Swiss replica Breitling conquered the sky with its Chronomat line in the 1940s, and subsequently, with the now iconic Navitmer in the 1950s. Alongside the introduction of the Navitimer, it was time for the company to dive into another exploding area of interest, the ocean. In the 1950s, we started seeing exponential interest from various watchmakers entering the dive watch market. Of course, the big names include the fake Rolex Submariner, Omega Seamaster, Blancpain Fifty Fathoms, JLC Deep Sea Alarm, and so on. But also, many smaller watchmakers, i.e. Enicar, utilized and benefited from the improvement of the water-tight case designs pioneered by EPSA (Ervin Piquerez S.A). To ride this wave, perfect super clone Breitling produced its first official dive watch, the SuperOcean (Ref. 807 Chronograph and Ref. 1004 Time-only) in 1957.
The beauty of the luxury fake Breitling SuperOcean was not just a true dive watch meant to be water-resistant for 200m/600ft, but it also boasted a keen sense of design so it didn’t just blend with the other dive watches that started to flood the market. It was cool and functional at the same time. There’s a hint of cheekiness to the design with the exaggerated hour markers and hands. The luminous portion not only made the copy watch legible underwater, but the large format design with the lume helped the watch stand out more against the black background.
The cheap fake Breitling model Ref. 2005 we have here today was released in 1964, and it is the automatic version of the earlier Ref. 807. It’s big and bold and fitted in a stainless steel case measuring around 42mm. The striking black and white motif with the now creamy patina on the lume makes the watch stunning even from far away. The most interesting feature is the “Slow Motion” chronograph hand. At a quick glance, the Swiss movement copy watch looks like a normal chronograph with a large square luminous tip. But once you start the chronograph, you will immediately notice that something is not quite right. It’s actually a “slow” chronograph hand meaning that it rotates once every 60 minutes instead of 60 seconds. This allows the diver to very easily read the lapsed time of how long they have been underwater. The caveat to this seemingly great idea was that because it’s in “slow motion”, it was difficult to actually know whether the chronograph hand was moving or not. To resolve this issue, they added a window at six. The full yellow circle meant the chronograph was engaged, half yellow circle meant the chronograph was paused, and the full black circle meant the chronograph was disengaged.
We are certain that this high quality replica Breitling was designed to be as functional as it could be underwater, tested numerous times, and released as a serious dive watch. But what I love about this watch the most is that while the watch is considered a rugged tool copy watch for sale, it remains elegant and undeniably charming at the same time. Just like going on any exploration, we all want to be (or should be) fully prepared, but why not do it with style?
