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Blancpain reproduces a 1968 Bathyscaphe for the model's 70th, at 37.40mm

Seventy years after the Bathyscaphe arrived as the civilian Fifty Fathoms, Blancpain has copied one specific watch from 1968: 37.40mm across, 10.60mm deep, glass box crystal, and 300 numbered pieces.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 5 min read · 22 August 2026

• Blancpain marks seventy years of the Bathyscaphe with a close reproduction of a single 1968 watch, built around a slim modern automatic calibre.
• The steel case measures 37.40mm across and 10.60mm deep, with a glass box crystal and a bezel insert narrower than today's Bathyscaphe models.
• Limited to 300 numbered pieces, it lists at A$25,100, US$18,300, £14,000 and CHF 13,800, the figure varying by choice of clasp.

If you did the sum back in 2023, when the Fifty Fathoms turned seventy, you already knew whose turn this year was. The Bathyscaphe landed in 1956, three years behind the watch that made Blancpain's name, and it has spent most of the seven decades since as the sensible sibling, the one that went under a cuff while the big one went under water. So an anniversary piece was always coming. What I did not expect was that Blancpain would aim it at a single year, and a single watch, and then build the case around the movement rather than the other way about. This is the Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe 70th Anniversary Limited Edition.

Blancpain picked one watch from 1968 and copied it

There is a lazy way to do a heritage release, which is to pick a decade, borrow a font and call it a tribute. Blancpain has not done that. It went to one Bathyscaphe from 1968 and reproduced it as closely as current manufacturing allows, and the brand's argument for that year is that the watch held everything the model was supposed to be in one place: balanced proportions, genuine dive function, and no decoration doing a job the shape was already doing.

The result is 37.40mm across and 10.60mm deep. The second of those numbers is the one to sit with, because a watch carrying a rotating bezel and thirty bar of water resistance does not usually get anywhere near it. Blancpain says the case was developed around the calibre rather than adapted to fit it afterwards, and the slim case middle is where that shows. On paper it is a ratio. On a wrist it is the difference between a watch that perches on your arm and one that disappears under a shirt sleeve without an argument.

Thirty bar means 300 metres, incidentally, which on a watch this handsome will mostly be tested by rain.

The bezel carries on past where you expect it to stop

Look closely at where the bezel meets the crystal. The steel bezel does not stop at its own edge, it continues into a ring at the base of the glass box crystal, an architectural detail taken straight off the 1968 watch and revived specifically for this piece. The insert sitting inside it is narrower than the ones fitted to Blancpain's current Bathyscaphe models, which is precisely why the dial has so much room to breathe. Everything here is doing period work.

One thing has deliberately not been reproduced. The original insert was hesalite, and this one is black ceramic with lacquered numerals, which is the single place where fidelity has been traded for something a wearer will actually feel over twenty years of desk knocks. It is the right trade, and Blancpain has been open about making it.

Meteor grey, and lume mixed to look like it has already aged

The dial is a sunburst finished in what Blancpain calls meteor grey, and in the brand's own close-ups it behaves like the inside of an oyster shell, near silver where the light lands and going almost brown at the rim as you tilt it away. Baton hands and applied baton markers carry Super-LumiNova mixed in a vintage tone, warm enough to read as material that has spent decades yellowing rather than material applied last month. The logo is the mid-century Blancpain script, not the modern one.

Turn it over and the calibre 1150 is on display through sapphire: 28 jewels, 210 components, 3.25mm thick and beating at 3Hz. Blancpain quotes 100 hours, and the honest consequence of that figure is not anything to do with weekends. It is that a 37mm dress diver is going to be somebody's second or third watch, and 100 hours is roughly the point where keeping a rotation stops being a chore and starts being invisible. The balance spring is silicon, so the movement is indifferent to the magnets in a laptop lid, and it is one of Blancpain's secured designs, built so that setting it carelessly does not turn into a service bill.

The caseback earns its space too. Fifty Fathoms and 70th Anniversary are engraved around the sapphire, and each watch is numbered out of 300 on the back itself rather than tucked away on a lug where nobody would find it.

Eighteen millimetres, and the one thing I would change

The strap is hand-stitched chocolate calf, 18mm between the horns, chosen for leather that will go blotchy and darker rather than stay showroom-neat. Eighteen millimetres is proportionally correct on a case this size and mildly annoying in practice, because the good aftermarket strap makers thin out considerably below 20mm. That is a small grumble about a watch I otherwise think has been judged unusually well.

The date is where I keep changing my mind. A reproduction this careful could have left the aperture off, and the dial at three o'clock would be cleaner for it. Then again the 1968 watch had a date, so deleting it would have been the modern flourish, not keeping it. I have argued myself round to the aperture staying. I still think it is the weakest thing on the dial, and I suspect I will still think that in a year.

What this release actually argues is that Blancpain has worked out which part of its own history is worth selling. Not the depth rating, which almost nobody buying this will use. The fact that a serious diver's watch once fitted a normal wrist, and that it took the brand seventy years to admit it was the best idea it ever had.

Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe 70th Anniversary Limited Edition pricing and availability

The Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe 70th Anniversary Limited Edition, reference 5903-1110-063A, is limited to 300 numbered pieces and sold through Blancpain boutiques and authorised points of sale. It lists at A$25,100, US$18,300, £14,000 and CHF 13,800, and Blancpain notes on the product page that the figure varies according to whether the strap is fitted with a pin buckle or a folding clasp. Blancpain announced the watch on 20 August 2026.