The fastest and most secure way to protect the watches you love.
We’ve minimized the paperwork and maximized protection, so you can stop worrying about your watches and focus on enjoying them.
In most cases, you’ll get a personalized quote in seconds and your policy kicks in immediately.
Wherever you are on planet Earth, your watches are protected. Rest easy and travel safely.
If you suffer a covered loss, there’s no deductible and no gimmicks. Ever.
Each of your watches is covered up to 150% of the insured value (up to the total value of the policy).
SELL OR TRADE
Our quotes are based on historical sales and real-time market data allowing us to give fair prices without all the hassle.
The fastest and most secure way to protect the watches you love.
We’ve minimized the paperwork and maximized protection, so you can stop worrying about your watches and focus on enjoying them.
In most cases, you’ll get a personalized quote in seconds and your policy kicks in immediately.
Wherever you are on planet Earth, your watches are protected. Rest easy and travel safely.
If you suffer a covered loss, there’s no deductible and no gimmicks. Ever.
Each of your watches is covered up to 150% of the insured value (up to the total value of the policy).
SELL OR TRADE
Our quotes are based on historical sales and real-time market data allowing us to give fair prices without all the hassle.
Popular Searches
The fastest and most secure way to protect the watches you love.
We’ve minimized the paperwork and maximized protection, so you can stop worrying about your watches and focus on enjoying them.
In most cases, you’ll get a personalized quote in seconds and your policy kicks in immediately.
Wherever you are on planet Earth, your watches are protected. Rest easy and travel safely.
If you suffer a covered loss, there’s no deductible and no gimmicks. Ever.
Each of your watches is covered up to 150% of the insured value (up to the total value of the policy).
SELL OR TRADE
Our quotes are based on historical sales and real-time market data allowing us to give fair prices without all the hassle.
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The first MoonSwatch has gone to space and honestly, we’re surprised it took this long.
On October 26, 2022, a small carbon fiber rig made a slow weather balloon-assisted ascent into earth’s atmosphere carrying one of the most in-demand payloads in recent watch history: Swatch’s Bioceramic MoonSwatch Mission to the Moon – maybe you’ve heard of it. The watch was sent up as the first endeavor of a recently launched (launched, get it? Like a roc– okay nevermind) collective of horology fans called For Exhibition Purposes Only (FEPO), with the intention that the watch be sold and 20 percent of the profits go to the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Unlike Apollo 11, however, this Mission to the Moon came up a little short, making it only about 0.0085% of the way to the moon before safely returning to Earth, but who’s really keeping score?
Wearing a watch that kind of went near space.
The watch actually only made it to 33,566m, the middle of the Earth’s stratosphere, leaving it around 65,500m short of the technical definition of “space,” also known as the Kármán line, as defined by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. But it traveled more than 100 miles over the course of a four-hour flight.
Space-worn Omega Speedmasters themselves are notoriously hard to come by, not least of all because most watches worn by astronauts are issued by NASA and are U.S. government property, so one coming up on the market and being legally purchasable is a rare occurrence.
The engraved back of the MoonSwatch that went kind of into space.
But technically this isn’t a Speedmaster and technically it didn’t go all the way to space. Instead, it’s a “close enough” achievement for a “close enough” watch that everyone unequivocally accepts as the Watch of the Year for 2022. Sounds perfect to me. And if you want to own a piece of history, FEPO is raffling off the watch through everyone’s equally-favorite form of a digital raffle ticket: the purchase of an NFT. Those are still a thing, right?
Sticking with the hyperbole, the teaser video says “you can’t get a MoonSwatch on Earth.” Now that the riotous demand has died down (emphasis on the riotous), the watches are more easily acquired as long as you live near a storefront. You’re still rolling the dice when you walk into a Swatch store in search of a MoonSwatch though. Maybe they have them, maybe they don’t, but either way you’re never guaranteed to get the one you want. But here, you at least have a chance.
Before everyone gets themselves worked up, don’t take this whole thing too seriously – the folks at FEPO certainly don’t. The company was founded by the same people behind the publication “The Watch Annual”. But while The Watch Annual is educational, the whole point of FEPO is to experiment “at the convergence of new technology, watchmaking, and hype,” founding member Justin Hast says, and it’s all “completely tongue-in-cheek.”
And where better to start with hype than the MoonSwatch, Hast says. “We thought 2022 was just all about the MoonSwatch and we just couldn’t resist the temptation to send one into space.”
The team worked with a company called “Sent Into Space” which has done big projects with Nike, Reebok, and others. It took two months to create the rig and deal with the “very real concerns” that the watch might not survive, Hast says.
The carbon fiber rig for the MoonSwatch “launch.”
But for all the naysayers’ concerns about the durability of the Bioceramic MoonSwatch, the chronograph was running the entire flight, and miraculously the watch survived despite the 33.5km-high, 190mph flight that reached temperatures as low as -65ºC. Sure, it’s not space but it’s also not nothing.
If you have any “Kubrick shot the Moon landing” level doubts, the flight and descent were recorded on video. A portion of the video was then cut into 960 equally-divided clips to make the NFT raffle tickets. It’s another experiment from the mind of FEPO so entrants can feel like they own something a little more interesting than a digital receipt of their entry.
The MoonSwatch on display at Somlo in London.
The “First MoonSwatch in Space” is on display now at Somlo (the London vintage watch retailer and Omega experts) in the Burlington Arcade where it will remain until the winner is announced at the beginning of March. The sale of NFTs (at the cost of 0.03 Ether – whatever that means) runs until March 1 or until all 960 units are sold, whichever comes first.
In all honesty, I’ve never been quite sure how NFTs work. If you are less of a luddite than I, you can go to the FEPO In Space website, connect your digital wallet, and mint your NFT entry into the raffle. Then all you have to do is sit back and hope the “First MoonSwatch in Space” touches down in a package on your doorstep.
The Hodinkee Shop is an Authorized Retailer of Omega and Swatch watches. You can browse through plenty of (new and pre-owned) Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch examples, but unfortunately no MoonSwatch. Take a closer look at what we do have in stock right here.
You can learn more about MoonSwatch via Swatch online, or by reading our previous coverage (here, here, here, here, and here).
By Danny milton
By Brandon menancio
By Hodinkee
By Danny milton
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