A number of Swatch James Bond events were already held all around the globe:  A launch event "007 Swatch Night" took place on 18-FEB-2002 in Milano, Italy.   A similar launch event organized by Swatch The Club Germany took place on 10-MAR-2002 in Frankfurt, Germany.  Here is a short report about the German event.  During the event, a special aluminium suitcase (closed / opened) was released.  The suitcase contains:  Dr.No square, set of 19 glossy Bond prints (Milano only(!), representing the posters of the 19 Bond movies produced so far), space for 19 more Bond swatches, and a James Bond Swatch catalogue (preview of the swatches that will be released later).  The aluminium suitcase is not numbered, it should not be too hard to get.  1200 pieces of the aluminium suitcase have been made.  For price info, see my report.  Yet another launch event took place on 20-MAR in London, UK (here is a wonderful report by Robert Gough) and on 28-MAR in Miami, USA.  The event in Miami took place in South Beach.

The highlight of all James Bond events definitively was the Swatch The Club James Bond event in London from 26 to 28-JUL-2002.  For a long time, it was rumoured that a James Bond Leather Briefcase (with all 20 Bond swatches, 3300 Euro / US$!) was to be launched at this event but fortunately enough, this was not the case.  Collectors received something better instead (more about that later!).  

Before I start with the report about the James Bond event, I have to tell you about a wonderful evening that I spent in London before the event:

I arrived in London on thursday, picked up a "Time Out" magazine at the airport and I found out that Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits) was in town to play a charity gig (long sold out!) at the Shepherds Bush Empire (capacity 2000).  So I took the chance to see one of my favourite musicians at a rather small venue.  I arrived at 5pm at the SBE, long queues had formed already (for entrance, not for tickets :-)

Luckily enough, I managed to get a ticket at face value (from someone from France; people flew in for these concerts [3 charity gigs in a row, the 25th was the last one] from all over Europe!).  That's what I love about London:  There is always a chance to see a special concert!  The concert began at 8pm, Mark played for over two hours.  The first half of the concert was with the Notting Hillbillies, the other half with some original members from Dire Straits (eg. bassist John Illsley).  A lot of Dire Straits songs were played.   The atmosphere, the sound, and the performance was phantastic.  Too bad that it was over so soon.  Here are some pictures from the concert:

OK, this was already very good so far (too bad that I had to miss The Cure at the Hyde Park on the 27th because of the James Bond event :-)

Friday morning, I arrived at the Radisson Edwardian Kenilworth Hotel.  A welcome desk was already set up (by the wonderful team from Head For Heights)

Later in the afternoon, a detailed "agents briefing" took place.  About 100 collectors participated at the event, so the group was quite large.  I have to say that the London James Bond event was the best organized event ever.  Swatch The Club UK (James Maxwell) and the team from Head For Heights explained every little detail.  The highlight was:  "the group will be in two different hotels (on opposite sides of a street).  If there is a fire in hotel 1, the meeting point is hotel 2.  If there is a fire in hotel 2, the meeting point is hotel 1.  In the unlikely event that both hotels are on fire, the meeting point is the British Museum."  [the British Museum was just around the corner]  Wow!  Sounds like Swiss precision.  Fortunately enough, there was no fire.

A real MI6 agent (not) handed out detailed instructions.

The 100 collectors were divided in six different teams, my group was the pink one (called "Pinky The Beer", my suggestion "The Pink Penguins" was not soo successful :-).  My team leader was Markus Jeanneret, pictures of Markus will follow!  On saturday, the different teams competed against each other but no details about the activities on saturday were given at the agents briefing.  Everything was top secret!

But they let us know about saturday evening:  A dinner cruise on river themse with casino entertainment.  The first prize of the casino was a very special one:  The original(!) artwork for the special packaging of the London swatch (pic1 and pic2 of the packaging).  The artwork was done by UK designer Ian Moore.  So a really unique prize!

Click here to go to page 2 of the report to read about a bus journey around London.