“Let’s go on an Aventurine!”
Aventurine. Adventure with a typo?
Oh, I can already hear you asking. What exactly is aventurine? Aventurine is a form of quartz which is known for its translucency and platy mineral inclusions that lends it its glistening effect called aventurescence. Yes, this is what Wikipedia told me.
Moving on, let’s take a look at the focus for today. The Czapek & Cie Faubourg de Cracovie in a dark blue aventurine dial. We’ll get the headline figures out of the way first. Price? €38,000 or RM176,812 in today’s exchange rate.
“Fantastic! I’ll have two!”
Well, you better be quick. At the time of writing, you can still pre-order the Czapek & Cie Faubourg de Cracovie Aventurine but there will only ever be 50 units worldwide. So, now that we’ve established the fact that us plebs will never own one, what’s the highlight of this?
The dial, of course! It’s not the first time Czapek is using aventurine though. Czapek has used it in the creation of the ‘Midnight in Geneva’ limited edition of the Quai des Bergues collection back in 2019. In the case of the Faubourg de Cracovie Aventurine, there are three separate aventurine dials that form the entire setup. Each of the chronograph counter is rapporté. It’s fixed inside the hours and minutes dial, in other words.
Elsewhere, the applied hour markers and rhodium-plated hands are coated in SuperLuminova and sealed inside a 41.5 mm case with brushed and polished elements. The box sapphire crysal has AR coating. I really like the integrated pushers which blend very nicely into the lines of the crown guard.
Flipping the watch around, there’s a sapphire exhibition caseback with AR coating. Inside beats the COSC-certified, Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier-supplied Calibre SXH3. The vertical clutch and column wheel chrono movement has a beat rate of 5 Hz and power reserve stands 65 hours. The timepiece has a water resistance of 50 m.
With that said, all the technical brilliance would be worth nothing is the finishing isn’t up to par, right? I’m a fan of the combination of the skeletonized golden rotor that contrasts nicely against the sandblasted and diamond polished anthracite bridges. Last but not least, the Czapek & Cie Faubourg de Cracovie Aventurine comes on a black alligator leather strap with a steel buckle.
