Fresh from the Showcase at SwissWatchExpo. Today, we're going to talk about the Tudor Heritage
Chronograph. It's an important piece in the Tudor lineup because in the 1950s, chronographs and
divers watches became all the rage. And especially if you combine these two elements, it was, it was
really interesting. Not a lot of companies were doing it. Of course, Rolex was ruling the world
with their oyster case, their water resistant case for a lot longer than so many other manufacturers.
And as Tudor is a Rolex company, they also led the way in the oyster case style. Now,
a lot of people get confused about Tudor and whether or not Tudor is just sort of
the cheaper brand of Rolex. And it's actually not always want to correct the record on this
because when you buy a Tudor, you're still buying a Rolex product for the longest time.
Of course, Rolex could be found in name on many of the pieces for Tudor. So you'd find case backs
that said case backed by Rolex. You would find Rolex crowns on a lot of the watches. So there
for a very long time, the Rolex and Tudor line were intricate. And it was as if Rolex wanted you
to be absolutely certain that you understood that Tudor was a Rolex product. In fact,
in the 1990s Tudor actually pulled out of the United States, losing a little bit of
their, um, market share to other types of watches. And so from 1998, until 2013 Tudor
had disappeared from the United States market. In that time, they made a lot of really cool watches
for other countries, as they always had. Now, prior to leaving the market,
there were watches like the one I have on my wrist here. This is the Tudor Tiger.
So the reason it's called the Tiger is because Tudor in the nineties were sponsoring
Tiger Woods. Obviously Rolex sponsors all the golf tournaments now, but at the time
Tudor was really heavily involved. When Tudor came back to the United States, they started
promoting the IMSA series, which was a automotive racing series. And they were big sponsors of that
for many years. And the reason I mentioned that is because these two watches that I have down here,
these two chronographs, the Heritage Chronographs when they came back to the United States
were the first debuted chronographs. And these were huge within the IMSA series in their product
announcements and things like that. So their sponsorship of the series went hand in hand with
these two models. So you have a really unique history of Tudor with their chronographs. Now
there's some very distinct differences about their chronographs, that if you don't pay attention to
you will miss really quickly upon first glance, you look at these watches and you think, gee,
they look a lot like a Daytona from Rolex. Well, they do, but there's some really big differences
between the one I have on my wrist and the two that are in this display box. So let's talk about
that. First of all, the Tudor Tiger. I don't want to take this in off my wrist because I want to
be able to show you the dimensions of it as compared to the ones that are in the box.
The Tudor Tiger is a smaller watch at 40 millimeters,
and I'm going to hold it over here next to the other watches so that you can see that
the newest Heritage models, the blue and orange, and in the black and gray,
those models are 42 millimeter cases. And they're called big blocks. Tudor made a series of
chronographs like this in what would be considered the big box series, which we actually have in our
inventory, but they are quite a bit different than a few ways. And I'll explain that in a moment.
The Tudor Tiger is awesome because it has a lacquer dial with that enamel, the sort of
a lacquer enamel finish. And they're very, very deep. They have extraordinary color. They come
in green, blue, red, yellow. They also come in some flat colors that don't have that enameling.
And so with this particular Tiger in that burgundy red, you get almost a candy look out of it.
It's really amazing. You don't find that in any other watch manufacturer.
So that's, what's making these watches extraordinarily popular all over again.
Now this has a thinner case. It's more rounded on the sides. So it has more of that
Rolex Daytona appearance. It's much more close. And of course from Daytona is 40 millimeters.
So it makes sense that the Tiger looks so much more like the Daytona in its dimensions.
The cool thing about this watch is it still retains the screw-down pushers
top and bottom for the chronograph. Now that's not something in a lesser expensive watch that
you would normally find. These are more affordable timepiece. Of course, they're getting more
expensive because now the collectors are starting to come after them with everything. And every
time we get them in, they sell very quickly. This happens to be an amazing example because
it doesn't have a lot of scratches along the inner bezel ring, the crystals phenomenal shape.
There's no dings, dents or scratches. This watch is truly in amazing shape and has been very well
taken care of over the years. And that red color just is stupendous. It's absolutely amazing.
So let's talk about the Heritage Chronographs and what happened when they came back to the
U S market. These two models were throwbacks to the 1950s in their original introductions,
but there's some sincere differences between these and the originals. Of course, the originals
were big block cases, just like these were, the dials were a little bit different though. The
chronographs were reversed. They were some, and I don't like getting into very technical
details just because we could spend hours getting bogged down in the weeds over that kind of thing,
but just understand that the chronographs were reversed
so left and right were swapped. And also they had 45 minute chronograph counters.
And the reason that I mentioned that without getting too technical is because
most chronograph counters are either 30 minutes or 60 minutes. So it was very strange to have
a 45 minute timer. However, when you think about racing series, you realize that 45 minute
increments can be used for so many different things and so many different sporting categories.
That's the reason that it's believed, but not known for sure that they use the 45 minute
counter. But the other thing is this watch can be used as sort of a crude or rudimentary
GMT model in the same way the Rolex GMT could be used because it has a 12 hour bezel on it.
And you can, and it's it's unit direction, I'm sorry, by directional. So you can
move it left or right. And you can change the, the time zone that you want to monitor with it.
So it's sort of, you know, it's a very simplistic way of doing a GMT or monitoring a secondary time
zone if that's what you wanted to do. But it also, of course, is used for counting down,
timing events. So it's a very multi functional role. Now, the date that's two,
because the data's at the six o'clock position on this particular piece. And it's important to note
the original model had a magnifier. It was a Cyclops was on the outside of the crystal.
