Rare 1985 CWC Royal Navy Divers Watch

CWC won the contract to supply an automatic dive watch to replace the Rolex milsub in 1980, and in 1980 and 1981 they supplied watches with a dial similar to the Omega Seamaster 300 from the 1960s and an acrylic bezel insert.   In 1983, the watch was changed to a quartz movement and was issued sporadically up until 2000, with most of the watches being issued during the 1990s.  The case was similar to the Monnin case popularised by the Heuer reference 844 from the late 1970s, although with some small variations across the years.  The automatic dive watch NSN ends 9237697, and the quartz dive watch NSN ends 7573314.

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1983, 1985 and 1986 – Dial has new CWC logo, larger circled T above the hands and QUARTZ below the hands. Fitted with an ETA 555.115 1J quartz movement, although 555.112 is often seen as well.  The bezel insert on the 1983 watch is clearly luminous with greenish numerals, but changes style for the 1985 and 1986 watches to a more orange colour, and whilst some appear to be luminous, many are not.  This may be due to poor or inconsistent application of lume or a mixed batch of bezel inserts.  Approximately 850 watches were issued across the three years (400, 350 and 100 respectively), with serial numbers sequential across the years.  

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The watch began to be replaced in the early 2000s with the SBS watch, which became the standard issue of dive watch for anyone in the British military; although the RN watches continued in use for some years, when the RN watches were returned to stores or were broken, a new SBS was issued instead.

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In all, over the 20 years between 1980 and 2000, CWC supplied probably around 3,000 dive watches to the Royal Navy.

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Above taken from the excellent CWC Addict Website.

As you can see from the excellent article above, there were not many of these Divers were issued at all, with only 350 in 1985. The Interest in CWC Issued Watches, I have found to be growing at a supersonic rate and these early models are so seldom seen these days as they are mainly all in your serious Collectors Collection. 

This represents a fantastic opportunity and investment.

View this Rare Diver in a video: here 

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The Specs