Bundeswehr 3501 IWC Porsche Design Ocean 2000

IWC-Bund-Issued-Ocean-2000

We now live in a world where a good Milsub is a 500K proposition in USD. So how does it make any sense at all that Bundeswehr-issued Ocean 2000 is still just over 20K? This is a combat diver issued, under-hyped, comparatively economic (I suppose anything is when contrasted against a milsub), materially innovative, 1980s…

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‘3H Bund’ Blancpain Fifty Fathoms

Blancpain-3H-Bund-Fifty-Fathoms

Veblen goods are those for which demand increases as price increases, breaking traditional economic models. If this does not compute, ask a guy named Philippe Dufour to explain it to you. But I’d like to suggest there’s a similar but distinct phenomena in military watches. Usually, collectors uniformly aim for golden tritium, perfect razor cases,…

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Bundeswehr-Issued ‘No Rad’ Blancpain Fifty Fathoms

Bundeswehr-Blancpain-No-Rad-Fifty-Fathoms

I’ve pondered many times if beginner’s luck is universal. We’ve all seen it, but how, why? Think in the watchmaking context. Even if you try to consciously separate the fallacy collectors have to preference the earliest iterations of any watch, it still holds. There’s a magic about tabula rasa thinking, as long as you exclude…

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Bundeswehr-Issued IWC Porsche Design Ocean 2000

IWC-Bundeswehr-Ocean-2000

When I say integrated sports watch, you almost certainly imagine a RO, Nautilus, or Overseas. You almost certainly do not imagine a Laureato, Octo Finissimo (despite it holding all the records today), or this: an imaginative 1980s diver with a full integrated titanium bracelet issued to Bundeswehr combat dive units known as Kampfschwimmers. This is…

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