Hublot Ups the Ante With Sapphire Cases for the Big Bang
Only 250 of each color exist.
As Perpetuelle points out, colored synthetic sapphires are nothing new: French chemist Auguste Victor Louis Verneuil invented them back in 1902. However, given the unpredictable and unstable process used to make the crystals, uniformly-colored creations have long been nearly impossible on a large scale — until now.
Hublot has come up with a process to create massive, uniform, transparent sapphires by melting iron with aluminum oxide. And thew watchmaker is putting the production to good use by creating full sapphire cases for the Big Bang. Available in both blue — a first for watchmaking — and red, the watches see their middle, bezel, and case back all cut out of a single block of sapphire, which, in addition to looking out-of-this-world, makes them supremely scratch-resistant and fully transparent to show off the Unico HUB124 movement inside.
Measuring 45mm x 15.7mm and limited to just 250 production models each, the blue and red sapphire Big Bangs are available now at authorized Hublot dealers for $85,000 and $74,000 USD, respectively.
