An interesting story surfaced last month as art experts discovered what they thought may be the world’s oldest painting to feature a watch.

The painting (pictured above) shows Italian nobleman Cosimo l de’Medici holding what looks like a watch and is estimated by curators at the Science Museum to be 450 years old.

Curator at the Science Museum , Rob Skitmore says of the piece “The watch itself would have been a virtuoso piece at that time, probably made in southern Germany, and the picture also shows its separate alarm mechanism that was used with it at night.”

It is know that Cosimo was a patron of science and technology so it is all the more plausible that he would own a watch of this kind.

Professional comedy theif, Bob Arno makes his way through an audience stealing watches off the baffled punters.  He then proceeds to get them up on stage where it gets even more impressive!

Vladamir Putin is very aware of the need to be well presented. This is the guy who released a ‘Let’s learn judo with Vladimir‘ DVD in 2008 - he made no mistakes that it was all a careful PR stunt, the DVD didn’t really contain Judo instructions from the Russian chief, ‘but from real geniuses’

Pictures of Vladimir doing manly things like fishing in a lake with his shirt off are entirely normal. Pictures of him holding a gun and wrestling tigers don’t even raise eyebrows. This is stock manly behaviour from the Russian chieftain…

So how has this Russian man-god decided to demo his testosterone this time?

By presenting his watch to a child on a horse of course! If anyone on the planet knows how to show off the manly mojo, it’s Vladimir Putin, so we officially declare that giving people a watch is as manly as wrestling a tiger. Of course, Putin assures us we can stroke a tiger and be manly at the same time.

You know celebrities - those people that are better than us, right?  Well these people who are better than you like to wear clothes that are nicer than yours.  And just to rub it in your face, Watch Superstar bring you a selection of said people (of whom you are not worthy) along with the Breitling watches that they wear.  Sure you may not have their money, looks or talent but if you pop along and browse our very own selection of Breitling watches, then you’ll at least be able to tell the time like them!  Read the rest of this entry »

Obviously bored with using his watch solely for the purpose of keeping time, this young chap decides to study what effects if any would result from placing his watch in the microwave.  Judging from the state of said microwave, it looks like the watch isn’t the first thing he’s tried to cook.  Needless to say, this isn’t something you should try at home… Read the rest of this entry »

Those pesky celebrities have it all, the money, the clothes, the yachts and the lifestyles and whether we like it or not we’re forever chasing rainbows and aspiring to be like them. They definitely are rainbows, since we’ll never get there, their image is a carefully constructed masterpiece and it’s this that makes them attractive. Well we’re going to be scientific about it, and deconstruct those expensive and unattainable  images into something much more realistic. Here’s our list of expensive celebrity watches, and their much cheaper alternatives. Most lists go to ten, but ours go to eleven. Read the rest of this entry »

You will notice on the Watch Superstar site that there are both designer watches and chronographs available.  Some may never have heard of a chronograph and others may just be confused as to how one differs from a normal watch.  This handy guide should set you straight.

A chronograph is a timepiece that has both timekeeping and stopwatch functions.  The term chronograph is often confused with the term chronometer which in some cases describes a watch that has received some kind of precision certificate.  Chronographs come in the following forms:

• Analogue chronograph - these display both time and stopwatch functions using their analogue hands.  Usually the centre hand will be used for the stopwatch function with  subdials indicating seconds, tenth seconds, etc.
• Digital chronograph - predictably, this uses a digital readout for both timekeeping and stopwatch functions.  This will either use 2 separate displays, or one display whose mode can be selected.
• Analogue/Digital chronograph - this chronograph consists of a standard analogue watch with a smaller inbuild digital display being used for the stopwatch function.
• Double chronograph -this is a watch that has not one but two stopwatch mechanisms so that it can estimate separate events of different durations.
• Flyback chronograph - this is often confused with a double chronograph.  This is a watch that has a single button to stop, reset and restart the chronograph function of the watch.

Having an expensive watch is an age old status symbol. Not content with simply having a a time keeper strapped to his arm, mankind has strived to make the most complicated mechanical wonders designed to make jaws drop. Complications, (additional extras to you and me) are the curreny of the high class watch, the more it has, the better it is. If you want to tread the route of the gentlemans collectors watch expect to spend well in excess of $200,000. Until you’ve pulled in that kind of money you might as well stick with your trusty casio.

The Chopard Super Ice Cube

Forget the endless, needless and confusing world of complications and spend your hard earned monies on the Chopard Super Ice Cube for that special lady in your life. The vital statistics: 66.16 carats of diamonds which includes 1,897 brilliants, 288 trapeze-cuts, and a center case set with 16 squares. No matter how much money this thing costs, it’s still ugly. Ugly and over a million dollars, a combination rarely seen.

$1,130,620

The Blancpain 1735

The 1735 has half-a-dozen complications, two more than a watch needs to qualify as a “grand complication”. It has an ultra-slim, 42 mm platinum case, a perpetual calendar (meaning it never gets the date wrong), a split-second chronograph, a minute repeater, a tourbillon and a moon phase minder. It takes steady Swiss hands eight-to-ten months to piece together all 740 components and only 18 out of a limited run of 30 watches have been assembled to date.  Click on the images below to get a real good look inside this $1,000,000 masterpiece.

