The Grey NATO – 394 – New Bond Watches But No New Bond (Yet)

James Stacey (0:04)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Grey NATO. It's a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, driving gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 394, and it's proudly brought to you by the always growing TGN supporter crew. We thank you all so much for your continued support, and if you'd like to support the show, please visit thegreynato.com for more details.

My name is Stacey, James Stacey, and I'm joined as ever by my friend Heaton, Jason Heaton. Jason, how are we doing today? A little bit of a Bond episode, I think.

Jason Heaton (0:32)

Yeah, we haven't done one in a while. This is, I don't know, I feel a bit of a, I don't know, a disturbance in the force these days. There must be an actor announcement coming up here soon. We're going to talk a little about that. It's got to be soon, right? Of course, there was a watch thing. So a couple watch things. I mean, we talked about The Vertex a while back too, but yeah, exciting times.

James Stacey (0:50)

Yeah, I think it's obviously something that has been a major part of what we've talked about in watches over the past decade is like Bond stuff. If you go back and look at some of the biggest episodes when we were getting possibly not accurate numbers from SoundCloud, I don't really know. But some of those are Bond episodes and you're a big Bond fan. I'm a big movie fan in general and I feel a kinship to the Daniel Craig era more than any other. And I think it's going to be an interesting time. It is an interesting time in watches simply because it's been such a long time since the last Bond film. And then on top of that, you had the COVID delay in the middle. So if you're Omega, the maker of Bond's current watches, I think it's probably been a pretty annoying time to have that be one of your highest profile.

They've had more Olympics than Bonds.

And those feel like, aside from moon landings, which there hasn't been one in some time, it's kind of Bond in the Olympics. This is one of the largest watch brands in the world. And I think it makes news, it turns headlines. There were two new watches that were released this week to a very specific, or surprising, I guess, amount of irer for what felt to me like very conventional sort of watches. But we'll get into that for sure. And then we're gonna get into this sort of rumored shortlist of who might be Bond. And back in the day, what would we call it? Like if we were casting a Bond film? If it wasn't Nina Gold, if it was you or I? It was really fun. And I'd like to redo it, but we have a Bond, another Bond episode coming up that we might ask that person with a guest, we might ask that person to be part of some fun stuff, including casting a Bond.

So I'm just working on that now. It will be fun. That kind soul who may be listening to this is on vacation and couldn't make it into this episode. Kudos for that. So today, we're chatting new Bond watches and then the possibility of a new Bond and kind of where we stand in that realm. But before we get into all the movies and everything else, we have a little bit of fun news that's pretty current because we're recording this for an episode that comes out on October 8th. And then just a week and a day later on Friday, October 16th, we have a special chat going on with Marathon at Wind Up in New York. So you're flying in, I'm flying in. I'm going to be there for a big chunk of the week. We're doing a Houdinky Happy Hour Wednesday night. Stay tuned for that RSVP. Actually, that RSVP will be long live since this episode goes up. But it's going to be a great time. And then as part of the weekend of Wind Up and the whole watch time thing, and New York Watch Week, it's a very busy time of year that really doesn't have one sort of title anymore. There's a lot going on in Manhattan for watches that week, which will be the week after this episode comes out. We have this great talk with Marathon. It will be, no RSVP is needed, but Wind Up has opened the bar, so it'll be a nice, come in, grab a beer.

Jason, myself and a couple of guests are gonna be talking about titanium watches. I'm absolutely pumped about this. We've been preparing for it for a little while. It's gonna be a really good time and a really fun chat. So if you're in New York and would like to attend, that is going to be at 5 p.m. We start sharp at 5.15, so you've got time to come in, figure out where you'd like to be and what you'd like to drink, and then sit down. There's gonna be a really fun Q&A, and we would love to see all of you there. I think it's funny, the last so many episodes, we've had so much more housekeeping because of the Toronto Timepiece Show and the RZE Gear Swap and then the Marathon Hangout. But yeah, we just have this one. If you're in town for wind up, please, please show up and hang out. There's lots of space in the room, and I think we're gonna have a pretty good time.