Blancpain

Blancpain have released a press information on the 42(!)mm Fifty Fathoms 70th Anniversary this morning.





The watch features a polished stainless steel case and is powered by caliber 1315.

Like with the 2003 FF 50th Anniversary, it is a limited edition in three series (EMEA, Asia Pacific, America), this time with 70 pieces each.

The watch shall be available for pre-order on the Blancpain website later this month.

Cheers
Henrik

For the rest of us they can make the regular model without a date

Unfortunately it is a quite miss for me. Date , case , busy dial.
So pity as I had this kne on my 2023 shopping list.

I like the case dimension and the use of the 1315 movement.

Make this a regular production model and I'm in: it's the Fifty Fathoms I've always loved, but in a case size I can wear. But a big 'meh' on the anniversary edition stuff.

This is a total miss. Once again Blancpain focuses on limited production releases. The fact this is not a general release is a huge miss. Very disappointing.

Yes, it would be great if this was a true Tribute piece without a date. Fortunately, I'm not bothered by the date. I'm not a fan of NATO straps, which should be an easy change to a tropic strap. BUT, I just read on another on another site that the lug-to-lug width is 21.5mm??? 😡 So, those that prefer this on the X-71 bracelet will probably be out of luck!😔

I think if one of the other things was fixed, it would be fine:

In a world where it could happen ☺️

I'm glad to see BP held the line on this and continued the 1315 forward, into the new case rather than using a refresh and smaller size as an excuse to also slip in a cheapened movement, something that's become all too common.

As for the new size, 45 was fine, 42 is nice too, the big news is they shaved over 1mm off the thickness of the case. Imho this was overdue, once they moved to silicon and ditched the iron plate, there was clearly room to get skinnier.

If there's one thing though that drives me nuts is the extreme level of lug width absurdity. Blancpain must be making all their money on straps to keep giving us odd sized lug widths, the Apple lightning cables of the watch world...

This 70th looks like a great release, I like the new size, but will keep holding out hope for a no date titanium model....

Hard pass for me. Thank you Blancpain for reducing my options.

1.
I have to see it in the flesh for my final judgement.
2.
It's really a shame, I would have expected more creativity and „pep“ for the 70th anniversary.
3.
I'm not a big „date-window-at-the-4:30-position-hater“ because I think the date is nicely integrated here (in general, I find this to be a poorer solution for the Bathyscaphe, since there the date window extends beyond the indices).
However, it would have been nice, if BP had omitted the date for this model.
4.
The 1315 is a fantastic movement, but I would have expected an additional innovation.
5.
The 42mm is nice, but I don't have a problem with the 45mm either.
6.
The reference to the 70th anniversary on both the front and back is redundant and therefore too much.
7.
The constant artificial limitation of watches without any need gets on my nerves.

It's perplexing that BP ignores us. But that's OK. My money will continue to ignore BP.

I think that we and Blancpain could be in a mutually beneficial relationship. Unfortunate that Blancpain hasn't seemed more interested!

At 42mm, hmm I'm thinking. I am not a ff purist so I'm okay with some concessions, but 42mm plus an oversized bezel is likely not the direction I'd go. If I saw a video or good wrist footage. Maybe. By then likely sold.

Excellent!

Movement aside, this is a very low effort release. A copy of the 50th anniversary minus the applied indices plus some generic hands.

Not shown here but I have seen elsewhere that the case flank is stamped Blancpain which has always been a turn off for me within this range.