COMEX Watches

By Guill@ume & Ed Delgado · DRSD.com

COMEX is a French diving company founded in 1961 to explore the depths of the oceans — the NASA of the deep sea.

From 1970 to 1997, COMEX worked closely with Rolex and many of their deep sea divers were issued Rolex Sea-Dwellers as a tool to do their work. Rolex used this as a way to test new watches and to resolve issues raised by COMEX — including decompression divers finding their watches unable to withstand depth. The Helium Escape Valve (HEV) was developed and tested on the 5513 and 5514 (a reference made for COMEX only) before being commercially available in the original Sea-Dweller in 1967.

COMEX watches have also been associated with records and experiments such as the maximum depth of 701 meters or the Hydra experiments, and it is common to see those watches engraved with specifics about the experiments.

      What makes them very collectible is that they were never sold by Authorized Dealers — only issued to divers or officials — and that they were made in extremely low quantities even after all those years with COMEX. They also have special characteristics and unique COMEX serial numbers and engravings in the casebacks which make them very interesting for collectors. They played a big part in the development of the watches that we wear today.
    