There are two sides to every Bond story, and for the first time in its thirty-year tenure on 007’s wrist, Omega has decided to dress them both. Released on Global James Bond Day, the 5th of October, the new Seamaster Diver 300M James Bond and Spectre Collection splits the franchise down the middle: one watch for the agent, and one — a first — for the organisation that has been trying to kill him since 1962.
The Bond watch is the hero in more ways than one. Its blue aluminium dial carries a laser-engraved wave pattern and the Bond family coat of arms at twelve, framed by a grade 5 titanium bezel and a 42mm steel case on a brushed mesh bracelet; turn it over and the rotor resolves into the famous gun-barrel sequence, rhodium-finished and aimed straight at the wearer. The Spectre watch answers in black — grained aluminium dial, black ceramic bezel, and a blackened octopus coiled across the rotor where the gun barrel would be.
Both run Omega’s Master Chronometer Calibre 8806 with a 55-hour reserve, both resist water to 300 metres, and both are priced identically at CHF 6,700 — a deliberate provocation. Good or evil, the price of admission is the same.
For those unwilling to choose at all, Omega has built 77 numbered sets per side, each pairing the steel watch with a companion in the brand’s proprietary platinum-gold alloy: 95 per cent platinum, 5 per cent gold, with 18k white gold dials carrying gun-barrel or octopus guilloché beneath gradient PVD. At CHF 70,000, the sets come with cufflinks, straps, a loupe and a travel pouch — everything a well-equipped agent, or indeed a well-funded villain, might require.
Thirty years after GoldenEye put a Seamaster on Pierce Brosnan’s wrist, Omega’s point is neatly made: the watch has outlasted five Bonds, and it is now generous enough to outfit the opposition too.
