Artle - RM 010 in Titanium

DETAILS

This watch is an ambassador from the early days of the Richard Mille brand. The brand was founded in 2001 with the brilliant launch of the unprecedentedly expensive RM 001 Tourbillon watch, which was compared to the F1 racing car in the world of watches. The RM 001 was followed by further generations of tourbillons and split-seconds chronographs. When Richard Mille’s first automatic watch, the RM005, was launched in 2004, the brand already had an image as a manufacturer of exceptional tourbillons. The bar was therefore set very high for the successful launch of the RM005, the first automatic model. In principle, Richard Mille mastered it in collaboration with Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier, the developer and manufacturer of the movement. The RM005 and later the RM010 movement are a heavily modified version of the automatic Vaucher caliber 4000, characterized by a very strong technical character and radically different from the image of the traditional Haute Horlogerie caliber. Instead of rhodium-plated brass, perlage, Cotes de Geneve, polished bevels and slotted screws with flat polished heads, we find titanium with a matt blasting, brushing, a PVD coating that ranges from grey to black, and a screw with a sculpted polished five-pointed head.

REASONS TO BUY

Nowadays we are witnessing the incredible popularity of Richard Mille watches. According to the results of 2022 and 2023, the brand ranks sixth in the Morgan Stanley World Best Watch Brands rating and is one of the most dynamically developing brands in the top ten of the rating. The value of Richard Mille watches on the secondary market is also increasing. This RM 010 in titanium appears to be one of the most affordable entries into the world of Richard Mille, but it also exhibits a very high level of craftsmanship that makes it one of the best self-winding watches with the basic functions of three hands and a date. For a connoisseur of watchmaking, it will be very important that the RM 010 in titanium is the rarest watch in the world where not only the case, but also the movement frame and even the screws are made of titanium. Therefore, the RM 010 in titanium would be an excellent purchase for the collector who is looking for a very attractive, sporty and rare self-winding wristwatch from a world-renowned watch brand that is one of the undisputed leaders in the haute horlogerie segment.

ABOUT THIS WATCH

This was a new esthetic that Richard Mille's tourbillons had previously achieved and which found an impressive application in a relatively simple movement - for the ultra-luxury category in which Richard Mille lives, of course. Of the unusual technical solutions that justified the exorbitant price of this watch, the date with the numerals printed on the sapphire disc, the central rotor with adjustable inertia and the beautiful heavy, inward-facing wings are worth mentioning (to change the efficiency of the winding, one'd have to ask the watchmaker to open the watch... but hardly any customers have asked for such a service). And of course, don't lose sight of the incredibly difficult to manufacture curved case, where all three main parts are curved - the bezel, the caseband and the caseback.

All these advantages were carried over into the next version of the automatic base model, the RM 010, which was launched in 2006. You might think it was difficult, but it has added bonuses: an enlarged case to 48x39.3 mm (which feels like a round 40 mm watch) compared to the 45x37.8 mm of the RM 005, and a partially skeletonized caliber. Of course, the RM 010 is far from a traditional transparent skeleton watch in this respect, but this is more about the functional skeletonization than the esthetics. A skeletonized work like this, where the owner of the watch can guess the degree of winding by the state of the two winding barrels (at the minimum) and see through its inner logic (at the maximum).

If we talk about the positioning of the RM 010, it is an everyday automatic watch with date, one of the most luxurious offerings in this category and certainly unique in this niche, along with the Royal Oak, Nautilus... Yes, that's perhaps all, if we disregard the rare offerings from independent watchmakers.