Jacob & Co. Astronomia watches are designed with a very specific type of client in mind: someone who is not afraid to take risks, who is not afraid to show off, and who appreciates the sophistication of extremely complicated mechanisms.
Rapper Drake happens to be one of those people.
Drake loves custom fashion, expensive and fast cars, and luxury private jets that he can customize as he sees fit — even if he occasionally gets caught lying about buying them. He also likes watches, preferably limited editions. You’re not a fashion millionaire without such an item on your wrist.
That said, the Canadian rapper recently added a pretty impressive item to his already impressive collection of watches. This is Jacob & Co.’s Astronomia Casino Tourbillon, also known as the Astronomia Gambler.
The luxury jeweler launched the Astronomia collection in 2014 as a white canvas for novel and unexpected concepts. The idea behind it is to create small, self-contained universes that can be worn on the wrist and wow the world — and at a price to match. We’ve already discussed the Clarity Spider Tourbillon, which features a life-size tarantula made of feathers and black vapor deposition in the center of the dial.
Astro Casino may be more visually stunning than Spider, simply because it’s more complex. Truth be told, all Astronomia timepieces are overly complicated, but this one takes its place in the cake, with its over-engineering approaching ridiculous territory. However, this is not without its advantages.
As you can see in the video at the bottom of the page and the attached gallery, the Astro Casino is huge. At 47mm in diameter, it might be fooled to think it’s fairly average when viewed from above, but quite different when viewed from the side. The Casino has a thickness of 27.9mm, which is necessary to accommodate the vertically multi-layered JCAM29A movement, which has multiple complications, each more striking than the other.
First, the bottom is a fully functional mechanical roulette made of 18k rose gold with 37 pockets marked with black and red enamel. When you press the two buttons on the side of the case and the wheel starts to move, a white ceramic ball spins. replica watches uk
To prevent the balls from bouncing to the upper layers of the movement, the roulette wheel is covered by a sapphire crystal plate. The entire case is actually made of sapphire crystal, and the spinning roulette wheel is visible every time the release button is pressed.
Then comes the really outrageous part of this watch: the upper part of the movement is made of a rotating platform that includes four rotating arms. Yes, every element here is constantly moving independently, which is what makes this timepiece so complex and interesting.
The four arms carry a three-axis tourbillon, an asteroid made of blue magnesium, a sub-dial for timekeeping, and Jacob & Co.’s trademark rotating diamonds. That would be a 1-carat Jacobean-cut diamond with no fewer than 288 facets, revolving around its own axis every 30 seconds, so you can fully appreciate its brilliance from every angle.
In addition to the individual movements of the complication, the four arms perform a full rotation on the face of the watch in 10 minutes. Each pair of opposing arms is perfectly balanced, reducing the weight of the complication. The power reserve is 60 hours.
To top it off is a more domed sapphire crystal, while the strap is luxurious alligator leather with a gold clasp.
Astronomia Casino sounds appealing – and it is. With so much going on inside, one can barely remember actually checking the time, which kind of defeats the purpose of wearing a timekeeping device on the wrist. But it’s beautiful, over-engineered, and truly a sight to behold.
