If you can hear me, pick up — the new Timex Marlin is calling! It’s the newest reissue from the Connecticut-based company, and the whole watch is built around a dial designed to look like a rotary phone, right down to the finger holes.
Each Arabic numeral sits inside its own polished gold-tone frame set against a white backdrop, arranged in a circle that mimics the layout of an actual rotary dial. The 37mm case is fully polished gold-tone stainless steel, with a twin porthole day and date window sitting at 3 o’clock. It looks absolutely wild; full vintage, in the best possible way.
It also runs on a quartz movement, keeping things simple with light water resistance (fine for splashes and rain, not for swimming), and comes on a brown leather strap.
Timex’s archive is turning out to be its best design team
Timex has spent the past few years proving that its back catalog is more interesting than a lot of stuff currently on the shelves, and the Rotary Phone Dial reissue is one of the stranger, better examples of that strategy paying off.
This isn’t a subtle vintage pull or a font choice from an old catalog — it’s a full watch dial that looks nothing like a modern release.
The only place to quibble here is the movement: true purists might want a real hand-wound movement in there. There’s certainly an argument to be made for that case, and maybe in the future Timex will be able to deliver, but for now, I imagine they’re keeping the price low with quartz to test interest. Smart move.
Really, this whole thing only works because Timex has decades of genuinely weird archival material to pull from, and a design team willing to bring back something this particular instead of sanding off the edges.
Timex’s reissue streak has made it one of the more reliably interesting affordable watch brands going right now, and this one adds a genuinely fun footnote to that run.
Where to buy it
The Timex 1976 Rotary Phone Dial Reissue is available now for $219 through timex.com.
