The CHF 2,900 Watch Everyone Wants: M.A.D.Editions’ M.A.D.3 With Vincent Calabrese

The M.A.D.3 is M.A.D.Editions’ new wandering-hour watch created with independent watchmaking pioneer Vincent Calabrese, unveiled at Geneva Watch Days 2026 and priced at CHF 2,900 excluding taxes. It runs a modified La Joux-Perret G111 base movement with an MB&F-developed hour module, comes in pink exclusively for MB&F and M.A.D. Tribe members, and in blue allocated by a public raffle that closed September 7.

If Geneva Watch Days 2026 had a single watch that dominated conversation on the shores of Lake Geneva, it wasn’t a tourbillon and it didn’t cost six figures. It was the M.A.D.3 — a CHF 2,900 watch from M.A.D.Editions, MB&F’s accessibly priced sister label, made in collaboration with one of the founding fathers of modern independent watchmaking, Vincent Calabrese.

What Exactly Is the M.A.D.3?

The M.A.D.3 is the third core model in the M.A.D.Editions lineup, following the M.A.D.1 and the Eric Giroud-designed M.A.D.2. It marks a shift in how the brand tells time: rather than a conventional dial, it revives Calabrese’s Baladin — a wandering-hour complication he first introduced in the late 1980s, long before “jumping hour” became a watch-fair buzzword.

The mechanism is easy to describe and unusual to watch. A colored disc carries a cutout aperture that shows the current hour numeral while an arrow printed on the disc travels around a minutes track on the dial’s periphery. As the hour approaches its end, the aperture advances in the final few minutes rather than sweeping continuously — a semi-instantaneous transition, not the abrupt snap of a standard jump hour. A central running-seconds hand keeps the dial feeling alive between transitions.

Underneath, MB&F’s engineers took a modified automatic La Joux-Perret G111 base caliber and paired it with a bidirectional wandering-hour-and-trailing-minutes module developed in-house, reworked for tighter tolerances and a more efficient power draw so the complication could reach series production rather than remaining a one-off. Turn the openworked rotor and, between the spokes, a French sentence appears: “Il est assez aisé de plaire aux autres, bien plus ardu d’être fier de soi” — “It is fairly easy to please others, far more difficult to be proud of oneself.”

M.A.D.3 Vincent Calabrese: Specifications

Two Versions, One Price

Two editions exist, and they’re allocated in very different ways. The pink M.A.D.3 — a raspberry-toned sunburst dial — is reserved for members of The Tribe and Friends, MB&F’s existing community of owners and registered friends of the house, and was available to order directly. The blue M.A.D.3, with a sunburst blue dial, was open to the public exclusively through a raffle. Both share a bombé minute ring with Super-LumiNova, a beige leather strap, and a stainless steel folding buckle with the wandering-hour aperture motif echoed on the clasp and the crown. Case dimensions are identical across both: 40mm by 12.7mm in 316L stainless steel, with sapphire crystals front and back.

Who Is Vincent Calabrese?

For collectors under 40, the name may need an introduction; for anyone who has followed independent watchmaking since the 1980s, it needs none. Vincent Calabrese, now 82, is one of the true pioneers of the modern independent movement — a self-taught, fiercely inventive watchmaker who spent decades proving that horological creativity could live outside the big manufactures. His prototype baguette-movement Golden Bridge, shown at the 1977 Geneva Inventors Fair, was bought and produced by Corum; the Baladin wandering hour that inspires the M.A.D.3 came later, in the watch he credits with keeping his independent career afloat.

His most consequential act may have been institutional rather than mechanical: in 1985, Calabrese and fellow watchmaker Svend Andersen founded what became the AHCI — the Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants — the academy that gave independent watchmakers a collective identity and a platform, and through which generations of now-celebrated names first showed their work. Without the AHCI, the independent-watchmaking boom the market is living through today arguably doesn’t happen.

Pairing him with M.A.D.Editions reads as a deliberate gesture: the accessible arm of MB&F honoring the man who helped build the world MB&F operates in — and doing it not with a vintage reissue, but with his original wandering-hour concept translated, and re-engineered, for a new era.

The Raffle Has Already Closed — Here’s What Happened

M.A.D.Editions raffles have become the brand’s answer to a familiar post-MoonSwatch problem: when a hyped release costs a fraction of a typical MB&F piece, the pool of would-be buyers explodes far past the production run, and scarcity that used to be a function of price becomes a function of process. Rather than a first-come server crash, the brand runs a raffle — chance, not connections, decides who gets to buy at retail.

For the M.A.D.3, that window opened September 1, 2026 and closed September 7, 2026, with the blue-edition raffle results communicated on September 8. Pink-edition direct ordering for Tribe and Friends members opened the same day the raffle began. Selected raffle winners and direct-order customers are told to expect delivery beginning in October 2026. If you registered, check your inbox — and if you didn’t make this round, M.A.D.Editions has run this playbook for the M.A.D.1 and M.A.D.2 as well, so it’s a good bet another release, and another raffle, is coming.

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Seth Semilof

Co-Founder & COO · Haute Time

Seth Semilof co-founded Haute Living and, with business partner Kamal Hotchandani, launched Haute Time, the brands' luxury timepiece site, to educate buyers about the best watches in the world and to showcase the passion of collectors and the CEOs who lead the great maisons. His love of watches began early: a TAG Heuer at 13, an Omega at 16, and his first Rolex at 20. Through Haute Time he has been honored to visit the greatest watch manufactures in the world and meet the master watchmakers behind them. He has also personally featured private collections exclusive to Haute Time, taking readers inside the watch boxes of Kevin Hart, Carmelo Anthony, Tony Robbins and Swizz Beatz.