What We Know
IWC is joining rarified air today with announcing the brand’s first secular perpetual calendar. This hyper-accurate calendar caliber has only been designed four times in the past. The calendar will adjust for the skipped leap years at the start of each century until 2400. Maybe more impressive is that they’ve absolutely shattered the record for moonphase accuracy with a new display accurate for 45,000,000 years. And they’ve done it in essentially the same case dimensions as the other new Swiss made replica IWC Portugieser Perpetual Calendar watches that were also released today.
It’s hard to pick the biggest achievement here. Until last year, only three brands had created a secular perpetual calendar watch: Patek Philippe with the caliber 89 pocket watch, Svend Andersen with the Perpetual Secular Calendar, and Franck Muller’s Aeternitas Mega 4. The normal schedule of adding a day to the calendar every four years doesn’t account for the exact unevenness of the Earth’s rotation around the sun. A secular perpetual calendar accounts for the fact that leap years are skipped in years ending “00” but not in years divisible evenly by 400. Then, the little upstart Furlan Marri shocked folks with their incredibly simple module made with Dominique Renaud and Julien Tixier, which turned a simple La-Joux-Perret G100 into one of the most challenging complications in the world for Only Watch 2023. Now, IWC has joined the club with best UK IWC fake watches with a new 400-year gear, ensuring the accuracy of the perpetual calendar.
IWC’s iconic Double Moon display, with a moonphase for the northern and southern hemisphere, now has an accuracy of 45,000,000 years, far more than the previous record holder, the Andreas Strehler Sauterelle à Lune Perpétuelle 2M (with 2,060,757 years before it needs to be adjusted). Their previous most-accurate moonphase displays was in the cheap replica IWC Portugieser Perpetual Calendar watches (Ref. IW5021) from 2003 impressed with a moon phase accuracy of 577.5 years. IWC used a super computer to simulate 22 trillion different combinations of gearing, resulting in a new reduction gear train using three intermediate wheels.
All this is cased in a 44.4mm by 15mm platinum case (technically 0.1mm thicker than the other Portugieser Perpetual Calendars) with a mix of polished and brushed surfaces. The dial is made of glass, the underside of which is frosted and lacquered in white, with separate glass subdials fixed to the dial and then printed, while the dial appliques are hand-applied. The high quality IWC copy watches is finished with a double-box sapphire on the front and back. The IWC Portugieser Eternal Calendar is not a limited edition, but it is “price on request,” so we’re talking well into six figures, I’d imagine.
What We Think
For IWC, you could say the brand’s history could be divided into two periods: before and after Kurt Klaus. The brand’s former lead watchmaker spearheaded the development of their first perpetual calendar, which made its debut on the Da Vinci in 1985. Since then, they made a perpetual calendar with a split chronograph, then a Grande Complication (adding a minute repeater), and the Il Destriero Scafusia (adding a tourbillon) among others. But this Swiss movements IWC replica watches is the culmination of nearly 40 years of development that started with Kurt Klaus. That alone is something worth celebrating. But to put it in a (relatively) wearable 44.4mm by 15mm case is an achievement as well. If you were shopping for a Portugieser Perpetual Calendar and have the money for a (very big) upgrade, there’s very few reasons not to get the new Eternal Calendar.
The prototype I saw felt very visually cold, with the glass-on-glass white dial lacking a lot of contrast (especially against the white case) and not providing much benefit to the overall design. Unfortunately, I was also not allowed to photograph it much (and not at all from the back) as it would still undergo some final changes. Top IWC super clone watches hasn’t provided movement images yet to see the final architecture, either.
Despite the glass dial, you can’t really see anything interesting from the front that’s not shown with an aperture. The thin hands also get lost on the dial, and the applied silver numerals (like the hands) would have been better blued. For such a bold achievement from IWC, they might have been served with a more traditional dial design, with some brushed finishing or colored enamel not done on other Portugiesers. Maybe then the floating glass subdials would be enough to highlight the special nature of the perfect Swiss fake IWC watches. But IWC isn’t one to let their big achievements exist in only one form, so I expect there will be future variations that I might like more. Then again, if you wait, you won’t have the first model, which will certainly be the most collectible.
