IWC

Gone, but not forgotten. I got it in the early 2000's. Sold it 5 or 6 years later, but it was quite a watch. Always loved the idea of a mechanical depth gauge in a wrist watch, even if I didn't really have the need of it. 

Nobody makes watches like this anymore.  No more super niche technical watches anymore.  They've all become "luxury objets d'art" and no longer "tools" for specialists.

As a president of a watch company - I would think, this watch is going to cost a lot to develop. Development costs in the past 20 years (since the IWC mentioned above was made) have definitely gone up A LOT. And thus, the small volumes would mean that this watch would be less profitable than if the watch brand had just sold a "normal" variant. So, I understand what the brands are thinking - but at the end of the day... Do something to wow the customer!

I've got so many ideas - some rather elaborate - that serve really niche markets.

Fully agree that there’s a lot less of this experimentation and complication exploration nowadays than back then. Unfortunately 🤷🏻‍♂️

Not sure what happened, after my last dive I checked and everything was screwd down, or maybe it was a valve failure… but my case flooded with sea water, and this is what happened:

It’s so light, just even picking it up now to shoot this picture was a true joy!

You should have included a trigger warning before that picture. My whole day is ruined now!

I owned it on 2 separate occassions. Possibly my favourite IWC.

Blancpain with a depth gauge. Oris has one with a very simple system.

I enjoy wearing these two followers, but they are pretenders to the throne. The Deep One is the true king!