Blancpain

SteveG
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I am way out of my depth here,

as is appropriate to the watches under discussion 

I of course haven't seen the subject watches, but this does not prevent me from wanting to contribute a little.  My viewpoint is
distant, perhaps this is good, I am not emotionally wrapped up in Blancpain's current business, but also less relevant, I am not
even remotely a customer for these watches. 

So just a few considerations.  Although I am not a customer, I applaud Blancpain's interest in their own history.  As a brand
resurrected by the amazing JC Biver, much emphasis in the past seems to have been placed upon their (I will call it) mythical 270+
 year history, but with so much ignoring of their intriguing and productive (but horologically simple) involvement with military and
tool watches.  As to the details of exactly which watches they choose to homage, and how faithfully, this is beyond my range.  I
should note that although I personally prefer no-date watches, when one considers how often modern dial designs are intruded
upon by date windows simply because manufactures (seem to) feel the just "have" to provide the date...at least there Are historical
versions of the FF/no Rads with this design:



Now for that modern and affordable and actually dunkable version of these watches, here I will venture...is is realistic to think that
Blancpain is going into the sub-US$1000 beat-this-watch-to-hell business?  Even if they did, would their product be competitive
with those already in this market?

My example is from the very top end of such watches, cusom-configured and finished to my specifications, and assembled from
legitimate quality compnents, but still only about US$650:



My watch resembles this favorite:



And let's not forget that one can still buy a Seiko diver, identical to thousands of really-used-by-soldiers watches for a genuine
pittance.