Carl F. Bucherer Release Heritage Bicompax Annual Hometown Edition

There’s nothing wrong with a bit of hometown pride. We at Oracle Time are certainly guilty of cheering for old Blighty whenever we can and there’s no where on Earth better than London (probably). One watchmaker who knows about hometown pride is Carl F. Bucherer who rep Lucerne in Switzerland. To honour their city, and cities around the globe, they’ve launched the Heritage BiCompax Annual Hometown Edition.

Structurally and mechanically, the new collection is based on the 2018 Heritage BiCompax Annual. Which means a familiar 41mm stainless steel case housing the automatic movement CFB 1972 Calibre with chronograph and annual calendar functions. It’s a solid heritage design and the movement makes it even nicer thanks to a 42-hour power reserve and a good variety of functions.

Where the Hometown really picks up is the dial and caseback, of which there are 17 variations, celebrating 16 global cities across 9 countries. Those cities are Lucerne, Basel, Bern, Geneva, St. Gallen, Zermatt, and Zurich in Switzerland, Berlin and Munich in Germany, New York in the US and then a collection of global capitals including London (yay), Paris, Vienna, Tokyo, Mumbai and Beijing. The cities are represented by three dimensional style engravings on the watches’ sapphire casebacks depicting significant landmarks and skylines.

Each city has been paired with a gradient dial from a selection of five colours, for example London has a green dial while Lucerne has a brown one. The full range of colours are green, brown, burgundy, yellow and mint. Plus, the colour of the stitching on the accompanying strap is matched to the dial. The mint is particularly cool for its fresh brightness, similar to the Breitling pistachio dials on the revitalised Navitimer, however the burgundy has a richness that’s very attractive. The reason there’s 17 watches but only 16 cities is that Beijing gets two colour options, green and burgundy, while the rest are limited to one.

The Carl F. Bucherer Heritage BiCompax Annual Hometown edition is limited to 88 pieces per city, except for Beijing which is limited to 188. Despite being limited with special engravings and updated dials, the price for the watch is actually the same as for the 2018 original, £5,500. It’s refreshing that Carl F. Bucherer haven’t slapped a larger number on them just because they’re hometown themed, which many manufactures surely would. You can wear this bit of hometown pride with pride. If only they were GMTs to match the global theming…