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What a Fender Cease-and-Desist Can Tell Us About Watch Collecting
Kaz and I have been chasing the same two rabbit holes for most of our adult lives. Guitars came first, the way they do for a lot of people who grew up with a cheap Strat copy and a dream that outran their talent. Watches came later, and faster, the way the expensive habit usually does. What took me a while to notice is that the two hobbies are the same hobby wearing different clothes. Both run on a small number of foundational designs that everyone else has spent decades reinterpreting. Both have a prestige tier that owns the myth and a working tier that owns the wrists and the fretboards. And both, it turns out, depend on an unwritten agreement about who gets to own a shape once that shape stops being a product and becomes a language.
Squale Sub 37 Legend Review: Your One-and-Done Vintage-Inspired Dive Watch?
In nearly ten years of running TBWS with Kaz, I’ve never reviewed a Squale. In fact, I’m not even sure I’ve handled one outside of a trade show setting. While Kaz owned one of the brand’s older GMT models years ago, I’ve mostly experienced Squale from a distance. That changed earlier this year when they announced the Squale Sub 37 Legend. On paper, it checked a lot of boxes for me.
The 5 Best Microbrand Watches of 2026 So Far
For a long time the microbrand playbook was easy to summarize. Take a Seiko movement, wrap it in a dive case borrowing heavily from something Swiss and expensive, keep it under $300, and lean on a good Instagram feed to move the first batch. Plenty of that still exists. But the more interesting independents have spent 2026 outgrowing the formula. The releases that stuck with me this year lean on titanium, COSC certification, in-house-grade finishing, real antimagnetic protection, and dials you simply can’t get from the majors at any sane price. These are the risks the big Swiss houses won’t take anymore, taken by brands a fraction of their size. A few of them cost real money now, which is its own conversation. Even so, each one earns the attention. Here are five of the best microbrand releases of 2026 so far.
The Affordable Luxury Brand Frederique Constant Finally Made a Solar Watch
Frederique Constant doesn’t usually make news for technology. The brand built its reputation in the accessible luxury lane on tidy dress watches and the occasional in-house complication priced well below where you’d expect one. So a solar movement is a genuine first, and it shows up somewhere that surprised me a little: the Classics Moneta Solarmetre, a new addition to a dress line that only launched in 2024.
The PDW x HGP Is an Affordable Dive Watch With a Case History Worth Knowing
The Monnin case doesn’t get talked about enough. If you collect CWC watches, you already know the geometry. That flat, low-profile midcase with protected crown architecture and lug geometry that distributes load cleanly across the wrist. What you might not know is that Georges Monnin, the French case maker behind it, was also the guy Heuer turned to in the mid-1970s when they wanted to enter the dive watch market and had no prior experience building waterproof cases. Breitling, Sinn, Aquadive, and Zodiac followed. It’s one of the few dive watch cases collectors know by its maker’s name rather than whatever brand happens to be printed on the dial. Prometheus Design Werx just put it on a $649 watch, and it’s worth paying attention to.
