March 26, 2022, a date the watchmaking world will never forget and one that brings back to the mind of every enthusiast what happened around the world.
In fact, this is the day when Swatch, together with Omega, put on the market a watch we never expected, namely the MoonSwatch (I leave you our article here to relive the launch of the most talked about collaboration all year).
Almost exactly one year after the release of the 11 watches that brought many people closer to the world of hands, Omega and Swatch have just announced the launch of the Mission To Moonshine Gold Moonswatch
Mission to Moonshine Gold
Yesterday we had fun making our predictions following the release of the video posted on social media by Swatch. Looking at the video we can see the presence of a gold-colored moon in the typical shades of Omega’s Moonshine gold.
However, nothing we had thought came true. If you will, we had been much more drastic and invasive. In the end, it was only a seconds sphere made in Moonshine Gold that came out on top.
Surely the Moon, as in the “Mission to the Moon” model, should have been the protagonist also because it appears evident in the video released by Swatch in a golden guise. Indeed it is.
The new Moonswatch Mission To Moonshine Gold is none other than the Mission To The Moon enhanced with a seconds hand in Omega’s Moonshine Gold, as you can see by comparing the photos above and below.
Omega’s Moonshine Gold alloy (hence the model’s name) was introduced in 2019 on the case and bracelet of the Speedmaster Professional Apollo 11 50th Anniversary.
It is a special alloy, inspired by the light of the moon in the night sky, composed of 18-karat gold with the addition of silver, copper and palladium for color and stability.
Thanks to this innovation by Omega, the particular gold has a lighter hue than traditional yellow gold and a high resistance to loss of color intensity and brilliance.
An unusual choice, dare I say it, for a Swatch that we are usually used to seeing with less valuable materials (although there is no shortage of past examples made entirely of noble materials, but that’s another story).
The watch comes with a certificate stating that the hand was produced during the February Full Moon and a revised box characterized, inevitably, by the color gold.
If the moonshine gold hands were only produced on that February night, this suggests to us that they were not made in huge quantities. Swatch itself commented on the production with “Probably not enough,” to mock the incredible phenomenon that has been the launch of Moonswatch for the past year.
Price and availability
The new Moonswatch Mission to Moonshine Gold will be priced at CHF 275.00. It will be directly presented at 4 locations around the world at 7:00 pm CET: Paradeplatz, Zurich, (Switzerland); Tokyo Stock Exchange, Tokyo, (Japan); Piazza Affari, Milan, (Italy); and The Royal Exchange, London, (UK).
The choice of these four locations is also not random. In fact, Swatch chose them as cities with close ties to gold. Suffice it to say that the London exchange is where the global gold price is set.
Will we again witness streams of people queuing up in order to grab the much-desired watch dedicated to the Moon? Honestly, we hope not.
Our predictions
Before we say goodbye, we wanted to share with you some predictions that our creativity has provided us following the announcement by Swatch. Our imagination has really produced many variations in these 24 hours, here are a few for you.
We had thought we might see a new Bioceramic model that could feature a case similar in tone to the Moonshine Gold and a champagne dial with black subdials similar to what we saw last year in the new version of the Speedmaster with the same features.
Another possibility might have been inspiration to the Speedmaster, again in Moonshine gold, but with a green dial and bezel.
Last hypothesis to consider, again looking at the Moonshine gold Speed line, could have been one that takes inspiration from the Speedmaster Apollo 11, 50th Anniversary (a hypothesis that would have broken the Internet).
Visit our Youtube Channel to live the best of the world of watchmaking firsthand.
Follow us on Instagram not to miss any real-time update.
