Ollech & Wajs Recreates the Traditional Caribbean 1000 Diver

Ever since people started exploring the ocean’s depths, watch firms have been creating timepieces able to withstanding the pressures of SCUBA diving. Within the Fifties and 60s, firms like Blancpain, Rolex, and Omega raced to create watches with the best water resistance. Nonetheless, a small collaborative model outdid all of them with a watch able to reaching a depth of 1000 meters. It took Rolex nicely into the subsequent decade earlier than they made a watch that would transcend that. A kind of collaborators was Ollech & Wajs, and the legendary timepiece was named the Caribbean 1000.

Roughly thirty years later, when the web was nonetheless in its early phases, in the event you had been looking the online for dive watches, there’s a very good likelihood you got here throughout New Outdated Inventory (NOS) Caribbean 1000 watches by Ollech & Wajs or Jenny. In its heyday, O&W produced practically 10,000 watches per 12 months. There have been nonetheless fairly just a few unused watches accessible, and collectors had been thrilled to have entry to them. Regardless of barely surviving the quartz disaster of the Seventies, Albert Wajs remained in cost till 2017, when the model was bought to Charles Le Menestrel. Since then, the model has been revived with reimagined fashions from the previous, such because the Caribbean.

To have a good time its sixtieth anniversary, O&W is launching essentially the most genuine copy of the unique Caribbean 1000 thus far, the C-1000 A. From its brief, triangle-shaped lugs, affectionately known as ‘Vampire fangs’ by collectors, to its slender 12-hour bezel, which is bidirectional and options the identical 20-minute diver’s scale as on the unique. It appears and feels the half. The scale are additionally practically an identical, with a diameter of 39.5mm (the unique was 39mm) and a thickness of 15.8mm, which isn’t too unhealthy contemplating it’s water resistant to 1000 meters. It even has a equally tall double-domed crystal now in sapphire glass.

The motion is the place issues get attention-grabbing. Over time, one motion made its manner into most of O&W’s watches: the ETA2824 automated caliber. Sadly, the unhealthy information is that ETA is reluctant to offer these actions to firms outdoors of the Swatch Group. Nonetheless, some excellent news is that O&W nonetheless had 56 new previous inventory ETA 2824-2 actions readily available. So, the primary 56 examples of the C-1000 A might be numbered editions and home this venerable caliber. All subsequent timepieces will function the Soprod Newton Precision P092 motion. This motion has a full stability bridge and a 44-hour energy reserve. It’s regulated in 5 positions to take care of an accuracy of inside +/- 5 seconds per day.

The Ollech & Wajs C-1000 A comes on a 20 mm, yellow nylon one-piece band, made in Nice Britain, hand-finished in Switzerland, with two brushed stainless-steel keepers and a pin buckle, signed ‘OWZ 1956’. You may also get it on a 20 mm rubber strap, which options an embossed centimeters/inches scale, morse code, and metric conversion desk. It additionally comes with the identical keepers and buckle. You actually have a selection of two stainless-steel bracelets: their S mannequin, which is a beads-of-rice model with a double-deployant clasp, or their M mannequin, which is a 20mm brushed mesh bracelet with bolstered ends and an OW-engraved pin buckle.

The C-1000 A begins at $2,188.93 after foreign money conversion. To order one of many 56 Numbered Editions, e mail [email protected] along with your full title and make contact with particulars. The watch might be accessible for buy on the finish of August, and deliveries will begin in early October. Ollech & Wajs