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BLANCPAIN Vintage Fifty Fathoms 34mm Stainless Steel Radium Dial Bj-1953 Very Rare

We are honoured to present an exceptionally early and rare example of what is widely considered the archetype of the modern dive watch: a Blancpain Fifty Fathoms from the model's very first year of production, 1953. Developed at the request of Captain Robert "Bob" Maloubier and Lieutenant Claude Riffaud, founders of the French Combat Swimmers unit, under the direction of then-Blancpain CEO Jean-Jacques Fiechter, the Fifty Fathoms was the watch that first defined the vocabulary of the professional diver's watch — a unidirectional rotating bezel to time a dive, exceptional water resistance, and, remarkably for its time, an automatic movement.

Presented in a compact 34mm stainless steel case, this early example carries the original radium-lumed dial and hands that gave the Fifty Fathoms its unmistakable glow underwater in the years before the dangers of radium were widely understood — a feature that today places it firmly among the most historically significant executions of the reference, predating the tritium and later "No Radiations" dials that would follow through the 1960s.

The dial retains the honest, decades-old patina so prized by collectors of the earliest "Golden Era" Blancpain divers, its radium markers having taken on the warm honey tone that only seventy years of natural aging can produce. The bezel and case bear the simple, purposeful design that Blancpain, Rolex, and a handful of other pioneering houses established in 1953 as the founding template of the modern dive watch — a template every diver's watch since has, in one way or another, followed.

Owning a first-year Fifty Fathoms means owning a genuine piece of watchmaking history: the watch that accompanied French Navy combat divers, was later worn by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his team during the filming of the Academy Award-winning The Silent World, and went on to define an entire category of horology. Examples from 1953 in this configuration are seldom seen on the market and represent a rare opportunity for the serious vintage diver collector.

"To hold a 1953 Fifty Fathoms is to hold the watch that invented the modern dive watch — before Submariner, before Seamaster, there was this."

 
Comes with a one year warranty through our watch lab.

- We buy watches since 1991. -

-- All offered watches are on stock in our store.--

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