PAM 341 Radiomir Egiziano and Panerai BHB

[SubKing]

Originally Posted by bcacncnc

I saw one in the flesh the other day... and it looks ridiculously large by "normal" standards. But who knows. Maybe it becomes the new "norm" in a few years time.

the size of this watch will never become normal.. it is not a fashion statement by any means...

the size of this watch will never become normal.. it is not a fashion statement but just a pure tool watch.
its a historical piece. back in the 50's the egyptian navy paid panerai to design 100 watches for them to their military specs. all of the plans were destroyed because back then it was a top secret commission. only 7 watches are known to still exist to date. panerai owns 2 of those 7. one says radiomir on the dial and the other says luminor. so panerai made 50 with luminor material to make the dial glow and made 50 with radiomir material to make the dial glow. radiomir was very toxic and dangerous but it glowed longer and brighter than the luminor model... the navy would wear these as true tool watches. on their left they would wear huge meter gauges or compasses made by panerai and on the right they wore this "big egiziano" to keep track of time while submerged, they were also all fitted with an angeles 8 day power reserve. back then the dive suits were so big and bulky, their watches had to be very large as they were made for only one purpose. diving was very difficult back then and their navy only had around 100 trained divers.


when panerai re created this watch they didn't have any blue prints in their archives being they had to destroy all documents so the watch could not be re created by other company's or information leaks could not occur.. the watch would stay top secret.. so even with our current technology today, it still took panerai few years of studying to re create this watch by taking the original apart and reproducing piece by piece and screw by screw"




originals today are worth 150k up to 350k depending on the condition and the type of dial.

i knew very little about this watch before i purchased it, i did several searches on the net to find out more about these big egiziano panerai watches. i found really nothing. the only thing i found is that they were made for the egyptian navey... it wasn't until i received mine that i knew the whole story about it. panerai included a very nice book with pictures telling all about the watch. from time to time you will see the compases on the net and other tools panerai used to make..


it is a real piece of history and not a fashion statement by any means.
just thought you all would like to hear that story.