The H. Moser & Cie Swiss Alp Watch ‘Final Upgrade’

You may recall the original H. Moser & Cie Swiss Alp Watch from 2016. It’s the high-end Swiss mechanical watch that looks like an Apple Watch. Not like sorta kinda looks like an Apple Watch — it really, deliberately, looks almost exactly like a pre-Series 4 Apple Watch. It cost $25,000.

Now, Moser has released their “Final Upgrade” edition, and Bilal Khan at A Blog to Watch has the details:

With that classic Moser sense of humor, the Vantablack dial has a seconds subdial done to resemble the “spinning” loading icon that Mac users are all too familiar with.

The Swiss Alp Watch Final Upgrade incorporates some of Moser’s signature touches, like the use of Vantablack and the unmarked dial (you can’t print on Vantablack). Vantablack is the blackest manmade material, and my first interaction with it was when Moser released its Endeavour Perpetual Moon Concept back in 2018, and I can’t describe it better now than I did then when I said it feels like “a black hole on the wrist.”

It’s a limited edition of 50 pieces, which cost $31,000. That seems crazy, particularly for a watch that seems half a prank. But when you think about it, it’s less crazy than the fact that Apple itself was selling $17,000 solid gold Series 0 Apple Watches in 2015. These Moser Swiss App Watches will still function perfectly for years to come. Decades, with proper maintenance. Those gold $17,000 Apple Watches only received three years of software updates before they were deprecated.

Story. When I was in grade school, maybe 4th grade, we had a creative assignment where we were asked what we’d buy if we had a fortune to spend. My friend Mark, who was delightfully clever and never one to care about pleasing the teachers, said, and I quote, “a solid gold Etch-A-Sketch”. His delivery, as always, was deadpan. I laughed out loud, because that was both funny and a much better answer than whatever I had come up with. (I don’t remember; it was probably a sports car.) Our teacher, Mrs. Latimer, was annoyed. We were supposed to be taking this seriously. But Mark was adamant that that’s what he’d buy. A solid gold Etch-A-Sketch. I don’t recall his reasoning verbatim, but it was something to the effect of “Because it’s pointless and no one else would have one.”

I always think about Mark and his Etch-A-Sketch when I think about those gold Apple Watch Editions.

★ Wednesday, 3 February 2021