Posts Tagged ‘Military’
Royal Navy Clearance Diver 116660 Rolex Sea-Dweller Deepsea
At this point, you might be asking why Hairspring is talking about a modern Deepsea. Well, flip it over, and you’ll find this is not like any other modern Rolex you’re likely to have handled. Milsubs don’t really exist today in the traditional, issued sense. Today, Tudor will make what we now call ‘Unit Watches’…
Read MoreFAP 6263 Rolex Daytona
This is one of those exceptions we love here where the caseback holds more interest than the dial. Say what you will about the Peruvian Air Force (Fuerza Aérea del Perú or FAP), their military had style. FAP military engravings on provenance cover basically all the best professional 60s offerings. Where the UK military made…
Read MoreUAE Ministry of Defence 1675 Rolex GMT-Master
Middle Eastern signatures are one thing, but when you see a polychromatic painting of a Quraysh Hawk in enamel, it’s always an occasion. Made for the emir of Dubai Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, examples are far less in number than say an Oman Khanjar dial. More importantly, for us Rolex lovers, they’re also more…
Read MoreRoyal Navy Issued Precista RN82 Automatic
The British MOD realized Submariners were getting far too expensive way before the rest of us. In 1979, the MOD and Royal Navy stopped using Rolex and put out a call for British watchmakers to answer, a criteria defining what would be the Milsub’s replacement. CWC won the contract. However, CWC lost the contract only…
Read MoreBundeswehr 3501 IWC Porsche Design 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…
Read MoreUS Navy Tornek Rayville TR-900
This is about as special as a Fifty Fathoms gets, mostly because it technically isn’t one. Tornek Rayville was (is?) a company created in the imaginative American spirit of creatively avoiding laws, to get around the US Navy’s ‘Buy America Act’ in 1933. That put Blancpain’s Fifty Fathoms well out of consideration for the US…
Read More‘3H Bund’ Blancpain 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,…
Read MoreMk1 Enicar Sherpa Jet GMT
A small but vocal section of the vintage watch collecting community has for years tried to make the case that Enicar’s sport watches from the 1960s and 1970s measure up to their counterparts from Rolex and Omega. This Sherpa Jet can and should be Exhibit A in their case. This reference 126/002, circa 1964, was…
Read MoreFAP 6263 Rolex Daytona
You should always read the caseback, but also know what you’re looking at. There’s the famous story where Dr Jim Norton, driver of the Porsche Cayman team which won the GX Class at the 2013 24 Hours of Daytona, brought his Daytona to a Tampa jeweler to be told it was ‘likely’ a fake because…
Read MoreIDF-Issued 7928 Tudor Submariner
The military Tudor rabbit hole goes deeper than you think. You will be familiar with the snowflake-handed 9401/0 Marine Nationale which has recently seen new life via the FXD. But Tudor’s military history extends far beyond France. South Africa issued its Navy divers a small run of ref. 7016 subs. There are US Naval 7928s…
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