Don't miss the next drop
The copper dial is the whole proposition on this Baume & Mercier Hampton. Hold it up to natural light and the salmon field shifts from a deep amber to a luminous warm gold, with a slightly paler concentric sub-seconds register at six that punches the rhythm of the layout without breaking the warmth. This is, in our opinion, the most genuinely interesting dial Baume & Mercier ever fitted to the Hampton case, and it is unreasonably difficult to find against the sea of white and silver variants that dominate the secondary market.
Baume & Mercier traces its house back to 1830, which makes it one of the oldest continuously operating Swiss manufacturers in the industry, and the Phi emblem you see throughout this watch (on the crown, on the deployant, beside the dial signature, engraved into the caseback) was adopted in 1964 to formalize a guiding philosophy already a century deep at that point: that watchmaking, like any decorative art, is fundamentally a problem of proportion. The Hampton itself debuted in 1994, drawing equally from the brand’s own 1960s archive and the broader 1920s Art Deco vocabulary of geometric restraint, and it has been in continuous production now for more than three decades. That kind of longevity for a rectangular dress watch in a market obsessed with round divers is a quiet vote of confidence from the collector base.
The movement here is a Swiss quartz with a small-seconds complication, a configuration we genuinely appreciate on dress watches in this size class. The added register at six lends visual depth and gives the eye a third point of focus on what would otherwise be a very flat dial composition, and the quartz regulation keeps the whole thing accurate to within a few seconds a month with none of the daily-winding fuss. The Hampton family used a range of Swiss quartz calibers across its long run, and the small-seconds variant is the one to chase if you care about dial architecture over movement showmanship.
The case is polished stainless steel, rectangular with the Hampton’s signature gently rounded corners and a slim, wrist-hugging profile that genuinely flatters smaller wrists. Dimensions sit at 20.4mm across the case by 33.8mm lug-to-lug, which puts this firmly in the unisex-leaning-petite category. The polished flanks show honest hairline scratching from regular use, particularly on the caseback, which has the kind of patina you only get from a watch that someone actually wore for years rather than one that sat in a drawer. The faceted octagonal crown at three o’clock is signed with the Phi logo, a small detail that telegraphs the original-everything provenance. The caseback is fully engraved: the Phi emblem, BAUME & MERCIER, GENEVE, a small triangle separator, STAINLESS STEEL, ACIER / INOX, the reference MV045139, and serial number 2695670.
The dial is the headline. A matte copper salmon field with the Phi logo and BAUME & MERCIER GENEVE printed in the upper register, applied polished steel Arabic numerals at twelve, three, and nine, applied small square markers at the remaining hour positions, and a printed inner minute track framed by a fine crosshatched border at the dial edge that gives the whole composition an almost architectural rigor. The sub-seconds register at six sits a shade paler than the main field with concentric snailed finishing, and SWISS MADE is printed in small black type at the dial base. The hour and minute hands are slim sword-style in dark-finished steel, with a fine baton sub-seconds hand. No date complication interrupts the symmetry, which is a choice we very much endorse on a dress watch of this proportion.
The cognac brown leather strap with white contrast stitching pairs handsomely with the copper warmth of the dial, and crucially it carries the original Phi-signed Baume & Mercier polished steel deployant clasp, which is engraved BAUME & MERCIER GENEVE on the buckle plate with SWISS MADE and STAINLESS STEEL on the tang side. Original signed clasps on watches at this price point are increasingly rare, and the deployant remains crisp and functional.
Serviced in-house at OTTUHR and backed by our 2-year warranty. For the collector who values dial character over case dimensions and wants a rectangular watch with a genuine point of view, this copper Hampton is, to us, one of the most quietly compelling Baume & Mercier propositions on the market.
