About
Good morning from Venice, where I am once again reporting that the marine layer of ‘June Gloom’ still reigns with omnipotence. The first order of business amidst all this grey is coffee; Sarah and I are almost through month nine here in Los Angeles, and my caffeine dealer of choice has become Gnarwhal Coffee. It is a locally owned shop that sits on Main Street around the imperceptible, almost mystical border that puts Venice beyond the pale from Santa Monica. Coffee aside, I come to write but stay for the dogs; it is a welcome culture shock given I have only seen anti-canine establishments back east. I haven’t yet metastasized as a true regular, but at least two baristas have committed my name to memory. In short, I am inevitable.
Like so many others who exist within the unsurprisingly leviathan Venn diagram of “exists” and “drinks coffee,” I have come to appreciate mornings at Gnarwhal whenever I can find them. The concept of wringing your creative juices free at a place that isn’t your own four walls isn’t novel, and yet somehow at thirty years young (I’m just a baby) I am only now discovering how effective it can be. Make myself look human, pick out a watch, navigate the three-minute pilgrimage and two left turns, and then boom, I’m right where I need to be in order to spend six dollars. It is an added perk that Gnarwhal is a solid watch-spotting safari and you can meet plenty of cool people with cool watches. Scott – if you’re reading this, call me. I want to hear more about that Speedmaster you have owned for thirty years.
On to the agenda for the Count Sunny Hours board meeting, total population you and me – I want to drop off a pair of recent developments regarding my watch collection in the hope that they will significantly brighten your day in the same way they did mine. The first tale is about a watch that I was searching for. The second is about a gift and a personal reminder to have fun with this hobby.
A Tale Of Two Doxas
Back in April I wrote about a Doxa in my possession that formerly belonged to my partner Sarah’s grandfather, Ron. The article is is equal parts life story, Doxa history lesson, and watch review. The research behind it was the most fun I have had since starting Count Sunny Hours – I really can’t remember the last time I felt so energized about the blog, and that’s saying something considering I love writing 24/7 as a general baseline.
Long story short, Ron was gifted a Doxa Sub 600T Professional by Sarah’s dad David. These watches date back to the early aughts, and were made as limited editions (like most Doxas of the Rick Marei era) commemorating Clive Cussler in advance of Paramount releasing the movie Sahara. Ron was a big Cussler fan, and so this watch made sense for David to gift him as a token of appreciation. He evidently wore the watch with some level of regularity (at least enough to grade its condition as “well loved”) until his passing in 2021, at which point it was slid into a desk. Last year, David gave this watch to me.
As it stands, that 600T Professional has sparked an unhealthy obsession with the brand. My newfound knowledge base is heavily owed to Doctor Peter Millar; if you don’t know Pete, he is a subsea expert-turned Doxa aficionado (affectionately nicknamed the “Docsa”). Multiple chance encounters with Doxa over his career turned Pete’s nascent curiosity into a review-filled website and four separate history books; these annals chronicle Doxa’s heritage and the development of the Sub Professional. David and I had the recent pleasure of interviewing Pete for the podcast, and he is a lovely individual with a charmed sense of humor. I highly encourage you to listen to the episode if you have a two (yes, two) hour-sized hole in your calendar.
The Storing Time article covers the 600T in far more detail, but it is relevant to our discussion that this watch came in four different dial configurations. There was Professional orange as seen above with Ron’s watch, a Dirk Pitt-dial text version of the Professional, Divingstar yellow, and Sharkhunter black. Pete recently illuminated me to the fact that Doxa never completed their intended 3,000 piece production run; as soon as the 750T was ready, Rick Marei and team apparently stopped production of the 600T in order to start getting 750Ts into the hands of consumers. 600Ts are far scarcer than their caseback serial numbers would initially suggest.
600Ts are dimensionally similar to vintage Subs, albeit more svelte at 13 millimeters thick. I was ultimately so impressed by the 600T’s wearability that I decided I wanted to add another to pair with Ron’s watch. Therein lies the rub concerning rarity: you almost exclusively find these watches as ghosts in stale internet listings, and the overwhelming majority of enthusiasts don’t even know they exist. Given contemporary Doxa doesn’t really acknowledge the Marei era, I believe the 600T will remain esoteric. I liken the 600T, particularly the orange Professional, to my old Speedmaster Professional 3560.50; even as an Apollo anniversary edition, the only way you could even tell it wasn’t a regular Speedy (at least before I modified it with Mitsukoshi parts) was the commemorative “Eagle Has Landed” caseback. Keen eyes will spot the “6” on this Doxa’s dial, but most will just see another Doxa. I think I prefer it that way.
Inside baseball is a common theme in watches, and it often makes for rewarding conversations. The Sharkhunter 600T, the variant I fixated on for my second Doxa, takes that quality a step further by using an albino handset. These watches are known among collectors as “White Sharks,” a term which first originated with small numbers of 750Ts that came equipped with a white minute hand instead of an orange one. Despite the nickname implying aesthetic isolation, there is plenty of historical precedence here; vintage Sharkhunters of all eras utilized white hands, with the orange minute hand typically being standard issue for Searamblers. Orange minute hands on Sharkhunters is thus a seemingly modern phenomena.
