Bulova's New Watches Deliver '70s Glamour (Without the Eyebrow-Raising Price Tag)
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Welcome to Dialed In, Esquire’s column bringing you horological happenings and the most essential news from the watch world.
There’s no getting away from the fact that slinky, hot, precious metal dress watches from the 1970s back catalogues of the most venerable watchmaking houses have fast been closing the gap with collectors’ favorite tool watches. Here, we’re talking high prices and rare finds suffused with the style of the decade that birthed them.
Over the past couple of years, after languishing in the plutocrat’s sock drawer for several decades, these kinds of pieces in yellow gold, white gold, and even platinum have driven auction prices skywards. Often these vintage watches feature dials made from slices of semi-precious stone like tiger’s eye and turquoise to further glam things up. You could call it a trend, if “trend” isn’t too broad a word for a phenomenon seemingly limited to ballers and Silicon Valley multibillionaires.
All of which leaves those of us with real-life budget out in the cold. Until now that is.
Just before Christmas, Bulova launched a clever little trifecta of limited-edition watches called the Super Seville Stone Dial Collection in collaboration with Complecto, a New York based community and social platform committed to making watch design with a sense of luxury a more inclusive notion. The collaboration began in 2023 with a limited-edition Jet Star watch that reimagined a Bulova watch from 1973. It was proof of concept that well-designed watches need not always cost the earth. The Seville Stone Dial collection—loosely based on a Bulova stalwart from the past—takes that rather nifty idea and rockets it into space.
The three watches feature 37.5mm cases and integrated bracelets, one in yellow gold tone with a tiger’s eye dial, one in rose gold tone with a snowflake obsidian dial, and one in plain steel with a turquoise dial. Priced between $1,095 and $1,295, for our money these are a very fun way to nod to a style normally reaching up to 100 times the price.
“Where’s the catch?” you might ask. While the stainless-steel base overlaid with gold toning has neither the heft nor—let’s face it—the transparent moolah value of real gold, the movement’s an in-house quartz workhorse is correct to a matter of seconds per year and the look is every bit as sharp as those hot ‘70s watches that inspired it. The catch, you see, is there’s no catch.
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