SIHH 2011: Officine Panerai Radiomir 3 Days Platino PAM00373

SIHH 2011. Officine Panerai has officially announced it new offerings for 2011 and they are a very impressive set. There are eight 2011 Special Edition releases and seven 2011 additions to the regular collection.

Special Editions. All Panerai watches are of limited production. Only a few thousand of each model are produced a year. A trip to the local AD will reveal that only a few offerings are available from the rather extensive Officine Panerai's extensive catalog of watches. Getting the Panerai of your choice normally means a fair bit of waiting, even if your model of choice is a regular production watch. When it does arrive, you will definitely feel that you have a very special watch.  

There are even a more exclusive Panerai's, watches whose production is limited to 2000 units or less in the entire production life of the model. Some of these watches have even produced in quantities of as low as just 20 units. These ultra-exclusive Panerai 's are the Panerai Special Edition watches, and every year Panerai releases a few. In the case of the Officine Panerai Radiomir 3 Days Platino PAM00373, only 199 will be manufactured.

Officine Panerai Radiomir 3 Days Platino PAM00373. The Panerai PAM 373 is one of these Special Edition watches. It is of the classic Radiomir design, with a large 47mm case. The PAM 373's case is made of the most expensive of the precious metals, platinum. The case is water resistant to 100 meters. Complementing the platinum case is finely crafted brown alligator strap, closed by a buckle made of polished white gold.

The most distinctive feature of this watch is the dial which has a minimalist design for the hour markers which consist of an alternating of bar-shaped hour markers, at the 3, 6, 9 and 12 o'clock positions, and dot markers, rather than the characteristic large Arabic numerals figures which are typical of the classic Panerai dial. According to Officine Panerai's press release this dial is of historic origin, and the design was apparently used in a small number of watches manufactured at the end of the 1930's. The Press Release goes on to say that loss of the Panerai archive in the Florence flood of 1966 does not allow this facts to be verified.

We can do one better. This dial with alternating bar and dot markers was used in at least one watch built in the later 1930's with the Reference Number 2533. One sample of that watch still exists today.

The brown colored dial is a sandwich construction.  This manufacturing process consists of two superimposed discs, the upper one of which is perforated to form the hour markers through which the the luminous material can be seen. 

One of the rather surprising aspects of the design of this watch is the use of a 2.8 mm thick Plexiglas crystal. Plexiglass or acrylic glass used to be common in watchmaking until the 1980's, after which mineral glass and sapphire crystal glass was used instead. While Plexiglass is prone to scratches, it does add to the classic appeal of the watch.   

P.3000 calibre. The PAM 373 is powered by Officine Panerai's new P.3000 calibre. This is an in-house movement entirely designed by Officine Panerai and manufactured in Neuchâtel facility. The P.3000 calibre has a three day power reserve and produces 21,600 vibrations per hour. The movement can be viewed through a sapphire crystal case back.

The Radiomir case, 47 mm in diameter, is made of platinum and it is water-resistant to 100 metres, a figure to which it is believed that the first Radiomirs could descend. The back has a large sapphire crystal window to display the movement and the strap attachments are of wire, no longer welded to the caseband as in the distant past, but removable (an Officine Panerai patent) to enable the strap to be changed more easily.

About Panerai. Officine Panerai was founded in 1860 in Florence, Italy by Giovani Panerai. Panerai was acquired over by Swiss watchmaker Richemont S. A. in 1997.