NOMOS Glashütte Orion 38 384

Imagen: NOMOS Glashütte, web oficial

The storyWhy this reference matters

The Orion came out in 1992 alongside the Tangente, the Ludwig and the Tetra, the company's first four watches. In that division of labour it got the dress role: round case, no numerals, faceted appliqués instead of printed markers. Monochrome puts it well when it says the family looks to the Glashütte watchmaking school and to Germany in the twenties. It isn't textbook Bauhaus the way the Tangente is; it is older in spirit and a good deal quieter.

At Baselworld 2013 Nomos enlarged three of those four models at a stroke and created the 38 series. The Orion went from 35 to 38 millimetres and, along the way, gained a grey variant — the Orion 38 Grau — which was the only genuinely new design in the batch. aBlogtoWatch, having handled it, kept coming back to how little it weighed and to the fact that its 8.9 mm of height slides under any shirt cuff. Reference 384 is the classic version: silver-plated dial, blued hands.

The engine came later. From 2014 Nomos began replacing the bought-in escapement with its own, the swing system, starting with the calibres that had a power reserve. Today the whole hand-wound range runs the DUW 4001: same dimensions as the old Alpha, same three-quarter plate, but with in-house balance, hairspring, escape wheel and pallet fork, and 53 hours of autonomy instead of 43.

SpecificationsThe numbers, in one table

IdentificationHow to tell it apart

There isn't a single number on the dial. The markers are faceted appliqués — gold-toned in the official Nomos photograph — over a white silver-plated galvanised dial, and the hands are blued steel. The small seconds at six has a concentric-circle base that is the family signature. The sapphire crystal is domed, not flat as on the Tangente.

The 384 and the 387 are twins face on: 38.0 mm across, 48.0 mm lug to lug, 19 mm between the lugs, 5 atm, the same dial. The difference shows in profile and it isn't subtle: the 384 has a domed sapphire case back and stands 8.9 mm tall; the 387 has a steel back and stops at 7.9. A whole millimetre, which on a watch this thin you feel on the wrist.

Within the family, don't confuse it with the Orion 33 (32.8 mm, much smaller), with the anthracite-dial version, or with the Orion neomatik, which are automatics. If it is hand-wound, has small seconds and carries no numerals, you are on the right branch.

CollectingWhat collectors check

The Orion 38 is polished from top to bottom and that case scratches on its own. It is the first thing anyone with experience looks at, and also the first thing ruined by trying to fix it: the bezel is razor-thin and a polish under pressure eats the edge. An Orion with rounded edges has been through a polisher, and there is no way back from that.

The faceted appliqués are the other sensitive area. Being separate fitted pieces, any knock to the dial or a clumsy job with the hands leaves marks right beside a marker. Look at the dial against the light and at an angle: a galvanised surface reveals fingerprints and damp rings long before a matte dial does.

On resale, the sapphire-backed 384 tends to ask a little more than the solid-backed 387, and the view of the calibre is only part of the reason. Check the crown gasket before you pay — it is 5 atm, no more — and wind it to the stop to confirm the click responds and that the seconds hand halts when you pull the crown.

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Close relativesThe ones it gets confused with