$1,000,000

The Vacheron Constantin minute repeater

Vacheron Constantin started making watches in 1755 which gains them the title of oldest watch manufacturer in the world. In over 250 years in the watch-making game Vacheron Constantin have ammassed only 15 boutiques worldwide that sell their product. The plain vanilla faced minute repeater has a mesmerising mechanism that will chime back the time to you as and when you please. Housed in a 18K gold case the minute repeater was designed by Vacheron Constantin for Napoleon to help the tiny man to tell the time on the battlefield without getting shot. A minute repeater is a mechanical device that chimes out the time with two different bell sounds, so that at the pull of a lever you can hear exactly what time it is. All that history for the walk away price of $340,000! If you’re still not convinced that the mechanical wonder of a minute repeater is worth it then take a look at it in action.

$340,000

Audemars Piguet Tourbillon Minute Repeater

Considering the money you’d need to spend to get you hands on this piece of surgical engineering, it’s a mighty ugly watch. It looks like something you can pick up on the nightmarkets of Far East Asia but under the hood lie more complications than you’ll know what to do with. It comes with a tourbillon, a device invented in 1795 by French watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet to counter the effect gravity has on your watch as it moves around on your wrist. It’s a negates the effects of gravity on your time telling mechanism within a tiny confined space yet somehow it was invented 200 years ago by a Frenchman?

Oh, not only does it have a tourbillon, it also has a minute repeater, so even if you were to climb Everest you could still tell the time perfectly without having to look at it. The minute repeater flexes it’s tiny mechanical muscles in the video below.

$297,500

Breguet double tourbillon

This watch qualifies as a “grande complication” - namely because it’s needlessly complicated. Mankind was born with two kidneys and it’s well known we can get by just fine with just one. Tourbillons are similar to kidneys and yet here, echoing the mystery of mankind, we see a watch sporting two of the complicated little numbers. They work independently of each other and hand over the task of running the watch to the other tourbillon every 12 hours like a miniture mechanical relay marathon. Not only does this watch hit the tourbillon market for all it’s worth, it also has a 44mm platinum case with front and back sapphire crystals and 540 moving parts. Your laptop has less moving parts than that, and this is just a watch, and it’s only $329,000.

$329,000

Girard-Perregaux Opera One

This platinum timepiece has an alligator band, enough to get the activists backs up straight off the bat, and features a Westminster minute repeater and tourbillon with three gold bridges.

Unlike your standard run of the mill minute repeaters, the Girard-Perregaux’s Opera One sounds passing hours not with a stanard bell sound but a real life tune. $495,000 is all you’ll need to be allowed within arms length of this watch, failing that you can always just look at our nice picture..

$495,000

Grande Complication Blancpain

If Tom Cruise, Tommy Hilfiger, Gilette and Ralph Lauren had a love child, that thing (whatever it might be) would wear this watch. It costs a small fortune but for your dollar you get a minute repeater, a split-second chronograph, a tourbillon, a perpetual calendar, an automatic winding mechanism and if you’re into your astronomy it can even tell you how our lunar friend is doing in his monthly cycle. If you saved $2 every day it would only take you 1000 years to get your hands on this beauty.

$730,000

Vacheron Constantin Tour de l’Ile

Its that oldest of old watch manufacturer again. Vacheron Constantin claim this is the most complicated watch in the world, and because of that fact they only decided to put the time in to make seven of them. It’s estimated that the Tour de l’Ile took 10,000 man hours to make including the research and development needed to allow a watch this complicated to even exist. It has a list of sixteen complications including a minute repeater, sunset time, perpetual calendar, second time zone, a tourbillon device, the equation of time and the representation of the night sky, second time zone, moon phases, age of the moon,  a celestial chart, and a 58 hour power reserve. If it’s bells and whistles you like, this is the watch for you. With only seven of them ever being made the price of these rare birds is going up and up with some estimations sitting at around the $6,000,000 mark. If you’d jumped the queue when they first were announced you might well have got one much cheaper.

$1,500,000

The most expensive watch ever bought

The most expensive watch ever made was the result of a long lasting feud between two American financiers. During a time when most of the United States didn’t have two sticks to rub together the two businessmen, New York financier Henry Graves Jr. and Ohio automobile engineer James Ward Packard, duked it out in a game of “who can have the most ridiculous watch”.
Packard commissioned 13 complicated watches from Patek Philippe between 1900 and 1927 with complications including a perpetual calendar with phases and age of the moon, indication of sunrise and sunset, and a celestial chart depicting the constellations of stars in the sky over Packard’s home in Ohio.

Graves Jr. wasn’t going to roll over that easily, over a similar time period he comissioned complicated watched from the same guy who probably couldn’t believe his luck. To have two businessmen throwing money at you in the hope that you eventually roll over and say “this is as complicated as it gets” is surely a stroll up dream street for watch manufacturers.

The process eventually ended with a watch comissioned by Graves Jr. that boasted 24 complications. It took three years to design and five years to produce. The 24 carrat gold time piece was finished in 1933, had a different horological function for each hour of the day and included a chart of the night sky over Graves’ home in New York.

Triumphant in his victory, Graves died in 1953 leaving the watch to people lucky enough to be written into his will who sold the watch to the Time Museum in Rockford, Illinois. In 1999 the museum closed and their collection of watches was sold off at a Sotheby’s auction.  With a pre-sale estimate of $3 million, the Graves watch eventually sold for $11,003,500 to an anonymous collector.

That’s around half a million dollars for every complication in the watch and whoever bought it will be lucky enough to know how bright it is at the home of its original owner.

$11,003,500