Replace 4/7/23: Lightening strikes twice on the Swatch MoonSwatch. After its preliminary launch final month, the limited-edition “Mission to Moonshine” collaboration is again with a fair wider launch including 14 new in-store areas. Launching April 6, the Moonshine Gold mannequin, which retails for $285, is now obtainable in main cities across the globe together with New York, Toronto, Madrid, Berlin, Seoul, Sydney, Rome and others. Like earlier releases, this collab will not be obtainable on-line.
For those who do not reside in any of the cities above, you’ll be able to nonetheless store earlier fashions of the MoonSwatch now on eBay, StockX, or Chrono24.
Replace 3/7/23: The Swatch MoonSwatch is formally again. Yesterday morning, Omega and Swatch introduced a newer, fancier model of their smash-hit collaboration, the limited-edition “Mission to Moonshine”, which updates the metal grey “Mission To The Moon” with a second hand coated in modern gold alloy.
Like earlier fashions, the most recent MoonSwatch will not be obtainable on-line, and its launch is proscribed to London, Milan, Zürich, and Tokyo. It’ll price you roughly $285 at retail, however good luck getting your fingers on it.
This has been a banner yr for watch collabs, from TAG Heuer x Porsche to Timex x Adsum to Hodinkee x Bamford x Snoopy, amongst many others. Whereas a few of these had been a very long time coming, others caught the worldwide watch scene without warning. None, nonetheless, precipitated as a lot pleasure because the Omega x Swatch MoonSwatch, a first-of-its-kind partnership between two of the largest names in watchmaking. The gathering included 11 colourful variants of Swatch’s tackle the NASA-approved Omega Speedmaster, each devoted to a special celestial physique. Priced at $260 (some $6,000 lower than Omega’s famed “Moonwatch”) and solely obtainable in-person at choose Swatch boutiques, the collab attracted 1000’s of watch collectors and grey market flippers who lined up—typically days prematurely—to cop one. Then issues bought a bit of wild. Retailers had been overwhelmed by the demand, riot police had been referred to as, and a minimum of one man bought mugged for his spot in line at knifepoint.
Though the MoonSwatch wasn’t billed as limited-edition launch, that didn’t cease keen consumers from reselling them for $1,000 a pop, an ironic (if predictable) destiny for a watch ostensibly supposed to supply Omega vibes at Swatch costs. And whereas the watch-collecting group largely had good issues to say concerning the design of the MoonSwatch, Swatch’s option to roll out the watch in such restricted portions—and the rampant profiteering that it inspired—rubbed lots of people the mistaken method.
However if in case you have your coronary heart set on a black-on-black Mission to Moon or a cotton-candy-pink Mission to Venus (or ambitions to gather the entire set, Pokémon type), issues are trying up. A wider vary of Swatch boutiques are carrying the gathering IRL this season, and the model not too long ago introduced a sequence of rolling pop-ups in cities like San Diego and Jacksonville, with shock areas introduced through Instagram in between. Elsewhere, grey market costs have additionally come again to earth for many fashions, and now you can discover unworn choices with unique packaging for beneath $300 on websites like eBay, Chrono24, and StockX. (The one exception appears to be the blue Mission to Neptune version—because of rumors that it’s going out of manufacturing, although Swatch assures us that isn’t the case, it continues to promote for upwards of $1,800.) To not yuck anybody’s yum, or to take something away from one of the uncommon watch drops of latest years, however with classic Omega Speedmasters beginning at round $1,500 on Chrono24, there’s no planet on which that looks as if a very good deal.
So why not head over to the Swatch web site and cop a Evening Flight chronograph—a watch with a lot of the identical midcentury attraction as the unique Speedy—for simply $210, or fulfill your repair with the NASA-endorsed EXTRAVEHICULAR? Certain, they aren’t the MoonSwatch, however they are precisely the sort of enjoyable, accessible watches which have made Swatch such a beloved model for many years, and also you received’t must line up in a single day (or pay an extortionary premium on the aftermarket) to get one.
Nonetheless useless set on snagging a MoonSwatch, costs be damned? Begin right here.
Swatch x Omega Bioceramic “Mission to the Solar” MoonSwatch