There’s no mistaking a Richard Mille. Big, brash and expensive—putting it mildly—to call a Richard Mille watch a statement piece is like saying Alpha Centauri is quite far away. This RM033 is an attempt to bring some normality to the format—but this thing is anything but normal. It’s also £65,000.

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” It’s a well-known actual historical fact that this famous mantra was first uttered by a watch salesman when faced with a customer who couldn’t decide whether to spend all his money on one watch, or several. After all, why have one when you can have many—and here are three great budget choices at less than £1,000 each to get you started.

There are some good dials out there, some really good dials, and there are some exceptional dials as well. But there’s only one dial that can be called the best—and it’s this, the Grand Seiko SBGA211.

If you’ve got fat wedge of cash burning a hole in your pocket and you’ve earmarked a Patek Philippe to spend it on, stop. Wait. You mustn’t spend a single penny until you’ve seen this.

Breguet, Blancpain, Vacheron Constantin; with approaching a millennium of history between them, these three have earned a reputation for the archetypal classic watch, much like this Classique Alarm Le Reveil du Tsar here. Even the name sounds like it comes from a time when men wore velvet tights and long, curly wigs. But what if these brands tried something a bit more unconventional?

It’s the ultimate watchmaker flex; never mind minute repeaters and perpetual calendars, hidden deep within the movement—if you want to show off your skill as a watchmaker, you do it with skeletonization. Here are two such skeletonised watches. One costs £1,500, the other £43,000. Can you tell the difference?

If anyone knows how to make a Rolex, it’s Rolex. Let’s face it; they have the heritage, they have the expertise, and most importantly, they have the restraint. Nevertheless, there are many companies out there who think they know better, and the presumptuously titled Artisans de Genève is one of them.

Looking for a watch that’s a bit different, a bit interesting? Of course you are. Well how about this: we’ll save you the effort of looking, so you can just sit back, relax and enjoy discovering three Omega watches you didn’t know you wanted.

Maybe you know them, maybe you don’t, but chances are you’ve at least heard of the guy who has everything. Birthdays and Christmas’ are a complete nightmare with this guy, because no matter how hard you try or how creative you get—they already have it. So, what can you do? That’s the challenge we’ll attempt to take on with the three watches you’re about to see.

Imagine buying a Rolex 6263 back in the 70s for pennies. Now it’d be worth anywhere between £50–100,000, depending on spec. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But now, with ever-increasing prices and mark-ups appearing on new models before they’ve even been worn, it seems the days of bargain Rolexes with the potential for big appreciation are gone … but maybe they aren’t.

Oh, how I want an A. Lange & Söhne, and oh, how an A. Lange & Söhne continues to evade me. Flying this close to perfection has its price to pay, and that’s quite literally the price you have to pay for an A. Lange & Söhne. Excellent, they are, cheap, they are not, and no amount of feeling like you’d really appreciate it more than anything else in the world makes that RRP come down any lower. But can you scratch that itch for a fraction of the cost?

There’s watchmaking and there’s watchmaking, and this Master Grande Tradition from Jaeger-LeCoultre is the latter. We’ve spoken before about the minute repeater and its incredible, unbelievable capabilities—now we’re going to explore it like it’s never been seen before.

To look at two Formula One cars, aside from the distinctive paint jobs, it would be hard to tell one from the other. Yet these are machines built independently, in secret, by isolated teams working to different principles and ideas. The reality is that each car is incredibly different on a micro level, despite seeming so indistinct at the macro. The same could be said of Rolex’s Submariner and Omega’s Seamaster—two watches that seem so similar on the surface, yet differ in approach so dramatically when seen just a little closer.

One of the industry’s most famous—or infamous, depending on how you feel about it—designs, the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak set new standards for luxury watchmaking in the face of complete annihilation. It’s been heralded as an icon, a milestone, a game-changer—but does a tourbillon make it better, or worse?

A Rolex and the sea are like, well, a duck to water, the brand having kickstarted the entire dive watch legacy pretty much singlehandedly. As far as credentials go, there’s only one you need to know: a Rolex watch has been to the deepest part of the ocean and survived—and that was back in 1960. A watch literally cannot go any deeper than that. And so, Rolex dive watches have come to be heralded as the very best, and we’ve got three of them. But which is the best of the best?

We take for granted today that the wristwatch, a milestone of such events as the first visit to the bottom of the ocean, the top of the tallest mountain, an alien world, is such a popular and endearing device—but it hasn’t always been. In fact, at one point, a wristwatch, or ‘wristlet’ as it was known, was derided as a fashion faux pas, a silly trinket no man would be seen dead wearing. Change, however, comes at the most unexpected of times.