Sometimes, the way to truly separate yourself from the herd is not to follow the herd. So if everyone else jumps on the smartwatch trend, don’t be afraid to swim upstream and bling out with the coolest analog old-school wrist watch you can wear.
For fans of space, space exploration and good old American can-do spirit and guile, the new NASA-approved Apollo 15 commemorative watch from artisan watchmaker, Xeric, will fit the bill quite nicely.
Back in 2019, Xeric made a real splash with its first NASA timepiece, a watch honoring the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. After that beast tore up Kickstarter en route to the most successful timepiece campaign in site history, the California-based manufacturer is back with another space-themed watch, this time memorializing the agency’s first use of a lunar rover in 1971.
Every detail about this watch is an ode to NASA’s unwavering passion and innovation, starting with the fact that this watch has a pair of movement options. There’s a battery-powered American moonphase movement version, with swirling moons representing hours and minutes for charting the time, while the unique gauge also follows the satellite’s unique 29.5-day lunar phase cycle at the same time.
Then there’s the American automatic version, which doesn’t need a battery at all, powered by a self-winding mechanism that gathers energy through movement. It’ll even hold a power reserve for up to 40 hours, so the watch won’t run out of steam when you power down for the night.
Meanwhile, the design incorporates facets of that historic NASA mission at every turn. The premium American-made Horween leather straps were designed to evoke the look and feel of the astronaut’s gloves. The crown’s wire mesh texture is a spitting image of the rover’s unique tire treads. And, the watch grille is designed to represent the Apollo 15 command module, encircled with windows that look like the module’s crew access hatch to help tell the hour.
The luminescent Super-LumiNova markings allow the watch face to glow in the dark for easy viewing at night and in some models, the face itself is even crafted from a slice of an actual meteorite. Pretty cool, right?
The Xeric Apollo 15 commemorative watch campaign on Kickstarter opened to thunderous approval, reaching full funding status in literally minutes. Now, shoppers can choose from a handful of color and movement options priced from $259 up to $699, many with a savings of up to 36 percent off the retail price. Most varieties are extremely limited, with no more than 1,971 units of any given style, so shoppers should get it now to land the version they like best before it’s gone.
