Hodinkee’s Latest Limited Edition is a Collaboration with Bamford Featuring Everyone’s Favorite Cartoon Beagle

With Watches & Wonders behind us, we’re now well into new release season. Many of our favorite brands have revealed their hottest new watches already, with a near certainty that there are many more to come. A lot of these watches are stylistically daring and technically impressive, representing the absolute peak in horology for many of the brands we’re concerned with. What we wind up with, then, are a lot of watches that are nice to ogle but not necessarily wearable and fun in the traditional sense. It’s a lot of high end luxury, and watches that reside squarely on earth are the exception and not the rule. So it’s somewhat refreshing to see that the latest Hodinkee limited edition, a collaboration with Bamford, is so unpretentious. Consider this your Watches & Wonders palate cleanser. 

What we have here in the Bamford x Peanuts “Joe Preppy” GMT Limited Edition for Hodinkee is a fresh take on the character watch, with a helpful complication thrown in along with plenty of charm for the Peanuts connoisseur. Most readers will recognize Snoopy on the dial right away (the cartoon beagle appears more frequently on watch dials than in comics these days), but where he’s often shown in flight gear or a space suit for projects with Omega and Timex, this Bamford edition finds Snoopy in his “Joe Preppy” guise, one of the many “Joe” personalities the character adopts throughout the history of the long running comic strip. “Joe Preppy” is a more sophisticated Snoopy, clad in a tweed sport jacket and glasses, and of course for this watch his arms rotate to tell the time, in the great tradition of character watches of the past. You’ll notice Woodstock has been enlisted here to track the 24 hour display around the dial’s perimeter. 

If the Snoopy persona chosen for this watch is dapper and sophisticated, the design of the case sits on the other side of the spectrum, which is no doubt part of the draw and charm of the piece. The stainless steel case has a cushion design meant to recall military dive watches of the 60s. It measures 40mm across and is 11.7mm thick, with a lug to lug measurement of 46.7mm. The crown at the 10:00 position controls the internal bezel, making it simple to track multiple time zones while traveling. The watch has 100 meters of water resistance, making it a practical tool that can be worn everyday in a variety of situations, which is somewhat uncommon when it comes to character watches. 

The movement powering the watch is the Sellita SW330-2, an automatic GMT caliber with a 24 hour hand that can be independently set. This makes the watch a so-called “caller” GMT, easier to track another time zone from far away rather than in the midst of the travel, but the rotating bezel mitigates that potential problem a bit if you’re on the go frequently. The movement has 42 hours of power reserve as well as a date display at the 3:00 position. 

The Bamford x Peanuts “Joe Preppy” GMT Limited Edition for Hodinkee is on sale today with a retail price of $1,850. This is a numbered edition of just 250 numbered pieces, and in a playful touch packaging is fabric replica of Snoopy’s doghouse in a shade of brown to match the tone of the dial, with Hodinkee’s logo on the side. More information can be found here.