Cartier Santos de Cartier Large WSSA0018

Imagen: Cartier, web oficial

The storyWhy this reference matters

In 1904 Alberto Santos-Dumont — Brazilian, aviator, Parisian by choice — complained to his friend Louis Cartier that there was no way to read the time with both hands busy flying. Cartier mounted a watch on a thin strap with a buckle. The model reached the public in 1911, but for decades it was little more than a catalogue curiosity. It took the 1978 relaunch, with an integrated case and bracelet and screws on show, to turn it into the icon everyone now takes for granted.

The 2018 Santos is the version Cartier considers definitive, and its most visible change is a quiet one: the bezel no longer floats inside the case, it runs out to the point where the bracelet attaches. Beyond that it is trimmed proportions — 39.8 by 47.5 mm for the large, 35.1 by 41.9 for the medium — and two inventions patented under names of their own. Only the large carries a date; the medium settles for hours, minutes and seconds, and that is the quickest way to tell them apart in a photograph.

Inside sits the 1847 MC, which Cartier introduced in 2015 with the Clé de Cartier for a thoroughly unromantic reason: ETA shut off supply to brands outside the Swatch Group and the house lost the base it had spent years building on. The number isn't a measurement, it's the year Cartier was founded. It runs 23 jewels, 28,800 vibrations per hour and around 40 hours of reserve, and it allows something unusual in a square dress watch: 100 metres of water resistance.

SpecificationsThe numbers, in one table

IdentificationHow to tell it apart

Size first. The large measures 39.8 mm wide by 47.5 long and 9.38 thick; the medium stops at 35.1 by 41.9. If the dial has a date window at six, it's a large — the medium doesn't have one. The dial is silvered opaline, with black Romans, blued steel sword hands and the word AUTOMATIC printed directly above the date.

The WSSA0018 is specifically the reference that leaves the factory with two attachments: a steel bracelet with the SmartLink system and a calfskin strap with a steel folding buckle, both on the QuickSwitch fitting. If the seller only hands you the bracelet, or the strap's folding buckle is missing, the set is incomplete even when the watch itself is genuine.

The crown is heptagonal and set with a faceted blue synthetic spinel, not a sapphire cabochon as on the gold Tanks. And at the VII, vertical and in lower case, is Cartier's hidden signature: readable with a loupe, invisible without one.

CollectingWhat collectors check

SmartLink is a blessing and a trap. Links release by pressing a point on the inside and pulling the pin out with a fingernail, no tool required — which means plenty of second-hand examples arrive with links missing and no little bag to show for them. Ask for all of them and count them: replacing them at a boutique is not cheap, and a short bracelet shows up straight away.

Hold the bezel screws up to the light. Since 2018 there have been entire forum threads asking why the slots don't line up with each other; they come out of the factory that way and it's no reason to walk away from a watch. What is a reason: scratched screws or chewed heads, the sign that somebody went in without the right tools.

The Santos alternates brushed finishing on the top of the case and bracelet with polishing down the flanks. A bad polish rounds the corners of the octagonal bezel and wipes out that contrast; you'll see it the moment you turn the watch towards a window. Check too that the QuickSwitch pushers under the lugs click crisply and return the bracelet to its seat with no play.

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