Fresh from the showcase here at SwissWatchExpo, today we're exploring IWCs line of pilot watches.
Now the important thing about pilot watches is that so many of them are used and designed for
the actual purpose of pilots in their use. The issue is that so many other manufacturers are
pretenders. They are not actual pilot's watches. The IWC was designed as a pilot's watch from day
one. There were some very important innovations that IWC incorporated into their watches,
and a lot of people think they're just gimmicky because the large pilot came out
in 2002 and that's the first recollection that people in the United States at least,
remember the IWC pilot. That's the one that they usually think of. Most of all, this is
the IWC big pilot. This particular watch is large enough. It's 46 millimeters, but it's actually
more like 48 millimeters in terms of the way that the dial expands the outside edge of the watch.
Now, the interesting thing about this particular watch is, there's a lot of little innovations.
This is an in house movement. This is a manufacturer caliber IWC movement. It also has an
eight day, well it's technically seven and a half day, power reserve. Now the indication on the dial
is that it's only a seven day power reserve, but I know from personal experience that this watch
will go almost eight days when fully wound. That's an interesting feature on this watch. Now, yours,
of course may vary - temperature, humidity, all these other things influence and impact
the ability of the watch to continue to keep moving throughout the week. This watch also has,
the most famous portion, is the large crown, and the large crown was designed to so that a
pilot could get their hands on this particular crown and adjust the dial or the things that
they needed to adjust within the watch or even wind the watch when they had gloves on.
Now, most pilots, of course, don't mess with the dial and they don't mess with the
crown during flight. So in some sense of the word, it's just a little bit for this particular model,
because it's an automatic wind watch, and because it's not a manual wind watch. It's
a little bit gimmicky, but just the same, it's a throwback to an original watch that was designed
and that watch was 55 millimeters large. So if you can imagine how much larger that watch
would have been in the early days now that watch was designed as an observers watch,
it was an onboard, it was a crew member or a flight crew. The purpose was
on bombing runs, they would be able to see that dial even in low light conditions,
because at that time, those particular watches didn't have that great of luminescence.
They were, the radioactive loom, they just didn't - for hours and hours,
they would not glow all that great. They were very, very dull so at certain lighting
conditions they couldn't be seen. So the larger, the watch, the hands were painted bright white
under that luminescence so that they can be seen even in low light conditions,
regardless of whether they were glowing. So IWCs pilot watch history began in 1896 with a gold
pocket watch. Now, incidentally, that particular gold pocket watch was not designed just to be a
pilot's watch. It was just incidental that it was the first watch that was ever used during flight.
Now Breitling has a really extended history in flight pilot watches as well, and we don't
want to take away from that because they truly were an innovative pioneer in pilot's watches
as well. But when we talk about the true nature of pilot watches, we talk about IWC.
One of the things that IWC incorporated into their watches in the early days, and it still
continues to this day, are shatterproof crystals, temperature control - extreme high and extreme low
temperatures. The reason for that is because if you could imagine, pilots in the early days didn't
have pressurized cockpits. So they had to deal with extremely hot temperatures on the ground,
and then as they rose in altitude, extremely cold temperatures. So the watch had to be
fairly impervious, and of course they didn't have quartz watches to compensate for these things.
So the internal mechanisms had to be impervious to quick and rapid changes because obviously if
pilots were moving quickly up and then moving quickly back down, those changes would happen
rapidly inside the watch, and that would cause all kinds of accuracy issues. Now,
one of the other things that people don't think about is sudden pressure changes, even though
the human body can put up a certain pressure changes at certain altitudes, the watches cannot.
So those rapidly expanding temperatures, and contracting temperatures inside the watch would
actually cause the crystals to blow out the top in much the same way that diver's watches do. So
these watches have always been designed keeping in mind that they wanted to make sure that those
crystals didn't blow out the top of the watch. Then, you know, a pilot would land and have
no crystal protecting the dial of the watch or the hands of the watch - that would be a severe
problem. Now, as IWC has progressed through the years, they have designed certain watches
for ladies. In the early days, watches by IWC were pretty exclusively made for men.
Of course there were a few exceptions in the world. I happened to be wearing one
it's called the DaVinci. It is one of my favorite watches in the IWC lineup.
There's a lot of reasons why. It has the articulating lugs on it.
The design to me is just outstanding. It's just a gorgeous watch. The reason I bring this
watch up is because really when you think about ladies watches in the IWC line, the
DaVinci was worn by ladies because it was small enough to be worn. IWC never really did cater,
with all the other size of their watches, to the ladies market. Now, when this watch came along,
this watch came along around 2017, this is a 36 millimeter ladies pilot watch.
