Omega Goes for Gold With a Pair of Olympics-Inspired Seamasters
Welcome to Dialed In, Esquire's weekly column bringing you horological happenings and the most essential news from the watch world since March 2020.
For fans of James Bond, the Omega Seamaster 300m 007 diver has become a desirable collector’s piece, particularly in the past few years. Last year’s chunky special edition was released to time with No Time To Die, a movie that still—thank you pandemic—hasn’t hit the screens. Because of Bond, many people think of the Seamaster 300’s rugged good looks as emblematic of the Seamaster name.
But there was another Seamaster, one that Bond never wore, that preceded the 1957 birth of Omega’s iconic 300m dive watch by almost a full decade. It was a very different animal indeed. In 1948, timed to the centenary of Omega’s founding, the Seamaster was a classically styled but no-nonsense, steel, three-hand dive watch directly inspired by the military pieces Omega had made throughout the war. Though functional, the Seamaster had a refinement and an elegance about it compared to the rugged tool watches that succeeded it. Arguably it was the first wartime-derived design to make it onto peacetime wrists.
A multitude of variations followed right up to this day, and the original Seamaster still figures in the Omega ranges, with regular special editions to spice things up. Like this one, the Seamaster Aqua Terra Tokyo 2020. Omega has been the official timekeeper at the Olympic games since way back in 1932. Tokyo 2020 is the 29th Olympics in which it has participated. The Games stuck with the 2020 title, despite being held a year later, presumably so as not to mess things up on the medals.
The new Tokyo Seamaster has a striking engraved ceramic blue dial whose pattern is taken from the Tokyo games emblem. The watch comes in 38mm or 41mm sizes with an 18K gold case, and a Co-Axial Master Chronometer calibre movement, which is increasingly a fixture in Omega watches, but is far from standard, boasting levels of accuracy, performance, and magnetic resistance head and shoulders above mainstream Swiss watches.
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