Four Incredibly Cool New Watches Serious Collectors Are Loving This Month

Welcome to Watch Guy Watches, GQ’s monthly curation of high-end timepieces for the true watch nerds among us. This January, MB&F rethinks its Legacy Machine, Hublot goes full reptilian, Breguet gets its engines turning, and IWC turns its famed Mark-series pilot’s watch green.

2025 is shaping up to be quite the year in the watch industry.

Plenty of brands are marking significant anniversaries, which typically means special-edition watches are on the way. We’ve got Audemars Piguet’s 150th, Vacheron Constantin’s 270th, Breguet’s 250th, and Rolex’s GMT-Master's 70th birthday. But it’s a high-end independent with a reason to party that’s provided us with of a pair knockout watches of the year: MB&F’s Legacy Machine Perpetual and Sequential Flyback 'Longhorns.’

MB&F—Maximilian Büsser & Friends—opened up shop in Geneva in 2005 and has been crafting stunning watches and clocks for two decades. What was once a seat-of-the-pants operation is now a bona fide horological enterprise with 60 employees that consistently debuts some of the most mind-bending timepieces in the world. The ‘Longhorns’ watch gets its name from the extra-lengthy lugs attached to the case that were previously only included in an expensive prototype that sold at Phillips for 277,200 Swiss francs (roughly $300,000). While the regular-production LMs were made without these Longhorns, MB&F is bringing them back just in time for the brand’s 20th anniversary.

Now, MB&F is fitting these long “horns” to its LM Perpetual Longhorn and LM Sequential Flyback Longhorn watches. Like the one sold at Phillips, the lugs have two holes drilled in the lugs so the wearer can adjust the bracelet to their preference. Both of these watches are executed in stainless steel and fitted with black (rather than white enamel) subdials, with the LM Perpetual measuring 44mm by 17.5mm thick and the Sequential Flyback measuring 44mm by 18.2mm thick. (Neither is for the faint of wrist, to be sure, but the strap position optionality should certainly help with respect to comfort.)

Developed by star watchmaker Stephen McDonnell, the movements in both Legacy Machine models are by now the stuff of horological legend. (The QP model in particular won the Aiguille d’Or category at the GPHG, watchmaking’s Oscars.) Easily set and laid out to maximize legibility, they feature prominent, curved balance bridges displayed front and center on the dial along with rhodium-plated dial plates that make for a uniform aesthetic. The subdials—executed here in black rather than the model’s typical white enamel—make for a futuristic look that’s balanced somewhat by the more classically informed white Roman-numeral typography.

Limited to 20 pieces each, these stunning creations carry a price of 168,000 Swiss francs ($183,603). And before you go crying foul, lamenting how a small change to a watch’s lugs can deserve the dedication of an entirely fresh anniversary model, consider the years long development process. The brand shelved these lugs entirely for over 15 years until it could figure out a system that made them genuinely usable in addition to simply beautiful. That’s laudable attention to detail.

Hublot Spirit of Big Bang Year of the Snake

Each year, Hublot crafts a special version of its Spirit of Big Bang watch in honor of the Chinese New Year. The new Spirit of Big Bang Year of the Snake, housed in a black barrel-shaped ceramic case, celebrates the slithering reptile rendered in stunning detail on its dial and ceramic bezel. Look closely at the chronograph’s subdials and you’ll realize they’re formed by the body of a three-dimensional, gold-plated snake with fine laser engraving. The bezel, meanwhile, is likewise engraved with a scale-like pattern that extends to the watch’s black rubber strap with a velvet-like finish. Within the case is a notable movement: the skeletonized HUB4700 is a modern take on Zenith’s famed El Primero, one of the world’s first automatic chronograph calibers. (It was announced this year that LVMH would be making the El Primero available to other makers within its watchmaking division.)

Breguet Classique 7145 Lunar New Year 2025

As an alternative to the more avant-garde Hublot Spirit of Big Bang Year of the Snake, consider the Breguet Classique 7145 Lunar New Year 2025. Celebrating its 250th anniversary this year—a big one!—the namesake brand of famed watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet has applied its mastery of guilloché to the dial of this snake-themed Chinese Lunar New Year piece to stunning effect. Created with engine-turning and engraving techniques, the snake in question is given a coating of translucent green paint and joined by a set of rose gold, open-tipped “Breguet” hands. Housed in a 40-mm rose gold case, it’s powered by the brand’s impressively slim Calibre 502.3 movement with 22k gold winding rotor. At just 6.5mm, it’s a gorgeous tribute to what’s shaping up to be a heck of a horological year.

IWC Pilot’s Watch Mark XX Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team

The “Mark” series of IWC pilot’s watches is the stuff of horological legend—born of 20th-century military aviation, the series now forms no small part of the brand’s tool watch production as the basis of models both simple and wildly complicated. The new Mark XX Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team sees the Schaffhausen-based company putting its partnership with the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team front and center, designing a Mark-series timepiece in the spirit of this award-winning organization. Housed in a matte-grey 40-mm titanium case, it features the typically stark, utilitarian pilot’s watch configuration of black dial, large Arabic numerals, luminescent sword hands, and outer minute track. Here, however, the numerals (and lume) have been rendered in PETRONAS green and matched to a rubber strap featuring the EasX-CHANGE® strap change system. The whole thing is powered by IWC’s automatic 3211 movement.