Kicking off October (and starting a definite trend for the month) with another wonderful consignment watch: a super cool and chunky 1970s Aquastar Benthos 500 diver’s chronograph. This is a big watch at about 43mm wide without crown and 14mm thick and it features a very unique purpose built minute counter complication: once the pusher at “4” is depressed, the big orange hand begins a 60-minute journey around the dial (to tell the wearer how long he’s been underwater, for example). And while it can be reset back to zero with another click of the pusher it will not stop counting until it has made it all the way back to “12”. Unlike most chronographs, the straight white sweep seconds hand is just that, a constant seconds that is always running and unconnected to the minute counter feature. The highly unusual movement is an A. Schild caliber 1902/03 that seems to have been made and modified exclusively for the diver-specific Aquastar Benthos line, as I’ve not seen this strange type of complication in any other watches.
The whole watch is really pretty scarce, in fact, and to find it in this sort of unpolished and simply beautiful original condition is no easy task. Personally, while it’s not inexpensive I feel like it’s actually undervalued for as uncommon and special as this watch is. Best of all, if you’ve got the swagger to pull this bad boy off you’re unlikely to see it on anyone else’s wrist. The Aquastar Benthos 500 is a rare classic from the heyday of mechanical dive watches and it’s for the serious enthusiast knows the importance of the specially designed tool he’s got on his wrist.
