Rolex Deep Sea Special

Sold in the high CHF1,058,500 Rolex Deep Sea Special represents the brand’s interest for diving. Behind this watch was the brilliant Swiss oceanography and engineer Professor Piccard where magic happened. It’s special dome glass was developed and fitted to a dense 42mm x 62mm case, with thick caseback plate and crystal ball-like front plexi. 

Known by most dive watch nerds, this special timepiece is capable of surviving the trip to the bottom of the ocean, the Deep Sea Special was Rolex’s testbed for creating watches to withstand extreme pressure. This project started in 1953 resulting in the progressive development of a series of prototypes based on how the watches performed at increasing depths. 

The main goal was to make a watch that could actually travel to the bottom of the ocean, now that’s easier said than done, since humans can't simply dive that deep or really anywhere close. Rolex being well Rolex, found a submarine and strapped the watch on the outside of the sub and sent their two men down to the depth of the ocean, but it did not stop there. Diving down took several if not multiple times based on several stages of depth over a window of time from 1953-1960.