News · Minerva

Minerva turns its monopusher back to front in yellow gold, and cuts five windows in the case band

The Unveiled Chronograph arrives in 18 carat yellow gold with browned German silver bridges, limited to 30 pieces and listed at A$126,000 in Australia.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 4 min read · 25 August 2026

• Minerva has released the Unveiled Chronograph in solid 18 carat yellow gold, a limited edition of 30 pieces carrying reference MB136352.
• The hand-wound monopusher calibre MB M17.26 is reversed so its mechanics face the dial, with five apertures cut into the case band to light it from the side.
• Montblanc's Australian store lists the watch at A$126,000 as a boutique exclusive, currently shown as unavailable online with orders taken by phone.

Skeleton dials usually solve a problem nobody had. You take a movement designed to be looked at from behind, cut away the dial in front of it, and end up with a watch that is harder to read and no more interesting to study, because the side you are now looking at is the side the finisher was never asked to make beautiful. What Minerva does with the Unveiled Chronograph is the opposite manoeuvre, and the newest version of it arrives in solid yellow gold.

The movement has been turned around, not stripped back

The trick is that the calibre MB M17.26 has been flipped. Rather than skeletonising a dial to peer at the back of a movement, Minerva has reversed the whole thing so the regulating organ, the going train, the bridges and the mainplate face forward, and the chronograph mechanism is built up on pillars so the eye can travel down through it rather than stopping at the first layer. A skeleton sapphire dial with white luminescent indexes sits over the top, which is how you still get to read the time off it.

That is a monopusher chronograph, hand-wound and hand-finished, and the plates and bridges are German silver coloured brown. The browning is not new, and it is worth saying so plainly: Montblanc's steel-cased 1858 Unveiled Minerva Chronograph, listed at A$97,500 in a run of 100, already uses browned bridges under the same calibre. German silver left raw goes a warm grey, and browned against yellow gold it reads closer to an old brass instrument than to modern watchmaking, which is what stops this looking like jewellery with gears in it.

Five holes in the side of the case

Then there is the part that sounds like a gimmick and is not. Minerva has cut five apertures into the case band, so light enters the movement from the side rather than only through the front. A skeletonised movement viewed head-on is usually backlit by nothing at all, which is why so many of them photograph like black lace, and side-lighting is the practical fix for that. It also means the watch shows you something new when you turn your wrist, which is more than most complications manage.

The case is 43mm across in 18 carat yellow gold with a fluted bezel, fixed rather than rotating, and 14.78mm tall. Neither of those numbers is small, and I am not going to argue that this wears discreetly, though at 22mm between the lugs on a brown alligator strap it at least looks proportionate to itself. The crown is yellow gold with the Minerva arrow in relief, the manufacture's old signature, and a triple-folding gold clasp with fine adjustment closes it.

Thirty metres, and what that tells you

Water resistance is 3 bar. On a watch with five holes cut through the side of its case, that is a small miracle of gasketing rather than a shortcoming, and it is the number that quietly explains the engineering: 30 metres means rain and a basin, and every one of those apertures is another joint that has to hold. Anybody planning to swim in an A$126,000 gold monopusher was never going to be talked out of it by a specification sheet anyway.

Where it sits in the Unveiled line

This is not a new watch so much as a new grade of one. The steel version puts a stainless case under an 18 carat yellow gold fluted bezel, on a calf strap with an alligator print and a steel clasp, in a run of 100. This one is solid gold throughout, on real alligator with a gold clasp, and the run is 30. A$28,500 and seventy fewer pieces is the whole distance between them. The caseback carries an engraving of the manufacture building, which is either a lovely touch or a slightly literal one depending on your tolerance for architecture on casebacks.

I went in expecting the steel one to be the sensible answer, and on the money it plainly still is. What solid gold does, though, is stop the watch reading as a technical exercise and start it reading as an object somebody made, which is closer to what the movement inside it actually is. Pressed to choose, and setting the A$28,500 aside, I would take the gold. That is not the answer I expected to give when I opened the photographs.

The Australian figure is the news for us

Montblanc lists this at A$126,000 in Australia, which is the sort of number that arrives with its own weather. It is worth saying plainly that this is a boutique exclusive rather than something you will find on a shelf, and the online listing currently shows it as unavailable, with an Australian phone line for enquiries. At thirty pieces worldwide, the constraint is the run rather than the distribution.

Minerva The Unveiled Chronograph Limited Edition pricing and availability

The Minerva The Unveiled Chronograph Limited Edition, reference MB136352, is limited to 30 pieces and sold as a boutique exclusive. Montblanc's Australian store lists it at A$126,000, and it is currently shown as unavailable online with orders taken by phone. It comes on a brown alligator strap with an 18 carat yellow gold triple-folding clasp.