Lucio Castro’s Fall/Winter Collection Recap

Get ready for something interesting with the newest release from MING — a limited edition built around a material almost nobody uses in watchmaking.

The big selling point for the new drop from the Swiss-Malaysian independent watchmaker is a dial made with hand-hammered pewter. In case you didn’t know (and I certainly didn’t), pewter is a tin-based alloy strengthened with small amounts of copper and antimony.

Luminox just released the Navy SEAL 3500 “Semper-Fortis,” a limited edition built around a message that only fully reveals itself once the sun goes down.

That new release is a big boy — a 45mm watch built on Luminox’s Navy SEAL 3500 series. It keeps the collection’s turtle-shaped case but also integrates more features from CARBONOX, the brand’s lightweight composite, than any Navy SEAL model before it: the case, the unidirectional rotating bezel, and bracelet are all built from it.

Hanhart doesn’t get talked about nearly enough, so here’s a quick backstory: they’re a German brand out of Gütenbach in the Black Forest, they put the first single-button chronograph into series production back in 1938, and a year later they built pilot’s chronographs for the German Air Force. That red pusher button is still on their watches today.

That’s a real, foundational place in watchmaking history; it’s the kind of lore that other brands build entire marketing campaigns around. Somehow, Hanhart still flies under most people’s radar, but their new Aquasphere Matte Black is an argument that folks should be paying attention.