The Omega Speedmaster Hodinkee 10th Anniversary Limited Edition is inspired by a 1990s Speedmaster “Mark 40” owned by Clymer’s grandfather. This specific watch is the one that sparked the interest of watches for Benjamin Clymer. The timepiece was specifically a Speedmaster Day-Date ref. 375.0084 from 1996. The watch has a prolific nickname, “Michael Schumacher”, after ads featuring the watch and the F1 driver.

The Hodinkee Speedmaster is part of the Speedmaster CK 2998 Moonwatch remake collection. Each of these watches have the same 39.7mm steel case, aluminium bezel insert and the hand-wound, Lemania-derived cal. 1861 inside. Mixing together a MoonWatch with a Speedmaster is something very unusual but came out to be very well executed.

In the picture above, the left Speedmaster is the original model from the 1990s compared to the renewed version on the right. The key elements from the previous model version remained and were perfected in the new Hodinkee Speedmaster.

The twin central hands on the original (for elapsed seconds and the date pointer) have been merged into a seconds hand tipped with yellow “wings”. The timepiece has a solid back with the Speedmaster horse engraved on it. Around it you can find the engravements with commemorative text on its rim.

The remake edition is delivered on a grey leather strap that appears very nice. The Speedmaster Hodinkee 10th Anniversary is limited to 500 pieces, priced at US$6500. It’ll be available at Omega boutiques within the United States and also the Hodinkee shop online. Deliveries commence in November 2018.

As astronaut Ron Garan Jr. was spotted with an Omega Speedmaster, they knew it was a special watch. The cooler part is that Ron walked through space with this watch. The X-33 was designed specifically with spacewalking in mind, which makes this watch super cool.

“To me it wasn’t a luxury item, but a piece of equipment — just one of many tools we relied on for mission success.” – Ron Garan Jr.

Watches given for space travel are usually NASA property rather than owned by the astronaut himself. It is very interesting to find this watch on Ron much after his space travels. After catching love for the watch, Ron decided he wanted to keep the watch so in 2014 he payed a fee to NASA to keep the watch. He added that he has been given many watches for space especially from the Russian space team, but prefers Omega everyday.

The caseback features NASA’s ‘meatball’ logo including Ron’s name and the name of the mission, STS-124 which makes it unique watch.