Obviously, one of the things that they introduced for this watch was the multitude of straps options
that are available. So you can really customize this watch in a lot of different colors and a lot
of different ways for different outfits. Now don't get me wrong, all of the men's watches,
they have different straps that are available for theirs as well, especially the big pilot.
There's a multitude of different straps available for those watches.
If you don't like the large pilot, the 40 millimeter watch, this one here, is available
and it's a thin lightweight model. This is more like the pilot watch from the mid 1940s
onto present day. So when you think about a true pilot's watch the British used this watch
all the way from 1948 until 1981. It truly was a standard issue watch for the Royal Air Force.
Now this particular watch has changed throughout the years, and there's been different names for
this particular watch. Some of the names are like the Mark 15 that we have here. This one has a
unique IWC bracelet. That's something that in the marketplace has changed over the years as well.
Certain people have certain feelings about certain watches throughout the years for IWC. This one
happens to have, on the back a more or less flush clasp and a hidden clasp with a button
on the side that you press to deploy it. The new clasps were very different than that. But
as the market has changed, most people actually like the leather straps on their watch or even the
canvas straps on their watch. So it's very rare to see these watches on a metal bracelet. This
is a multi-link design, it's very comfortable, it's very fluid. This is just a gorgeous watch.
Now this particular dial was a throwback to that original pilot's watch dial from 1938 to 1981.
There's different Mark versions of these watches from 10 all the way through present day through
17. So they can get kind of confusing, which one is which. Well, the difference in the Mark series
of watches are subtle differences on the dial, there's subtle differences in the bracelets.
So if you really have a specific, and also by the way, subtle differences in the hands
on the dial. So if you have a specific watch that you're going after, and you happen to think, wow,
I like these particular hands in this particular watch. It could be from a very specific year set
because in some cases, these watches weren't made, but three or four years, maybe five at the most,
then they changed the design again. So this can get really confusing, especially if you've seen,
maybe you've seen this one in the present day form, but you've also seen the blue dial. We have
the blue dial available here at SwissWatchExpo as well. These are great alternatives to,
again, Rolex, a lot of the Rolex are very, very hard to find, and IWC is an extremely good watch.
It's a professional series watch. It's casual, it's dressy.
These watches are worn universally throughout the world, and what I want everybody to understand is,
even though there's a Rolex craze, we have a lot of IWCs here to fit every single style.
In fact, we have a huge assortment and array of IWCs, and you can get these things at really great
discounts to the original price. I think that's one of the value stories here. You want to make
sure that when you look at an IWC, okay, you may be considering something new and that's great,
but you have an opportunity here to be able to purchase these watches at a much lower price,
and they're in phenomenal condition. In very, in serious terms, you probably won't
find that these are much different than the one that you can purchase new. This is the
great value story behind buying a pre-owned watch and I just want to make that clear.
So if you have any questions about the pilot series watches, obviously give us a call
here at SwissWatchExpo. One of the other last pieces that I do want to document to you here,
and this is a great watch. We have this in gold. Antoine Saint-Exupery,
was a very connected pilot. He was a World War II pilot. He also was a writer for children's books.
Saint-Exupery is very highly regarded through the IWC line. Usually indicated, not always,
but usually indicated by an "A" and a period. In fact, being from Atlanta, the "A" often
looks like the script that "A" from the Atlanta Braves. So some people get that confused, and
they don't know where that "A" comes from. It's Antoine Saint-Exupery. So it's his first initial.
Now we've got a couple of the Antoine Saint-Exupery line of watches here.
They typically are engraved on the back. This one's really unique because it's got
Antoine Saint-Exupery's head engraved on with his pilot's helmet. Now Saint-Exupery of course was,
he had flown too many times. He was told not to fly. He was actually very ill at his last flight
when he and his plane was lost and he disappeared.
So he's considered a really huge hero in children's lineup of books, all throughout
the world, The Little Prince, in case you've ever seen that book. In fact, actually IWC has a lot of
watches to The Little Prince. Now, there are a lot of watches in the lineup of IWC that have a
lot of different character. So I want to make sure that anytime you see an IWC, you'd give us a call,
email us, let us know which IWC you're interested in. And even if you don't
know which one you're interested in, we can introduce you to one. Again, we have
a lot of IWCs and we have a lot of different lineup from the different styles and designs.
So I want to make sure that we get just the right one for you. Visit us@swisswatchexpo.com.