Watches, Stories & Gear: eBay Finds, Green Straps, and Remembering Connery

“Watches, Stories, and Gear” is a roundup of our favorite content, watch or otherwise, from around the internet. Here, we support other creators, explore interesting content that inspires us, and put a spotlight on causes we believe in. Oh, and any gear we happen to be digging on this week. We love gear.

Share your story ideas or interesting finds with us by emailing our Managing Editor at [email protected]

This installment of “Watches, Stories, and Gear” is brought to you by the Windup Watch Shop, which now offers home goods.

Tenet Coming to Your TV Soon

This was a tough summer (a tough year!) to be a movie fan. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, movie theaters throughout the country have been closed or operating with significant restrictions for months. Blockbuster after blockbuster has been pushed to 2021, and many of us have been left craving the cinema experience. There’s just something about the smell of popcorn, the anticipation of something new and unknown, and the collective experience of seeing a story unfold in a darkened room filled with strangers that can’t be replicated at home. Christopher Nolan’s Tenet was perhaps the greatest casualty of this year’s pause on the theatrical experience. Delayed several times and eventually released to theaters in states that would allow it over Labor Day weekend, the espionage/action epic struggled at the box office amid fears of the coronavirus. Now, at long last, we know when we’ll have a chance to watch in the privacy and safety of our own homes, with the announcement from Warner Brothers this week that Tenet will be released digitally on December 15, with Blu-Ray and DVD releases to follow. Get all the details on Collider right here.

The Allure of the Green Strap

Every watch enthusiast loves a good strap. For many of us, straps are a subcategory of collecting all on their own. They can make a watch come alive in surprising ways, and the best straps are representative of a type of handcraft that’s every bit as impressive as the fine watches they’re often mounted to. In this story in the New York Times, we get a look into the operations at Créations Perrin, a strap maker with workshops in France and Switzerland that provides luxurious leather straps to many top high end brands, but also makes custom straps to client’s specifications. Créations Perrin makes straps from a dizzying variety of materials, including the skins of alligator, shark, and python, and their workforce (mostly women) are skilled in as many as 85 separate operations for a given strap. Check out this article if you’re interested in the mind boggling level of detail involved in making some of the finest watch straps in the world. 

eBay Find Of The Week: Vintage Omega Geneve Ref 166.0118 

Here’s an unusual vintage Omega Geneve ref 166.0118, complete with boxes and papers. The 35mm hexagonal case is unpolished with nice sharp edges to go with its unique look. Classic silver dial with brushed finish is superb. Nice stick hands and original signed crown to boot. While the Seamasters, Constellations and Speedmasters might get all the love, the Geneve is still a solid Omega with all the quality and cache of a vintage Omega. And this gem comes with the inner and outer boxes, as well as the completed warranty paperwork from 1974! The automatic caliber 1480 movement with quickset date looks clean and the seller states it has been serviced by an Omega AD recently.

View listing here. 

A New Raspberry Pi Lands Inside Keyboard

The DIY computer system called Raspberry Pi got a big update with the release of the Pi 400, which places the traditional PCB within a keyboard. The move should make the device accessible to a far broader audience, who merely need to plug it into a TV and load some media to begin using. The 400 shares a similar architecture to that of the Pi 4 released last year, but receives a quad-core 1.8GHz ARM Cortex-A72 CPU, which should offer a bit more oomph for whatever projects you can cook up with it. For a starting price of $70, this is a perfect bit of kit for kids learning to code, all the way up to adults looking to make a bespoke media player. Learn more about the new Pi 400 from The Verge right here. 

Remembering Connery Through His Characters

We lost one of the greats this past week with the passing of Sean Connery. The actor was 90 years old, and leaves behind a remarkable legacy of influence and characters on the big screen. The Ringer looks back on some of the actor’s great roles over his career, from the eponymous James Bond, to his influence on Saturday Night Live, along with his impact on the evolution of masculinity, for better or worse. Understanding the allure of Connery’s characters provides a welcome bit of reflection and even appreciation for the contributions he provided to everything from style (minus the NATO and suit combo) to attitude.