MB&F rebuilt from scratch the wandering-hours mechanism Vincent Calabrese invented decades ago, then put it into a steel watch within reach of any collector, distributed through a public raffle open until September 7.
Two years ago, over lunch with no particular agenda, Maximilian Büsser and Vincent Calabrese landed on something they had been circling for a while: it made sense to build something together. That conversation became the M.A.D.3, the watch through which M.A.D.Editions, MB&F's accessible arm, brings Calabrese's wandering-hours complication, which he named Baladin decades ago, into series production for the first time. The watch ships in two dial colors: raspberry pink, by invitation for MB&F's Tribe and Friends, and blue, open to the public through a raffle that closes on September 7.
Technical Specs
| Case | Stainless steel 316L, 40mm diameter x 12.7mm thick |
| Lug-to-lug / lug width | 43.7 mm / 21 mm |
| Crystal | Domed sapphire with anti-reflective coating on both faces (front) and inner face (caseback) |
| Water resistance | 30 m / 3 ATM |
| Dial | Layered construction with sapphire minute ring; raspberry or blue depending on the edition |
| Strap | Leather with stainless steel folding buckle |
| Caliber | Base calibre G111 by Manufacture La Joux-Perret (Swiss made), with a bi-directional wandering-hours module developed by MB&F |
| Movement diameter / height | 25.6mm (11½ lignes) / 4.45mm |
| Frequency | 4Hz (28,800 vph) |
| Jewels | 24 |
| Power reserve | 55 hours, automatic winding |
| Complication | Progressive wandering hours (Baladin), plus a hidden inscription on the rotor |
| Price | CHF 2,900 excluding tax (roughly USD 3,550 at the exchange rate on this article's publication date; this is an estimate, worth double-checking) |
| Availability | Blue edition: 1,500 pieces allocated by raffle. Pink edition: invite-only, reserved for MB&F's Tribe and Friends |
Reinterpretation, not reissue
The case comes from Eric Giroud, a longtime MB&F collaborator, and keeps details already familiar from M.A.D.Editions: floating lugs, a layered architecture, and domed sapphire crystals front and back. What does change is the dial color: instead of the brand's usual tones, the M.A.D.3 comes in a deep raspberry on the invite-only edition and a bold blue on the raffle edition, both pulled directly from pieces Calabrese made throughout his own career, working here as a kind of indirect portrait of the watchmaker.
On the back, the rotor's cutouts slowly reveal a sentence as the movement turns: "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"). It's a fitting tribute to Calabrese, and it works better than an ordinary engraving would because it demands the same patience as the main complication: it has to be given time to reveal itself. Worth noting, though: at 30 meters of water resistance, the M.A.D.3 isn't built for swimming or any exposure to pressurized water, which matters if the plan is to wear it as a daily beater.
A mechanism rebuilt from the ground up
Manufacturing the M.A.D.3 turned out to be harder than designing it. Calabrese's original Baladin mechanisms were deeply artisanal, built through intuition, trial and error, but difficult to reproduce reliably at any real scale. M.A.D.Editions' technical team had to redevelop the wandering-hours module from scratch to preserve what makes the Baladin special: instead of an instant jump between one hour and the next, as with most jumping-hour watches, the hours travel slowly and continuously across the dial while the minutes keep moving normally. It takes a moment to read comfortably, then it becomes almost hypnotic.
That module sits on a base G111 calibre from La Joux-Perret, optimized to handle the extra energy load the complication demands, with a 55-hour power reserve that's generous for a movement carrying an added complicated module. This is also the first time the Baladin concept has been produced in a run larger than the one-off or near-one-off pieces that defined most of Calabrese's career as an independent watchmaker.
Availability in our region
The blue M.A.D.3 sells directly online through mbandf.com, with no physical boutique involved, which levels the playing field between someone in Guadalajara or Bogotá and someone in Geneva: raffle registration is open until September 7, 2026, at 3:00 PM CEST, one entry per person, with the 1,500 pieces allocated on September 8. The CHF 2,900 price excludes tax, and unless the shipping address is in Switzerland or the United States, local VAT and import duties are collected on delivery rather than at checkout, meaning anyone selected in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, or Spain needs to budget for that cost before confirming a shipping address. Complimentary DHL shipping is available worldwide and does reach these countries, with delivery scheduled between October 2026 and April 2027.
The verdict from ORELO
The M.A.D.3 Vincent Calabrese pulls off something few independent watches manage: a genuinely uncommon complication, backed by real technical development rather than a purely aesthetic gesture, at a price well below what it usually costs to get into wandering hours. The raffle system, while fairer than an endless waiting list, also means neither budget nor enthusiasm guarantees anything: entry and a wait are all that's on offer. For anyone collecting out of mechanical curiosity rather than brand name, and who doesn't mind betting on a random draw, the M.A.D.3 delivers something rarely found at this price point: a complication designed and built from the ground up, not a generic module with a new name stamped on it.
