Fresh from the Showcase here at SwissWatchExpo.
We've got a couple of really interesting watches.
These are from Cartier.
They're the Tortue shape watches.
We have a diamond model that could be worn by men or ladies.
But then I was just thinking, really this one could be worn by men or ladies as well.
One of our owners, is a woman wears the size watch in the same shape and it looks great
on her.
Everywhere she goes, she gets compliments from, all sorts of people.
It's a real show stopper.
It's an unusual watch, not one that you see out in the street very often and one that
creates a lot of interest whenever it is seen.
It's an interesting shape, like I said.
This is called the Tortue, which is a French word that means turtle.
In 1912, when most watches were around, suddenly Louis Cartier, the creative genius that he
was, came on the scene with a completely different shape.
This is not tonneau, which means barrel, where the top and bottom are flat and the sides
are curved.
This is a different shape.
The Tortue starts curved and then the light straightened out.
That's a completely different shape.
1912 when it came out, it was revolutionary.
But where it really got interesting was in 1928, Cartier fitted a minute repeater movement
to it, which is one that chimes the hours and minutes.
So if it's dark and you don't have glow in the dark hands in 1928, you could press a
button to hear the time that chimed.
But these are both, the other complicated movement he had premiered in 1928, which was
called the monopoussoir.
It means single pusher.
The way it works, it's very fascinating.
It is a chronograph, but with just one button you have right here, there's no extra pusher
to start and stop and reset
like there is on a regular chronograph.
It's just the one button.
You push it to start the chronograph, the chronograph hand starts.
You press it again to stop, and then a third time to reset the chronograph.
It's an extremely complicated movement.
The cases on the watches are not only beautiful, but this one is set with diamonds.
Cartier, how they work is second to none.
They really think of themselves as a jeweler first and a watchmaker second.
And they've been known as the jewelry Kings and King of jewelers.
But their putty is really smooth to the touch.
It doesn't catch on anything.
They use the largest possible diamonds in each space.
There's not a lot of negative space between the diamonds.
They're all full cut 58 facet diamonds that have a colorless VVS to VS1 clarity rating.
They just don't miss a beat.
The crown, which is normally a Sapphire you can see on a regular Cartier watch, the diamond
ones, they use a diamond on the crown and the dials are Guichet, which means engraved.
They are done, they do a sheet of these dials at a time, and I've seen them at the factories
doing them.
It takes 40 man hours to engrave a sheet of these dials all done by hand.
Beautiful work.
It's one of the highest, exemplary, features of a handmade watch that you could ever see.
These also both feature the deployment buckle, which Cartier invented in 1910.
It keeps the wear of the opening and closing the strap off of the leather strap and onto
the metal.
It also makes a cleaner look when it's closed.
You don't see the keepers in the holes.
These have the exhibition case back so you can see the beautiful Cartier movements.
They're heavily decorated with the Cartier double C logos all over.
In the Rose gold one here, it has an eight day power reserve movement where the power
reserve indicator, the solid small secondhand and the large date.
These both have the curved Sapphire crystals on front and back so that you can see the
movement and also have a nice scratch resistant surface there on the front.
This one has the chronograph alone, no power reserve indicator, no date that just a beautiful
watch.
Other Tortue versions that have been made in the past few years, but there aren't any
better ones than these two.
The Rose gold eight day.
And the white gold diamond Pavilion.