So they did not carry that over from the old model to the new one, because a lot of people felt like
it junked up the dial. It looked really busy, it looked out of place. It was very strange and
it caused the dimensions of the dial to be off. I'm not one of those people that gets that picky.
I happen to like interesting things like that. I think that the original model was
just fine the way that it was. There's a lot of people that complain about a lot of things
on watches. Oh, it's too thick. It's too thin. It's too light. It's this it's that
there's a lot of little details that, that are out there in the world that people were arguing over.
In my opinion, I would have liked to have seen the magnifier at the bottom
only because no other watch in the world has it. That's why I like anything that goes to a
throwback. I don't like them to eliminate too many things about the original. If you're going to go,
if you're going to do a recreation, because it kind of throws me off. This is the, that got my
attention. The first time with Tudor the first time I ever saw him reintroduced the U S market,
because I love the color style, the orange and blue, and sort of that, that off-white.
And this also, when you start looking at the dial, the subtitles are just, they have this,
the slightest amount of dish to them. It's not immediately apparent until you start
looking at it closely, but of course it does have the stick markers. And the chapter ring
is very interesting as well. Remember with this watch, you can also get the canvas style strap,
and it comes in the same colors as the dial, the orange and blue and the cream off-white
color. It looks absolutely amazing. It makes us watch super easy to wear, but that oyster style
bracelet is incredible. There's a lot of little details about these watches that
I want to show. And I'm going to want to show you the black and gray model, because
this model is referred to as the home base or the home plate model
reason being each one of the markers for each one of the, our indicators looks like home base.
It looks like baseball, and it is kind of interesting. There's no real explanation.
I've never gotten an explanation over the years for many of the folks that ever worked for Tudor
or the representative. This is a why it looks like that. I'm sure there's probably a history
that somebody knows it would be really cool, but this one that displays the same thing as the
Heritage blue. It has a little bit of a dish just enough on each one of the, hour and minute
collectors for the stopwatch. And of course no magnifier, but also the date at the sixth.
The date at the six is way more hidden on this model, simply because it matches
the home base or home plate, our markers, and neither one of these have any sincere scratches
on the bezel or inside the bezel ring on the painted. It is a painted bezel ring.
It's not a ceramic just in case people are wondering that again, both of them have
that maxi case and you can see how thick that case is. It's more blocky, the big block case,
and it's a 42 millimeters. So it does ride a little bit heavier and higher on the wrist.
It also has an it rate retains the screw-down pushers, just like the older models. Do,
these are smooth as glass. Our watchmakers do an amazing job
of making sure that these things work correctly when they service them before you buy them,
remember that all of the watches that you purchased from Swiss watch expo been serviced.
And you can really tell because the fluidity of how each one of these, crowns and pushers
works is amazing. They didn't necessarily feel like that when they were brand new, but the
pre-owned models in some ways feel better than they did when you would first buy them from an D.
It does have the screw down crown on the side, so that it is a swimmable case and the dimable
case. It's got that beautiful Tudor crown on it. And I always like to point out to people
when you're looking at a Tudor, watch the crowns are everywhere. So always look for
the sign of the crown. The Tudor crown is at the 12 marker on this one. It's on the crown,
the winding, crown, and STEM here, but also you start finding it in other places on the class.
When you open up parts of the class, suddenly you see the interesting Tudor crown there,
and then you even see it in the, in the class peer too. So you see that Tudor emblem
everywhere, everywhere you look. These are just little things that Tudor does
that make them interesting. The case back on this one is nice because it's flat.
It's not protruded. A lot of, a lot of cases are, are a lot like they're, they have a dome shape,
or they've got kind of an odd ball squared off shape around the edges. So when you wear them,
you can really feel them on your wrist. Not so with this model, they made the case back,
flush all the way through. So it just really fits well on your wrist. And again,
this watch comes the, that is the Homebase model also comes with, or you can buy
the strap that's in the same color as the dial, the black gray, and the orange,
the complimented, so that if you want to wear that NATO or canvas style strap, you can change up the
look of it. There's a lot of different things that really, really love about Tudor. I especially do
one thing that I want everybody to know about Tudor is that these things are super durable.
And to the point where the Tudor model for manufacturing puts these things through
serious tests, they put them through heat and cold shock tests to make sure that they
don't lose their water resistance, that the crystals don't break.
They put them through shaking and vibration tests. They, these watches probably singularly
go through more durability tests than any other watch manufacturer that I can think of today.
And I really think that they probably go through just as much, if not more than Rolex does. I tend
to think they go through more. They really abused these watches. They've done that always with Tudor
because Tudor was the original tool watch for Rolex. They were tested by the British army
in the early days, which you would refer to as the Tudor ranger. If you were to see it, the Tudor
ranger was used and they would ever advertise the watch with a fellow in a Jack hammer.
He had his, he had his watch on his wrist while he was holding the Jack hammer,
because they were trying to get the point across that if you were a Tudor,
you couldn't break it. And I think that probably stands true today. I literally have never seen
one of these watches get broken, unless it was a Supreme act. Somebody would really have to,
to, to damage these watches in a, in a really severe way to the point where it would actually
dinner break the case or break the crystal or something very severe. These watches are highly
durable. I love Tudor. It is one of my favorite companies and they have some very interesting
models outside the chronographs, but there's a lot of different variations of these chronographs.
Over the years, they had plexiglass crystals going back to the early nineties into the eighties,
they had the big block cases. They had the Tudor Tiger that re that represented more of the Daytona
look. So if you want to know more about Tudor, the chronographs or any version of the Tudor,
give us a call here at SwissWatchExpo, ring the bell, subscribe, ask questions here. And
we hope to hear from you soon, and maybe you'll have a Tudor on your wrist as well.