Nomos-Glashütte: A Watch Brand That Deserves Recognition

When it comes to collectible, luxury timepieces, most people often resort to looking at the Swiss Watch market and seldom look the other way. Most of the Swiss watches use parts or movements from the biggest watch company in the country - The Swatch Group. With most of the luxury mechanical timepieces (if not all) ranging from $1,000 - $5,000 USD price range uses ETA movement. ETA is a Swatch owned company that manufactures watch movements for both Swatch timepieces and non-Swatch pieces. That is until they started cutting deliveries to their competitors late last year. With the latest news from Tag Heuer moving to Seiko Instruments for parts, it may be inevitable that other companies that houses the same movements will start to migrate as well. Most manufacturers will argue that to develop their own in-house movements would mean a big spike in the prices of their timepieces and that it would be impossible to keep it under $5,000. But that is until Nomos-Glashütte arrived.

A German watch company that who creates their pieces from bottom to top completely in-house. With both manual and automatic mechanical movements that can make the Swatch ETA a run for its money and the most vexing thing about it is that most people don't even know Nomos. Now allow me to enlighten you, the Nomos brand came about in the 1990 and was founded by a photographer name Roland Schwertner in  a small town called Glashütte. Although the name Nomos may be familiar to a select few, which goes back to 80 years ago that was known as a "pirate brand". This company was constructing watches made to of Swiss movements, something that was seen as sacrilege back in the days. This is known as the old Nomos. The new Nomos is a completely different brand and have nothing in common with the original one. To add that the Nomos-Glashütte now is situated right along the highly popular A.Lange & Sohne and Glashütte Original, it is then become known as a "watch mecca". Now enough about history and let's see what Nomos watches has to offer and a short glimpse on their latest collection from Baselworld 2012.

At its price range, the Nomos watches offers one of the best bang for the buck for any watch fans. Their pieces are superbly made, with their most popular series the Tangente just starting above 1,000 Euros a piece. Any watch fanatics would know that for a pure mechanical timepiece that isn't powered by ETA and completely made in-house, the price is astoundingly cheap. I didn't mean cheap in a sort of low quality products, but the pieces are simply stunning to behold. Along with the Tangente, they also offered various other pieces that deserves a second look, I will not go into details of each but almost every piece in their collection are worth it. The Tangomat (Automatic Tangente) offers a twist from the standard Tangente, the Tangomat collection includes finer pieces that includes complication like the GMT. Remember, everything is made in-house and keeping to the price range mentioned above, the GMT complication is simply astonishing, hard to believe that a GMT piece can be bought below 3,000 Euros.

Speaking of GMT, one of my favorite timepiece from last year and perhaps one of the best world time watches in the market right now is the Zürich. I did a review of this piece last year, and the piece is extremely well made and adorned by connoisseurs around the world. You have to admit though that the $5,000 price for the Zürich Weltzeit is a deal breaker for some, but given the current direction of the company along with the quality of the piece you are getting, it simply deserves a second look. To further mark that this piece is a true collectible, Nomos introduced some new colors to their Zürich collection. Adding a blue-gold and brown-gold dial variation to their collection. You've gotta admit that the Zürich Blue-Gold is stunning! Hit the gallery below to have a glimpse of their most popular and latest timepieces.

The bauhaus design of the pieces along with the absence of a bezel is quite a refreshing look and away from the saturated sports watch market. Although their classic and sophisticated design along with its discreet size may not be for most people. The Nomos watches are more for open minded people with a clear sense of reason. Where other pieces aspires for complications and some demands attention, the Nomos watches simply reflects a love for logic and art of engineering.

Be sure to check out the Nomos-Glashütte to find out more on their collection. More Nomos-Glashütte posts are sure to come so stay tune.