Jerry Seinfeld wears a Breitling Navitimer

Jerry Seinfeld spent nine seasons on NBC playing a version of himself, a stand-up comedian working the small annoyances of daily life into a bit, and across that run he wore a Breitling Navitimer. By the account of the dealers and writers who have catalogued his collection, the watch turns up in episode after episode and in the show's promotional photos: a steel chronograph on a black leather strap, its three subdials set at six, nine, and twelve in the pattern that marks the Valjoux 7750 movement underneath. For some appearances he switched to the Navitimer Airborne, a four-subdial variant, and GQ counted two Breitlings on the show in all.

The Navitimer is a pilot's instrument. Breitling built it for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and ringed the dial with a circular slide rule, a working flight computer the wearer turns by hand to figure fuel burn, airspeed, rate of climb, distance covered. The name is navigation and timer pressed together. None of that has anything to do with a comedian in a Manhattan walk-up. Seinfeld never flies it, and the only part of the watch his character ever needs is the part any watch has, the hands telling him the time.

He wore it because he knew what it was, not because the role called for it, and he stayed loyal to it. The same Navitimer turned up on his wrist more than two decades on, in Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, a flight instrument that has spent its whole on-screen life doing the one thing the cheapest watch can do.