Baltic Releasing Limited Edition with A Collected Man
If you haven't heard of "A Collected Man", you're not alone. It's one of those sites that won't generally come across your feed unless you have a specific and abiding interest in buying and selling rare and independent watches. The UK-based website and "platform for those who love and seek rare mechanical timepieces" (their words, not mine) carries pre-owned pieces from F.P. Journe, AP, Lange, and Patek, among others.
Baltic Watches, to their own credit, has been churning out one noteworthy timepiece after another. From the Aquascaphe GMT with the Swiss Soprod movement to the most recent limited-edition Baltic x Peter Auto Tricompax Sellita-based chronograph, the French house continues to expand beyond its microbrand roots into an increasingly well-known independent maker.
A Collected Man's (ACM for short) partnership with Baltic to produce a new edition of the gorgeous and extremely sold out MR01 speaks highly of both brands, to be honest. It's absolutely a case of a rising tide lifting both ships. Baltic brings their unique design sense to the project, while a collaboration with Baltic allows ACM to stay true to their mission of being that platform for "rare and independent watches" (again, their words from their website title).
Titled the "MR01 Blue Roulette", the 300-unit special edition is a fantastic-looking piece in the photos. It drops the Breguet Numerals, use sans-serif type for the indices on a raised inner railroad track to give the entire dial a new, more modern look that nonetheless echoes some classic tones, and replaces the curvy leaf-shaped hands with more stern-looking sword-shaped hands instead.
The dial is now much more akin to a sector dial, with the track for the indices contributes to that roulette aesthetic the watch gets its name from. The inspiration comes from midcentury modern watches and ACM and Baltic specifically call out the Patek Phillipe Calatrava reference 96, and while I can see the nod to that reference, it's not an out-and-out homage, but a more subtle one.
The ACM x Baltic goes on sale at A Collected Man shortly (as in less than 24 hours), starting at 14:00 British Summer Time, on September 21, 2021. It retails for £500 GBP ($568.84 USD). It's being sold exclusively through ACM.
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