moving: Gerald Charles has opened its first dedicated space in Taiwan, in Taipei, inside Chung Mei Watch's Nanjing store, ten months after entering the market in December 2025.

In Monaco, the steel Rolex 6062 will put the value of provenance to the test: the same watch sold in 2017 for 5.8 million Hong Kong dollars and now comes to auction with an estimate of 1 to 2 million euros.

In Portugal, the Meridian shows a national brand moving upmarket with a dive watch of demanding specifications, with 300 metres of water resistance, a 120-click bezel and a sapphire crystal, and an expected price close to 1,000 euros.