The results of the Austrian election of the Watches of the Year and impressions from the price giving ceremony held during the inaugural evening of Viennatime last Thursday.

In 1996 I created the award “Watches of the Year”. Since then every year thousands of competent readers of the newspaper DIE PRESSE do participate and vote for their Watches of the Year.

Looking back in the year 1996, when I started the election of The Watches of the Year, comparable events did not really exist. Indeed I was the very first one to do this with a newspaper.

Good ideas are likely to be copied and so today we are confronted with an overload of such events; almost everybody, everywhere is giving away prices for the best watches. In my eyes a good reason to probably start again from scratch and rethink the whole procedure.

DIE PRESSE (founded in 1848) is one of the quality newspapers in Austria. Each week on Friday I publish an entire page about watches. Four times a year we publish a huge supplement about watches and the watch-industry. So DIE PRESSE readers are well informed and many of them became real connoisseurs and watch aficionados over the years…

To “pimp” our local results we also asked the visitors of Munichtime in Munich and the readers of www.watchtime.net to vote for their Watches of the Year.

154 watches stood to be elected. Have a quick look HERE …  This was our online voting… the watches are still there but you can not vote anymore … We of course also presented the watches in the newspaper DIE PRESSE itself …

These brands were the big winners:

A. Lange & Söhne, Baume & Mercier, Breitling, IWC Schaffhausen, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Junghans and Nomos Glashütte.

These were the watches that won the most first prices:

A. Lange & Söhne: “Lange 1 Lumen” and “1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar”

Baume & Mercier: “Clifton 10055” and “Clifton 10052”

Breitling: “Chronomat 44 Flying Fish” and “Transocean Unitime Pilot”

IWC Schaffhausen: “Ingenieur Chronograph Racer” and “Ingenieur Constant Force Tourbillon”

Jaeger-LeCoultre: “Master Ultra Thin Jubilée”

Junghans: “Meister Chronometer Gold”

Nomos Glashütte: “Tangente 33 Grau”, “Orion 38 Grau” and “Ahoi Datum”

And these are pictures taken during our price giving ceremony held last Thursday at the inaugural evening of Viennatime. As succesfully done in the last years Martin Traxl and I presented the results. Martin is a well known and multiple rewarded television presenter here in Austria and the head of cultural affaires at the Austrian television “ORF”.