The new Basel Fair building by Herzog/de Meuron (they also have designed the Allianz Arena in Munich)

here we are!

the new SISTEM 51 automatic watches, the sensation of Baselworld

It was Swatch Planet Club day this monday.  As a special surprise, Swatch boss Nick Hayek said "Hello" to all arriving club members, patiently shaking hands with everybody.

A special surprise was waiting for the four new Gold Members:

Nick Hayek held a nice welcome speech, talking about the 30th anniversary of Swatch and the importance of the club.

Afterwards, Nick Hayek and Swatch Creative Director Carlo Giordanetti handed out the four special Gold Member watches.  What a nice surprise!

I assume that Torsten is smiling as well :-)

A huge cake with a Swatch on top was served and Nick Hayek cut the first slice.

All Gold & Pioneer Members were invited as well....

Afterwards, Carlo Giordanetti presented the new Gold & Pioneer 2013 special, including the goodie bag with a lot of additional nice items.  As a special surprise, Swatch artist and Italian illustrator Lorenzo Petrantoni was present as well.  Of course it was no coincidence that the bag contained his nice book Timestory so that every Gold & Pioneer member could receive a personal dedication and an autograph.

The new Swatch newspaper The Swatch Eye

A very nice cook book!

And finally:  The new Gold & Pioneer 2013 special:

Lorenzo Petrantoni patiently signed autographs and posed for pictures for at least two hours, until every club member had received his signature.  I hope that all of you have noticed his great illustration in the middle of the Swatch Eye newspaper.  I wish that Swatch would make this available as a signed lithograph.  Until then, I will frame the picture below :-)

A looong queue!

US 1994 Olympic Gold medalist and Swatch designer Dan Jansen also stopped by for photos and autographs

After all these exciting speeches, videos, autographs, photos, ... it was time for an extended visit of the Swatch exhibition.  More than 5000 Swatch watches were on display, including the Puff watches which are rarely shown in public (most of the ones currently circulating are probably fakes).

Sooo beautiful, sooo rare (Royal Puff, GZ004)

We also discovered some small mistakes here and there, I'll leave it to you to spot these in the follong pictures from the exhibition.  Some are actually quite funny...

The 100,000,000th Swatch watch produced in 1992, quite yellowed by now...

Some rare prototypes are now considered as part of the regular collection?!?
You could never buy these in a shop...

...still queueing...

It was lunch time now, time to change the building, on the opposite side of the street:  Third floor, Congress Center Basel.  Location of the traditional Gold & Pioneer Kiosk.

Some impressions from the kiosk.  Not too many ultrarare or old specials this year.  It seems that the official stock is meanwhile quite "empty" in this regard.

Every collector had the chance to buy his personalized Pioneer Member 2013 (SUOZ161C) special in the G&P kiosk:

At around 4.30pm, we left Basel and headed home towards Strasbourg. 

Click here to read page 4 ("Confrérerie Saint-Etienne and Strasbourg boat tour") of my Strasbourg/Basel G&P Event 2013 report.