Blancpain is marking 70 years of one of its most enduring dive watches with a reissue of a vintage favorite — vintage sizing included.
The Swiss watchmaker launched the Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe in 1956 as the more relaxed, everyday counterpart to the Fifty Fathoms, the professional-grade diving instrument Blancpain had introduced three years earlier. The Bathyscaphe name itself was registered even earlier, in 1953, by then-CEO Jean-Jacques Fiechter (who was apparently an avid diver).
For the 70th anniversary, Blancpain repro’d a model from 1968, keeping the original 37.4mm dimensions intact rather than scaling the watch up to modern sizing.
The drop comes with a calfskin strap in warm chocolate leather, with a sunburst dial and indexes in vintage-toned Super-LumiNova, along with an arrow-tipped seconds hand. Inside, they’ve got Blancpain’s in-house automatic caliber 1150; it comes with a 100-hour power reserve.
The oldest name in watchmaking?
Most dive watches on the market now run 40mm and up, so going with a 37.4mm case here is a real statement; it’s the smallest watch in Blancpain’s current Bathyscaphe lineup. 2.6mm might not seem like much, but on the wrist, it’s no joke.
Blancpain has leaned hard into its own history in 2026, marking 40 years of its chef partnerships program alongside this Bathyscaphe anniversary, drawing on a company narrative that stretches back to 1735, when Jehan-Jacques Blancpain first registered as a watchmaker in the Swiss village of Villeret.
That claim is cool, but it’s a bit shakier than it sounds. The modern Blancpain was rebuilt from nothing in 1982, after the original company folded during the quartz crisis and was fully absorbed into Omega. Jean-Claude Biver and Jacques Piguet bought just the name for the price of a car, with no factory, no staff, and no real link to Villeret beyond the paperwork.
A decade later, Biver sold the rebuilt brand to Swatch Group for roughly 60 million francs, and it’s been there ever since, run today by Marc A. Hayek.
Where to buy it
The Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe 70th Anniversary Limited Edition is available now through Blancpain boutiques, priced at $18,300; availability is limited to 300 pieces, so get a move on if you’ve got twenty grand burning a hole in your pocket.
