One of America’s Greatest Watchmakers Goes Mainstream with His Latest Watch

Wait, this watch is handmade in Pennsylvania?

Close-up of a wristwatch with a blue textured dial, silver case, and brown leather strap on a textured fabric surface.

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Published January 15, 2026

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One of the best-kept secrets in the watch industry is located in the unassuming little town of Mt. Joy, Pennsylvania, located an hour west of Philadelphia.

There, a small team of 13 operates an independent watchmaker that rivals many well-known Swiss brands. They design and craft absolutely gorgeous, luxury-caliber movements, cases and dials in a converted old bank.

Silver wristwatch with blue textured dial, black numerals, and brown leather strap on a drafting table. — Teddy Baldassarre worked with RGM for four years to design this watch.

The brand is called RGM, named after its owner and master watchmaker, Roland G. Murphy. Despite producing exquisite watches, it has maintained a low profile since starting out in 1993, but a collaboration with one of the internet’s most-followed watch experts could finally earn it the recognition it deserves.

Teddy Baldassarre first profiled RGM for his YouTube channel in 2021. Shortly after, the two started a conversation about designing a watch together, which has finally come to fruition in the RGM 501 Teddy Baldassarre Edition.

Silver wristwatch with a blue textured dial and brown leather strap worn on a wrist. — The RGM 501 TB Edition has a 39mm polished steel case.

It features a 39mm polished stainless steel case with curved lugs housing an intricate, handcrafted sandwich dial and a movement assembled in Switzerland, then finished and calibrated in Pennsylvania.

The classical dress watch showcases RGM’s expertise in handcrafting guilloché dials on vintage rose engine lathes, a nearly lost art kept alive by a small group of watchmakers, mostly in Switzerland.

Smell the roses

Baldassarre chose to work with RGM for his second watch collaboration because it is one of the very few true watchmakers operating in America. For the renowned watch enthusiast, a crucial part of the design process was demonstrating the brand’s mastery of handcrafting guilloché dials.

Silver wristwatch with blue guilloché dial, black numerals, and brown leather strap on textured fabric. — The guilloché dial and subdial are handmade by RGM with a 1930s rose engine lathe.

RGM begins assembling the dial by machining steel plates with raised circles for the central dial and small seconds. Those plates are then decorated on a vintage rose engine lathe from the 1930s, a process that must be executed perfectly, by hand, or any misstep ruins the plate.

A triple barleycorn pattern was chosen for the central dial, accompanied by a simpler, classic barleycorn pattern for the small seconds. The process is well-documented on Baldassarre’s YouTube channel.

The raised hour track and seconds track are also hand-etched on a separate plate, which is then placed on top of the guilloché plate. The Breguet-style numerals complement the intricate detailing, solidifying the early twentieth-century look of the watch.

Silver wristwatch with blue guilloché dial, black numerals, and brown leather strap worn on a wrist. — The leaf hands are produced to RGM’s specification by a French manufacturer.

RGM is capable of crafting nearly every aspect of a watch in-house, but often outsources certain features to keep prices affordable and production times manageable for the small team. In this case, the rhodium-plated leaf hands are crafted in France to RGM’s specifications.

A transatlantic movement

Another outsourced feature that keeps the RGM 501 Teddy Baldassarre Edition from skyrocketing in price is the movement. The Caliber ASE 200 is a joint effort, created by the small manufacture Schwarz Etienne in Switzerland, then finished and regulated by RGM in Pennsylvania.

Close-up of a mechanical watch movement with visible gears and screws, housed in a stainless steel case with a brown leather strap, placed on a blueprint with a blue tool and a ruler nearby. — The micro-rotor movement is produced by Schwarz Etienne in Switzerland, then finished and regulated by RGM.

Once in the hands of RGM’s skilled team, the automatic micro-rotor movement receives hand-applied perlage and Côte de Genève, along with a singed plaque on the rotor. The movement, which beats at 3Hz and has an impressive 86-hour power reserve, is then regulated and tested for at least a week after assembly before shipping out.

Availability and price

The RGM 501 Teddy Baldassarre Edition is not technically a limited edition, but given the small team’s production constraints, RGM is only committing to making 25 pieces per year. That comprises a significant portion of the brand’s average annual output of 200 watches.

While RGM is capable of producing in-house movements, doing so for this project would have brought the watch’s price into the six-figure range and limited production to fewer than 10 per year. Baldassarre wanted it to be accessible to any watch fan with an mid-tier luxury budget.

The RGM 501 Teddy Baldassarre Edition is available now from Teddy Baldassarre for $13,900. It comes on a brown alligator leather strap from Jean Rousseau, complete with RGM’s stainless steel Keystone deployment clasp.

Silver wristwatch with blue guilloché dial, black numerals, and brown leather strap on a white marble surface.

RGM 501 Teddy Baldassarre Edition

Specs

Case Size	39mm
Movement	Schwarz Etienne caliber ASE 200 automatic
Water Resistance	50m

$13,900 at Teddy Baldassarre

About the Author: Brad Lanphear is an associate editor at Gear Patrol covering watches and style. Before joining the publication, he previously wrote for Heddels and Men’s Health. Now, he’s on a never-ending quest to find the perfect pair of Japanese denim.

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