For this week’s “Collector’s Catalog”, which will also be the first Collector’s Catalog that I publish, I think I may have found the best piece to start it off with. And as you can see by the title it’s a very special dive watch. The first watch I bought for myself when I was 12 was actually a dive watch. It was a solar-powered Casio dive watch with a rubber strap, and a striking ocean blue dial and bezel, which I thought looked really cool at that time.
Now this particular dive watch I actually wasn’t really looking for. I was just scrolling my Chrono24 suggested feed, which contains mostly neo-vintage watches from the ‘90s and early 2000s — when the IWC Porsche Design Ocean 2000 popped up and stopped me mid-swipe. Of course I’d come across the watch occasionally before and knew it existed, but it had never really registered properly. It was one of those pieces that lives at the back of your mind until something puts it back in front of you. Its design is unmistakably Porsche Design: a titanium dive watch with an integrated bracelet, minimalist to the point of austerity, but sophisticated with it. And what makes it really special is that it’s water resistant up to 200 bar, 2,000 meters. No that’s not a typo, you’re reading that correctly. 2,000 meters! That’s actually insane. I’ve been an IWC admirer for a while, mostly through the Gerald Genta-designed Ingenieur, but this was a different side of the brand I hadn’t really looked into before. So with the launch of “Collector’s Catalog” now was the perfect time to start digging. Or diving in, rather — seemed fitting.
A Collaboration Born Out of Necessity, Not Luxury
The Ocean 2000 came out of the IWC and Porsche Design partnership that ran from 1978 into the late 1990s. A collaboration that, by some accounts, accounted for roughly a fifth of IWC’s total sales at its peak. Those are impressive numbers for a brand better known today for grand complications, and it says a lot about the position IWC was in at that time: recovering from the quartz crisis, with a strong Swiss franc squeezing exports, and looking for a design partner who could make something genuinely new rather than genuinely luxurious. That partner turned out to be Ferdinand Alexander Porsche who was the grandson of the car designer, and the man behind Porsche Design itself.
The Ocean 2000 was developed with military use in mind, reportedly for West German Navy divers, which is also where the collectible BUND variants (orange minute hand, black anodized bezel, nylon strap) come from. The civil version arrived in 1983.
Titanium Wasn’t a Style Choice, It Was the Whole Point
At a time when titanium cases were still a novelty in watchmaking, the Ocean 2000 used it out of necessity. Titanium was light enough for a compact 42mm case to disappear on the wrist, hard-wearing enough to function as a proper tool-watch and use for actual diving. The design language is the same restrained, function-first vocabulary Porsche Design applied across their whole collection. Titanium-grey cases, black dials, and a single accent color, what else do you really need right? The bezel is held by four small screws and shipped with its own miniature screwdriver, so it could be removed and cleaned. A rather odd, but charming at the same time, piece of over-engineering for a tool watch.
The Depth Rating That Embarrassed the Competition
The number that got me is also the number that got collectors at the time: 2,000 meters, achieved through a titanium case and bracelet, layered gaskets, and a triple-sealed crown. For comparison, that’s well beyond what Rolex’s Sea-Dweller or Seiko’s professional divers were rated for in the same era. Reportedly, the case was pressure-tested even further, to around 3,200 meters. A smaller, simpler sibling, the Ocean 500, followed in 1987 with a 34mm case, which would actually be a better fit for me given my own small wrists. So the Ocean 500 might honestly be the smarter buy for me, and it’s also the cheaper option.
Which is exactly the reason why this one’s going in my catalog. It’s a watch that did something genuinely new — not for a marketing headline, but because a navy diver actually needed it to work at depth. A watch influencer/personality that I follow (and probably most of you know as well), Justin Hast, recently pointed out how much it resembles the H. Moser & Cie. Streamliner, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Both the Ocean 2000 and the Ocean 500 are rare enough now that they’re gone from Chrono24 before I can even click through. However I will keep an eye out for the Ocean 500 specifically, wrist size and all. If any of you has one sitting in a drawer or on your wrist, I’d love to hear how it wears.