Swatchissimo differences

Swatchissimo is simply the best coffee table book about Swatch watches. Go and get one for your collection, you won't regret it. These days, you often can find it astonishingly cheap.

It has many valuable details about the (early) history of Swatch watches and almost 400 pages with great photos of Swatch watches. It is still the reference book after all these years.

Swatchissimo was first published in December 1991 and a second edition (marked March 1992 on the last page) was published shortly afterwards in a much larger printing run. The first edition is not that easy to find, maybe 5-10% of the used books on the market were printed in December 1991 (marked on the last page and the cover is also different, see last photo on this page). I have not found a third printing so far.

Recently, I discovered some subtle differences between the first and the second printing, a few photos were changed or corrected. Also some writing has been changed / improved. Below, you can find all the differences that I have spotted so far. The book on the top of a photo is always the second printing, the book at the bottom is the first, original printing.

p. 193: This is the page that started it all. The first edition shows the 50'000'000 Swatch. This photo was moved to p.348 in the 2nd printing.

p. 140: The first edition states that some early Lady watches were sold in the USA. The 2nd edition corrected these to "prototypes" which is obviously more correct as these watches never show up on the used market. Fun fact: Swatch Finder now also states that some of these Lady protos were available in the shops which is not correct... Also some more lady prototypes were added in the 2nd edition on p.141

p. 155: Grey Markers (GM400) variant added in the second edition

p. 183: New photo in the second edition

p. 311: Nero (GB722) and Knight Of The Night (GB716) added in the second edition

p. 312: Several wrong watches on the photo in the first edition

p. 313: New photo with 'improved' Asetra (GK137/138) in the second edition. I think that the Asetra in the first edition is a prototype with matt plastic