Montblanc's new rose gold Nicolas Rieussec chronograph is limited to 100 pieces

Montblanc has introduced a rose gold limited edition of its Star Legacy Nicolas Rieussec chronograph, capped at 100 pieces. Pricing has not been finalized, but the brand expects the watch to sell for around €25,000.

Officially Montblanc Simplo GmbH, the company was founded in Hamburg in 1906 by August Eberstein and Alfred Nehemias and built its early reputation on fountain pens before entering watchmaking in 1997, joined the Richemont Group in 1998, and now reports annual revenue of $852.5 million.

A dial built from 1821 patent papers

Nicolas Rieussec built a timing device that recorded horses' finish times in ink at the Champ de Mars racetrack in Paris in 1821, using a fixed nib that dropped ink onto two rotating counters. The Academy of Sciences approved it and named it the chronograph, from the Greek for time and writing.

The dial carries that history in luminescent paint. Set against black sections, the inscriptions replicate handwritten passages from the Academy's approval document, its silhouette, a blueprint of the original ink hand, and Rieussec's own signature at the center.

The time is shown on a white chapter ring with black Roman numerals, a railway-style minutes track and rose gold-coated leaf hands, set beneath a domed sapphire crystal with double anti-reflective coating.

Two domed chronograph sub-dials are set into the base of the chapter ring, a 60-second counter on the left and a 30-minute totaliser on the right. A blued-steel bridge shaped like a diamond joins them and recreates the layout of Rieussec's original device.

A skeletonised GMT hand is hidden behind the solid hour hand. The hour hand tracks local time while the GMT hand advances in one-hour steps via the crown, and a day/night aperture is cut into the chapter ring at 9 o'clock.

The date window at 6 o'clock takes a bevelled rose-gold frame with two polished screws. The raised flange reads 'Compteur de Mr Rieussec' on one side and 'Paris, Le 15 Octobre 1821' on the other.

Case, movement and strap

We rank Montblanc among the best luxury watch brands, a name built on pens rather than movements. The case here measures 43mm in rose gold, polished, with the pebble-shaped profile, stepped lugs and 15.01mm thickness that mark the line, plus 50 meters of water resistance.

A pocket-watch-inspired fluted onion crown at 3 o'clock carries the Montblanc star, and a pusher at 8 o'clock runs the chronograph's start, stop and reset.

A rose gold caseback, its sapphire window anti-reflective coated, shows the manufacture calibre MB R200, an automatic integrated chronograph movement built from 319 components and 40 jewels, with a column wheel and vertical clutch. Twin barrels give it a 72-hour power reserve, and a 10mm balance wheel beats at 4Hz.

The movement is certified by the Montblanc Laboratory Test 500, the manufacturer's in-house protocol that puts every finished watch through a simulated year of wear, including 80 hours of continuous accuracy testing and two hours under water.

The GMT hand and date can be rapid-reset in both directions. The openworked rotor is engraved with a grain d'orge finish and the Montblanc star.

The black calfskin strap tapers to a point echoing a fountain pen nib, its underside printed with sections of an 1821 Parisian map, and it closes on a black-coated rose gold triple-folding clasp. The nib shape nods to the Meisterstück, the pen Montblanc launched in 1924 and engraved with the number 4810, a reference to Mont Blanc's height in meters.

Montblanc built the original Nicolas Rieussec monopusher chronograph in 2008, the same year it introduced the MB R100, its first movement developed and produced entirely in-house. That chronograph became part of the Star Legacy collection, whose mechanical watches otherwise run from $2,110 to $9,000, a fraction of what this gold edition is expected to cost.

Montblanc's most expensive watch is the Regulateur Nautique Chronograph, which originally sold for $388,600. It included dual time zones, a day and night display and a 30-minute counter of its own, while Montblanc's entry-level mechanical watches start closer to $1,800, with quartz models from $1,290.

Simpler pieces come from the brand's Le Locle workshop in Switzerland, while specialty pieces are finished by hand at the Institut Minerva de Recherche en Haute Horlogerie in Villeret, where output is capped at 200 to 300 watches a year.

Montblanc's Meisterstück pen also turns up among the no-ceiling picks in our gift guide for men.