Virtual-Basel: BaselWorld through the Ether

GUEST POST:  OK - are you ready for a little fun?  follow the fabulous Ed Estlow (self avowed watch geek) as he takes you on a Virtual Tour of BaselWorld!  Ready?  lets go...

I’ve been lamenting the fact that I’m not in Basel, Switzerland for BaselWorld right now. BaselWorld of course, is the huge annual watch & jewelry show. My wife and I attended in 2006 and had a fabulous time. In fact, we left with hopes of attending every two or three years. Well, that didn’t work out.

Now you have to understand, I’m self-confessed watch geek. So for the last six years I’ve been frustrated and worse, taunted from afar. See, I’m on BaselWorld’s mailing list so I get updates and invitations every year. Just haven’t been able to pull the trigger.

Well lo and behold, last evening my friend and online co-conspirator Robyn Hawk offered me a chance to vent my pent-up frustrations in a positive way. Her premise? With social media, blogs, and online press releases, sitting at my computer might just be the next best thing to being there. So she asked me to sift through the ether and send her reports from Virtual-Basel.

Here goes… how about a little taste of Germany to start?

Glashütte Original, one of my favorite brands, is releasing at least seven new models. I don’t have enough room to cover all seven, but I do want to talk about the new PanoReserve. The uncluttered asymmetric dial on this gentleman’s dress beauty provides plenty of visual interest. There’s a standard two hand display with small seconds at six, sits to the left of center. A power reserve indication and panoramic (big) date to the right keep things in balance.

All this covers a manually wound 48 jewel, 42 hour power reserve in-house movement, contained in steel or rose gold, strapped down with genuine Louisiana alligator in either black or brown.

The stainless steel version with grey ruthenium dial caught my eye, but the watch is also available in stainless steel with silver dial, and rose gold with silver dial. Personally, I also think a version in rose gold and the grey dial would be a looker.

The next Glashütte entry is the Lady Serenade. Classic and feminine, with just enough diamonds to catch a lady’s eye, the Serenade offers a traditional dial with applied indices and decoration. The rose gold version features four symmetrically placed arcs of small diamonds set in thin lines of rose gold. This certainly kicks the looks up a notch from previous entries in the line.

The Lady Serenade is available in three versions of stainless steel, and an additional three versions of rose gold. You can add a diamond-set bezel to any of the six models.

The Serenade is strapped to your wrist via beige, brown, or tangerine (?!) Louisiana alligator or bronze satin to compliment the case materials and dial decoration.

Glashütte’s Manufacture Caliber 39-22 powers the Lady Serenade. The date resides at 6 o’clock, and the movement has a power reserve of 40 hours.

OK! How’m I doin’?

Unfortunately, we can’t cover every new watch this way and give you a sense of what’s going on. So stay tuned here for another report from VirtualBasel tomorrow, when we’ll backtrack a bit and try to give you an overall audio-visual sense of Hall 1.

A Little About Ed Estlow:

Guest watch geek – er… blogger Ed Estlow resides in the Northern Time Zone. A self-professed chrono-junkie, he writes compelling story-filled copy for his clients from wherever he happens to be. Contact him at Ed@EdEstlow.com, on Facebook (look for NorthernTimeZone), or check him out at www.about.me/edestlow.