Review: Selten Series 00

There’s a handful of people who are obsessed with the idea of having a meteorite dial watch. Problem is, meteorite dial watches cost as much as you’d expect for something containing a literal piece of space rock. That is, many tens of thousands. But what if they didn’t cost many tens of thousands? What if they cost $699 instead?

Background

So a while ago, like around the time dinosaurs were chilling on Earth, a dirty great big lump of metal hit the deck in Gibeon, Namibia. That was pretty handy for the locals, because they didn’t have to mine for metal. It was right there. Over a hundred fragments of the Gibeon meteorite have been collected since 1911, with several going missing and many being turned into slices of watch dial.

In 1950, however, the remaining elements, strewn around an elliptical area some 240 miles long, were classified as a National Monument, and were no longer available for use in watch dials or anything else. So the manufacturers using that metal, to slice it and etch it to show off the crystalline form taken on by the meteorite, have been slowly rationing its use to delay the inevitable consequence: it will one day run out.

As such, watches featuring a dial harvested from the Gibeon meteorite are becoming more and more pricey as they become rarer and rare. For space fans seeking a watch to confirm their passion, that’s a sad time. Or, it would be, if that had been the only meteorite to ever make it to Earth.

Turns out it’s not. Not by a long shot. On average, it’s estimated that 500 meteorites fall to Earth every single year, and the Muonionalusta meteorite is one of them. It collided with a part of northern Scandinavia around about a million years ago, just north of the arctic circle.

Like the Gibeon meteorite, this one has a crystalline array known as the Widmanstätten pattern, formed by cooling very slowly over tens of millions of years, which makes the pattern impossible to replicate in the lab. The detail is only revealed when the space alloy is acid etched, as the different metals, such as iron and nickel, react individually.

So, imagine if I told you that you could procure a piece of this very old and very special meteorite for, oh, about $100. Starts to make some of those meteorite dial watches look a little… expensive? Because yes, you can purchase a watch with a delightful slice of meteorite for the dial for just $699.

This is Selten, a small watch company with a big market to compete in. You can imagine trying to find a USP in a space this crowded is like trying to find a smoothie stand at a Nascar race. So Selten went in strong for its first collection, called Series 00, by furnishing it with a genuine, real, bona-fide meteorite dial. Question is, did they blow the budget on this extra-terrestrial display or is the rest of the watch any good too?

Review

Right, so there’s not just a plain old boring meteorite dial for the Series 00, you can also pick an anthracite meteorite, a heat blued meteorite and even the sparkly stone aventurine. If you’ve got one of each material it’s like a view of the place the other came from. It’s almost poetic.

There’s two hand styles to choose from, pontife, with the gaping hole in the hours, or sword, which are a bit more reserved. On the natural meteorite dial edition, the pontife hands are also heat blued. The others get a heat-blued second hand instead.

What really makes the dial, however, is another splash of space rock—as if to prove its availability—in the form of the day/night display. There’s a deep blue starry sky background set with two moons, one in natural meteorite and the other in the anthracite meteorite for day and night. The whole thing is ringed in polished steel.

The blues and metallics are consistently represented in the outer ring, with the brand logo sat atop a curved, brushed plaque just under the twelve o’clock marker. It all sits inside a steel 40mm case that features a mixture of finishes and is sealed to 50m.

It’s a remarkably handsome watch. The colours and the pattern all work so well together. The aventurine is a nice option to have for those channelling their inner kitchen designer, but the meteorite by comparison just makes the watch. The whole watch has been crafted to feel forged in the fires of space, and it does a great job of not just feeling like a random watch that’s had its dial swapped for meteorite like so many others do.

There’s a host of other pleasant touches, too. Each watch is numbered, gets an anti-reflective coated sapphire crystal, double lug holes to fit the brushed and polished bracelet or included leather strap, features quick release strap changing, a double deployant clasp and a 1.25x link for fine—if not immediate—adjustment.

Providing power is a Miyota 9132, a Japanese movement classified by the manufacturer as a premium automatic. And it does look rather nice with the custom rotor, very similar to a Swiss La Joux Perret—which just so happens to be owned by the same parent company, Citizen.

Accuracy isn’t going to blow your mind at -10 to +30 seconds per day, but given its pleasant appearance and affordability, is something most people can probably overlook. With a meteorite that took ten million years to cool atop it, a few seconds here and there aren’t really going to matter.

Where the Selten 00 series falls a little short is in the thickness. It’s 13mm tall not including the slightly protruding crystal, and so it feels a bit chunky. There’s some tapering in the case back to style it out a bit, but it still notices. Whether it notices enough to be a problem is down to the individual. Some people can’t cope with a watch thicker than a sheet of paper; others think the 15mm thickness of the ceiling scraper Black Bay Pro is absolutely fine.

The overarching feeling of the Series 00 is that it’s something different, something considered. And not just because it has a meteorite dial. Everything together makes for a surprisingly unique experience which, given how long people have been making watches for, is an impressive feat to achieve without it feeling contrived. Whether you go meteorite or aventurine, you’re guaranteed to be wearing something that looks very different to all the other watches around you—even if they do have a bit of Gibeon in them.

What do you think of meteorite dials and this Selten in particular? Does it light your Saturn V or is it a soggy bottle rocket?