Victoria says I can have a lot of favorite watches, but this really is one of my absolute
favorites.
The Jaeger Lecoultre Master Control Perpetual Calendar.
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Fresh from the Showcase at SwissWatchExpo.
We've got what is truly one of my favorite watches.
This is the Jaeger Lecoultre Master Control Perpetual Calendar in 18-carat, yellow gold.
And, this is just all around one of the greatest watches I think that's ever been made.
It's a 37-millimeter diameter.
So it fits really well on the wrist.
It's a thin watch.
It's a little less than 10 millimeters thick.
So even for those of you with a smaller wrist out there, it's going to look great on the
wrist, but just the symmetry of the dial.
I love symmetrical dials and the way they've arranged the sub-dials.
And I think the movement really stands out on this watch, but just from an aesthetic
point of view, it has an opaline dial.
That means it's not like a sunburst dial.
It's not a guilloche with the engravings.
It's really sort of a, if you look at it with a loop, it's almost like a grainy silver look.
And, but it has a beautiful sheen when you turn it in the light.
The sub-dials at 9 and 3 and 12 are sort of snailed.
So they give you a little bit of contrast from the rest of the dial.
And the markers and hands, they, you know, just classic JLC.
They did a great job with them.
They have a little bit of contrast because one facet of the dauphine hand is high polished
and the other facet is sandblasted.
So you get some differentiation there that makes it real easy to read in just about any
kind of light.
Now, when you're looking at this watch, it does have a high polished bezel on the edge
of the case.
The lugs are a little bit downturned, which makes it very easy to wear.
The deployant buckle is the second generation JLC.
Deployant buckle with the sandblasted inner.
It's a machined buckle.
It's very nice and got a good gold weight.
It's real easy to open and close.
So those are the things as far as kind of daily living with it, but this movement is
the show stopper.
So it's part of the Master Control series.
The 1000 hours of testing, which if you do the math on it, I think that's about 41 or
42 days they've tested this thing.
It's way beyond what the COSC does.
15 days and nights for a certified chronometer and the way they have made this movement,
not only is it an automatic winding, but they've made it where it's adjustable to six different
positions.
So normally for a chronometer for it to be adjusted with tight enough specificity, to
be able to pass the chronometer test of - 4 to + 6 seconds a day, and three different
temperatures and five different positions, they have to be adjustable to five positions.
JLC has just gone over the top with the six positions.
I don't even know what the sixth one is.
Maybe it's another dimension or something, but the, what this watch does at its heart.
It is a perpetual calendar.
Penny reminds me to explain the difference between annual calendar and perpetual.
The difference is, okay, so on a day-dat watch you have the day of the week and the date
of the month.
So it might say like Sunday the 13th.
On an annual calendar, it's going to also know the month and which months have 30 days
and which have 31.
So if you're at the end of June, it will automatically jump to the first, instead of the 31st at
the end of the month, since it knows that June only has 30 days.
Now, a perpetual calendar takes it a step further.
It knows what year it is and what cycle of the leap year we're in so that it can automatically
adjust for you.
This one goes even a step beyond that.
It has the moonphases as well.
And you'd think that would all be really complicated.
Jonathan and I were talking about this yesterday, that if you get your hands on the wrong perpetual
calendar watch and you mess up the date, it can actually be about a $2,000 repair to fix
the date because you could still of invent any combination.
Day of the week, day of the month, year, cycle of the leap year and moon phases.
It gets really complicated.
It's real easy to mess it up.
Not so on this watch.
One of the coolest things about this watch, not only is it a great price point.
It's frankly, the value proposition for a perpetual calendar watch, but the way this
works, they've taken the perpetual calendar module from their stable mates at Richemont
IWC and modified it for it to fit the Master Control serie
watch from JLC.
They've separated the crown, which is to wind the movement and set the time from the actuator
to set all of the other functions of the watch.
It's just this one button right here.
And it's so easy because it is locked in mechanically programmed with the year, which is currently
showing 22 up here.
The month, the day, the day of the week and the moonphases, they all progress together.
So all you do, if your watch stops because you haven't been wearing it for a few days,
you don't own a watch winder.
You think it's fun to play with your watches like I do.
You pick it up four days later, you wind the watch, you set the time, and then you just
push this button four times to move it ahead four days, and you'll see everything mov together.
The day of the week, the day of the month, the moonphases, everything moves together
because it's locked in.
Now there's, from what I've read about 128 years of moonphases being correct before there
would need to be a correction and there's gonna be a correction to the Gregorian calendar
in the year 2100.
It'll need to be moved ahead one day.
Now here in 2022, I don't expect to be around in 2100.
That's gonna be somebody else's problem, but I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of watchmakers
in 2100, doing this advancement because virtually all the perpetual calendar watches that we
look at, have this problem where they're gonna need to be bumped ahead one day in 2100.
So to me, this is one of the best perpetual calendar watches, because you can't mess it
up.
You can't inadvertently move rearrange the day and the day of the week and end up with
a $2,000 repair on your hand.
And yet it's one of the best prices I've ever seen for a perpetual calendar.
Watch 38 millimeters, great size, really nice and thin beautiful design, excellent execution
probably should be a lot more expensive than it is.
But right now, while we've got it in stock, you should search and let us know, give us
a call.
If you're interested in adding this one to your collection, don't forget to like and
subscribe and give us a call here at Swiss watch expo.