admin If you don’t live in any of the cities that stock the Blancpain x Swatch collaboration, you can still shop the first drop—at a hefty markup—on eBay, StockX, or Chrono24.
Before the arrival of the Moonswatch, there were cheap watches and there were luxury watches, and the line between them was as impermeable as the case of a Rolex DeepSea. But thanks to the unprecedented success of the Omega x Swatch Speedmaster Moonswatch, a $270 plastic quartz ticker styled after the first watch worn on the moon, we have officially entered a new epoch of timekeeping—the “vibes era,” as GQ’s Cam Wolf recently dubbed it.
Following its first drop on Saturday, the ultra-vibey new Blancpain x Swatch Bioceramic Scuba Fifty Fathoms collection, complete with Swatch’s SISTEM51 automatic movement, is here to further blur the line between rare, old-school, expensive watches, and fun, funky, attainable ones.
In the spirit of the Moonswatch, Swatch’s latest banger remixes the first modern dive watch, the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms, in an array of sprightly hues, each dedicated to one of the world’s five oceans and paired with a different species of colorful sea slug called a nudibranch. As with the Moonswatch, the early reactions to the Blancpain x Swatch (SwatchPain? BlancSwatch? Swifty Fathoms?) were mixed, to put it mildly.
While comment sections were full of hot takes, diehard Blancpain fans seem to be mostly happy with the launch, which spotlights Blancpain’s important role in the history of dive watches and promises to attract more folks to the pleasures of watch collecting in general. Also, a lot of people around the world now know what a nudibranch is, and that can’t possibly be a bad thing.
As with the launch of the Moonswatch, Blancpain x Swatch is available exclusively in-person at Swatch boutiques around the world including locations in Las Vegas, NYC, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Orlando, and Honolulu. The decision to limit the model to in-person sales was probably the biggest sticking point about the Moonswatch in general, as it resulted in near-riots outside Swatch stores and exorbitant prices on the gray market for many months afterwards. Fortunately, Swatch boutiques appear to have been better prepared for the crowds this time, and the rollout went off without the need for riot police.
Since this isn’t a limited release, anyone who lives near a Swatch boutique (and didn’t fancy lining up for hours over the weekend) can try their luck copping one at retail in the coming days and weeks, when supplt is expected to be replenished. For everyone else, the gray market is full of sellers who’ll happily charge a premium (currently ranging from double to triple the $400 retail price) to express-ship you your model of choice. Here’s where to find one right now.
