Philosophy

Dials is built on a premise that is narrow and, as far as we can tell, unmet elsewhere: describe every watch to the same specification, so that two of them can be compared without first translating between two houses' idea of what a spec sheet is.

The problem

Look up the same watch on three sites and you get three different documents. One gives you the case diameter but not the lug-to-lug. One lists the movement by name and never says its power reserve. One buries the water resistance in a paragraph of marketing. None of them agree on what a "reference number" is, or where the seams in it fall.

That is fine when you are reading about one watch. It falls apart the moment you want to answer a comparative question: which of these two is thinner, which movement is actually the same ébauche under two names, what does this reference cost today across the market. Every one of those questions requires the same fields, filled in the same way, for both watches. So that is what the catalogue is: the same fields, filled in the same way.

The principles

One specification. A model is the unit of description. One watch, one record: case material and dimensions, calibre and its properties, dial, bracelet, water resistance, production years. Two models are directly comparable field by field, with no translation step. Everything else on the site is downstream of this rule.

Listings keep their source. The marketplace layer shows what watches are actually selling for, but the listings are not ours. Each one names the dealer or platform that published it and links back to them; anything about price, condition, availability, shipping or returns is theirs to answer. Dials takes no cut of anything and nothing here transacts.

Reference data over opinion. Prices shown are what listings ask, which is not the same as what watches are worth. The catalogue records facts about models, not judgements about individual physical watches: no valuations, no authentication, no provenance.

Open by design. A structured catalogue whose whole value is that its fields are consistent should not be locked behind a rendering of those fields. The catalogue is fully readable over a public API with no key and no account, every page of dials.co is also served as markdown to any client that asks, and this documentation follows the same rule. If you want to compare two watches programmatically, you should not have to scrape a page to do it.

What Dials is not

It is not a marketplace: nothing here buys or sells. It is not a valuation service. It is not an authentication service, and no data here can tell you whether a specific physical watch is genuine. And it is not a forum; there is no community layer and none is planned.

Contact

Corrections, additions and questions: hello@dials.co. Catalogue corrections are the most useful thing you can send: say which model, which field, and what it should be.