The community of pen enthusiasts goes just as deep as the watch community, and as you might expect, there’s quite a bit of overlap. This week, the two worlds are coming together for the benefit of charity, with a new watch from Nodus that’s been developed with the help of the Pen Addict Slack community member, Michael Harris. The watch is a Sector Dive GMT done in the colors of the Pen Addict website, referencing a membership poker chip created last year for the group. The result is a watch not shy on personality, and represents a passionate community coming together for a good cause. Proceeds from the sale of each watch will go directly to St. Jude’s Children Hospital.
The Nodus Sector family of watches boasts a diverse range of collections, from field watches to GMTs, to divers. This Pen Addict edition features a combination not seen before in the family, a dive bezel with a GMT hand, but that’s not the most unique aspect of this watch. The bezel transitions between base gray and orange segments, and opts for a countdown orientation rather than a more traditional elapsed time index. This also means that the bezel is bi-directional. It’s an uncommon approach to the dive bezel, but comes with a host of benefits as it’s a bit easier to operate on the day to day, in my experience.
The 24 hour scale has been placed within the rehaut surrounding the dial for a discreet look. The 24 hour hand itself gets a gray outline, while the hour hand and seconds hand are rendered in white, and the minute hand in black. The color selection of the hand set makes it slightly difficult to differentiate between the hour hand and the 24 hour hand initially, but the gray of the hand matches the gray of the 24 hour scale, so in day to day use shouldn’t present an issue.
The dial itself is blaze orange, similar to the Canyon release done with Matt Farah earlier this year. The orange and gray compliment one another nicely, though appear to have a similar value, making them rely on black accents to provide contrast. The resulting look is unique, even within the Nodus stable, and further still taps into the lore of the Pen Addict community in a meaningful way, while still providing enough appeal to those with no exposure to the pen space.
Inside, Nodus is using the Seiko TMI NH34, an automatic movement with date and ‘caller’ style 24 hour functionality. The movement is similar to what you’d find in the Seiko SSK watch, and keeps the price under $500. It also allows for rather tidy case dimensions, with the Nodus Sector GMT measuring 38mm in diameter, 47mm from lug to lug, and 12.75mm in thickness.
The Pen Addict community collaborator here, Michael Harris, helped with the design and features of the watch, and you can read his take on the process right here. Harris has pledged to run the St. Jude Marathon in Memphis, the home city of St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital, if the watch sells 100 units by the conclusion of the sale, March 27th.
The Nodus Dive GMT for The Pen Addict community is available for pre-oder now directly from Nodus. As this is a pre-oder, they are asking for 50% of the full price now, meaning buyers are on the hook for $237.50 until the watch ships in July of this year, at which point the remainder will be due. Overall this is a fun watch that represents an amazing community coming together to benefit an amazing cause. More from The Pen Addict & Nodus.