All of this talk about White Shark-shaped anomalies in the Doxa space-time continuum might lead you to conclude the 600T Sharkhunter is made of unobtanium, and for a time, my search efforts indicated a quick resolution to this quest was not feasible. I made one last “Want To Buy” post on Watchuseek stating my interest and that I had written the article about Ron’s watch if anyone was interested in learning more. After that, I took a breath and prepared to settle in for a multi-year search and purchase operation.
As it happens, a gentleman named Robert saw my post and messaged me asking for the article link. Sharing the article turned into an extended conversation about Doxa, Robert’s love of the 1200T, and some kind words about my writing. It also resulted in an initial offer, if I was interested, to make a deal on the Sharkhunter 600T that he hadn’t really planned on parting with anytime soon. Long story short, a second Pelagos 39 was jettisoned to a new forever home and the Sharkhunter now has a place in the family photo opposite Ron’s orange Professional. The watch was accompanied by an incredibly kind note from Robert as pictured below on the day of its arrival. Robert, if you’re reading this – thank you. Business transaction or not, I appreciate your support and am flattered that you like my work. The Sharkhunter is crisp, highly legible, and in immaculate condition. I am very happy to call it mine.
Ask Me What Time It Is
If my GMT-Master II 16710 could talk, it would say “Boss, I’m tired.” Post-MotoGP at COTA, I gave my watch to our friendly neighborhood media editor David Macdonald as part of a multi-piece servicing mission for our fellow musketeer Jesse, who previously joined us on podcast EP11. It was in desperate need of TLC; the crown was popping out completely when unscrewed to set the time, and accuracy was adrift enough to make the Caliber 3185 within look like Jekyll on some days and a 6R series movement on others (no offense intended, Seiko).
Jesse’s watchmaker inspected the GMT and described the hairspring as “having gone to hell and back;” the damage ultimately required fully replacing the balance in order to get the watch properly regulated. Honestly, that sounds about right from years of motorcycle engine vibrations transferring straight into my wrists. The beatings will likely continue; the Pepsi was my companion of choice two weekends ago during a dirt riding training class near Temecula, and it ate at least two handfuls of Terra firma to the dial as I binned my dirt bike repeatedly in a sand-filled riverbed. The 16710 has suffered at least one catastrophic failure before this most recent service, so I suspect this won’t be the last time repairs are required.
Something lighthearted and fun about the GMT that I’d like to share is that I was hoodwinked during its time in servicing purgatory. Both Sarah and Jesse know I love this watch and connived, schemed even, to do something nice for me (their audacity knows no bounds). The first component of Jesse’s mission was as advertised: when the watch returned in the mail, it was running well within Superlative Chronometer standards of +/- 2 s/d. The second was not – when I was reunited with the watch, I noticed that the caseback now had an engraving: Ask Me What Time It Is.
A bit of context is always helpful. When my dad was a younger man, he was into watches as well. His interest never reached the heights of the affliction I deal with now, but it was present for a time. Dad had a thing for the Breitling Navitimer, mayhaps a reflection of Granddad and other members of the family being aviators, and bought himself a Citizen Nighthawk (currently in my possession) as his stand-in. According to my mom, Dad’s greatest crime was reportedly saying “Hey, ask me what time it is!” to the point of exhaustion. As a fellow pest, I loved this story and immediately adopted the phrase as my own. I have had the idea to engrave the 16710 with these words for a long time. Imagine the smile on my face when I saw the caseback and turned to Sarah. She was convinced that I wouldn’t notice it for weeks.
There is a puritanical queasiness in the watch world around personalization, particularly when it comes to brands of repute like the Crown. Watches just aren’t seen like cars or motorcycles, even if the enthusiast circles have material degrees of overlap; I don’t know if I would say modification equals sacrilege, but it can certainly be construed as a sin. I generally agree with this sentiment unless you are never planning to sell your watch, which is my active stance towards the GMT. It is certainly valuable, but not a good example; in fact, I’d only call it an honest watch in terms of how openly dishonest it is. The current bezel is the second OEM replacement I have sourced, the dial has marks on it, and I even had the case restored to correct overpolishing from its previous life. All of this noise doesn’t matter to me – it is a birth year watch and it’s mine. I like to think of the engraving as an indelible reminder to have fun with this hobby and not unnecessarily turn it into an ordeal. Fun is the goal, not a side product, and it is all I think of when I see that Pepsi bezel.
I haven’t written about the GMT since the earliest days of CSH, and it is probably about time for a second, more nuanced encore. That doesn’t mean Rolex has been absent, in fact far from it; the brand is a repeat feature and I always invoke the 16710 as the neo-vintage gold standard (whether that is correct or not, I leave to your own discretion). I still see this particular reference as the poster child of an incredible group of watches from the five-digit era, where Rolex was actively blending its tool watch roots with a more refined luxury aesthetic. In that initial review, I mentioned we only need to look to the GMT-Master II of the relatively recent past, not the present, for a trifecta of critical qualities: functionality, wearability and stylishness. I still believe that now.
The more I expand the bounds of my experience in watches, the more I acknowledge two personal truths: A) the answer to everyone’s search isn’t always the 16710, and B) a lot of watches simply make me appreciate the 16710 further. That’s okay – taste is a subjective absolute, as weird as that is to say. The GMT-Master II was the initial answer to my search for a do-it-all watch, and it remains so even as other watches have come and gone. Watches are at peak fun when you can share your enthusiasm with others; I love that a pair of human beings so dear to me felt that energy and chose to reciprocate it. Come for the watches, stay for the people as I have been told before; truer words have never been spoken.
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