Blancpain continues its longstanding support of the biennial Only Watch auction of unique timepieces, and the charity that it benefits, with the presentation of a special one-of-a-kind version of its recently introduced, vintage-inspired Fifty Fathoms Barakuda, which is slated to go on the auction block in Geneva with 29 other unique timepieces on November 9th in Geneva. Here’s a closer look.

Like the 500-piece limited-edition watch that was launched at the Swatch Group’s “Time to Move” event this past May, the unique piece takes its aesthetic inspiration from a divers’ watch supplied to the German Bundesmarine in the 1960s in partnership with Barakuda, a company that produced and marketed technical diving equipment. Those historical models, based upon the now-legendary original Fifty Fathoms watch launched in 1953 and adopted by France’s elite military diving units, were notable for their two-tone rectangular hour markers, white-painted fluorescent hands, and a big, white-framed, extra-legible date window at 3 o’clock. The new watch features all of these traits, along with a host of modern upgrades, such as the scratch-resistant sapphire insert in the unidirectional rotating bezel, an element Blancpain introduced back in 2003 in its earliest contemporary revivals of the classic dive watch. The Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Barakuda Only Watch is notable for its light blue Super-LumiNova details.
The stainless steel case measures 40 mm i...