How can an upmarket analog watch compete in a digital world? Pierre DeRoche’s answer is its TNT Royal Rétro 43, which is based on the idea that if one second hand is good, six is better. Instead of one hand taking the tiresome journey around the entire dial, the TNT Royal Retro 43 has six; each measuring a 10-second interval before passing the job off to the next in a neat bit of mechanical choreography.
The TNT Royal Rétro 43 revives the Royal Rétro movement, which was created five years ago and is billed as "the essence of Pierre DeRoche." In this case, the movement has been tweaked to bring down the size a bit, so the watch is 4 mm smaller than its predecessor.
The watch boasts a mechanical 25-jewel automatic movement and an engraved oscillating weight. The half-dozen second hands are held up by six chamfered and satin-finished seconds bridges. Each second hand has its own retrograde gear train and a strip-spring return to snap it back to zero after it's done its task.
This is all set in a 43-mm titanium case with black PVD treatment, sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on both sides, a sapphire back, and an alligator leather strap. The whole thing is water-resistant to 100 m (328 ft).
The TNT Royal Rétro 43 comes in a limited edition of 201 units and costs US$25,000.
The video below shows the Royal Rétro movement in action.
Source: Pierre DeRoche
