Week in Watches: Nomos in Purple and Pink; Crypto and Watches

Crypto, Houses, Rolexes: How FOMO Drove (and Crashed) the Economy

It’s Thursday. Tudor’s got me all hot and bothered, per usual, teasing a release tomorrow to celebrate the anniversary of the British North Greenland Expedition. Until we can cover that in full, here we go with today’s ‘sletter:

• Hands-on with the Nomos Club Campus in Pink and Purple

• Swatch CEO opens up about the MoonSwatch

• NY Times and Bloomberg on ‘Crypto, Houses, Sneakers, Rolexes: How FOMO Drove (and Crashed) the Economy’

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Review: Nomos Club Campus in Pink and Purple

What does it mean for a watch to be ‘fun’?

It almost feels cliche to be writing about another watch with a bright, colorful dial in 2022. But the truth is that Nomos beat a lot of its peers to this trend. It’s been slowly adding colorful dial options to its lineup of minimalist watches over the last few years, long before a certain brand that rhymes with Nolex made the practice feel mainstream.

But this year’s introduction of a blue-purple and pink dial to its “entry-level” (a phrase I despise) Club Campus might be the Glashutte brand’s best effort yet.

First, a quick introduction to the Nomos Club Campus. It’s Nomos’ watch that’s designed to be more youthful and playful than its other long-standing Bauhaus-inspired watches. It’s got a California dial (a mixture of Arabic and Roman numerals), orange dial accents, and a healthy application of lume. Throw in 100m of water resistance and Nomos’ manual-wind Alpha movement, and it’s a watch that’s designed to be worn every single day. Much of Nomos’ advertising for the Club Campus pitches it as a graduation gift — it’ll even throw in a free caseback engraving if you buy direct from Nomos online — and it’s a pitch that just makes sense.

Full disclosure: The Nomos Club Campus (with standard silver dial) was my first real “luxury” watch purchase. I bought it around the time I finished graduate school. In other words, the Nomos pitch worked. I loved the German brand’s grounding in minimalist, Bauhaus design principles — form over function and all that — but the Club Campus was a bit more fun. The Club Campus is still the watch I most often recommend to people looking for their first “nice” watch, since it can be had for about $1,000 (pre-owned; $1,500 MSRP).

My Nomos Club campus, c. 2018. We’ve all grown, okay?

Since introducing the Club Campus, Nomos has brought a number of colorful dials to the line: bright orange, yellow, green, and so on. Color isn’t a passing fad for Nomos.

But this year’s release of the Club Campus in blue-purple and deep pink might be my favorite yet. Offered in 36mm and 38mm, I got hands-on with the smaller version of both.

Club Campus: Blue-Purple

Let’s start with the Club Campus blue-purple. The new dark purple dial color sticks closer to the wear-it-everyday ethos that I love about the Club Campus. Sure, it’s purple, but it’s not a terribly bright or bold hue choice. Nomos calls it blue-purple for a reason: The dial has deep undertones of blue, and in certain lights even feels more blue than purple.

If the deep pink makes an outfit (we’ll get there in a moment), the blue-purple goes with any 'fit. It doesn’t distract too much from whatever else you’ve got going on, you rakish gent, you.

I mentioned that the Club Campus is my go-to rec for people looking for one nice watch; going forward, I think recommending the Club Campus with the blue-purple dial might be my default tip. During my time with the blue-purple, I wore it to the office, biking, going out on the weekend, and it never felt out of place. It’s a clean, well-designed watch that doesn’t draw too much attention, but it does attract the right kind of attention.

While some of Nomos’ traditional options skew a bit dressier, the Club Campus is more casual, and with a colorful dial, more fun. With so much seriously bad sh*t going on in the world, I need that from a watch.

Club Campus: Deep Pink

Too often, “fun” in watches is used to mean “this brand added a colorful dial to their watches, isn’t that fun?” In reality, I’m not sure how a watch itself can be fun — it’s got more to do with how the watch makes you feel, or what you do with it.

This might sound corny, but I swear to you it’s true: On my last day with the deep pink Nomos Club Campus, I wore it to the office. It was a sunny day, and my office overlooks the Chicago River that cuts through the middle of downtown Chicago. I looked out my window and thought to myself, “self, I bet this pink dial looks so much better in the sunlight than this nasty fluorescently lit office.”

So I dashed off to the elevator, descending into the sunshine to snap some photos of the deep pink in natural light.

I ended up spending an hour or so strolling down the Chicago Riverwalk; sure, I snapped some photos, but I mostly just wandered around, enjoying the nice day and glancing at the Deep Pink dial every few minutes. Fun!

Join the Club

The Club Campus is chic, but not pretentious. It’s fun, but not kitschy. It’s minimal, but not boring. To me, Nomos’ calling card has always been its ability to balance so many things so seamlessly. Perhaps most importantly, it’s a brand that’s respected by horophiles, without getting weighed down by the heft of history.

👉 Read on for the full review and specs of the Nomos Club Campus

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THROUGH THE WIRE

😱 Crypto, Houses, Sneakers, Rolexes: How FOMO Drove the Economy. (NY Times)

“It’s not just prices for high-end watches that soared during the pandemic. For a wide range of collectible goods — among them fine art, classic cars, luxury handbags, sneakers, comic books and trading cards — the last few years were bubblier than a bottle of Dom Pérignon. But it’s fast becoming clear that crypto was just another collectible pumped up by the same forces inflating the market for Yeezys and Birkin bags — a lot of money sloshing around the world, not a lot of obvious places to put it, and a fear of missing out on something that everyone else seemed to think would be hot.

So why did so many invest? Because FOMO is a hell of a drug. Because when prices are shooting up and you feel the fear of missing out, you can talk yourself into imagining intrinsic value in anything: A mechanical wristwatch is a marvel of miniature engineering, almost a piece of art in its intricate complexity.”

Okay, yea, but have you peeked through the caseback of a Datograph? It’s art!

🎤 An Interview with Swatch Group CEO Nick Hayek about the Moonswatch. Do I love the MoonSwatch, or the idea of the MoonSwatch? It’s beginning to feel more like the latter, but I know I love this idea:

“[Swatch CEO Nick Hayek] shows early prototypes of possible Bioceramic Swatch collabs with iconic models other than the Omega Speedmaster. He also experimented with iconic models outside of the Swatch Group brands.”

BioCeramic Royal Oak? The world’s not ready. In the meantime though, Hayek says you won’t be able to buy a MoonSwatch online.

🍕 Italian tourism boss suggests stopping watch theft with cheap alternative. “[Naples’ tourism chief] says hotels could provide guests who wear expensive watches with cheap plastic alternatives to ensure that their actual timepieces can stay safe while they head out and explore the city.” Oh good, a use for those BioCeramic Royal Oaks. (CNN)

📉 Crypto Meltdown Claims Rolex and Patek as Victims. Bloomberg’s at it again with an article exploring how secondary market prices have peaked. Even if the headline is a bit misleading — the crypto and watch market boom (and subsequent corrections) are the result of the same cause, namely the “excess of money sloshing around and not a lot of places to put it,” as the Times put it above. But it’s fascinating how fascinated the outside world seems to be by the secondary watch market.

The article also points out that some cheaper watches (your Tudors, Speedmasters, Breitlings), haven’t experienced huge price spikes, and now aren’t experiencing corrections:

📆 It’s the slow season for watch auctions, but Bonham’s has an online sale through next week with a few fun lots.

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