Tudor’s introduction of dive watches into their catalogs in the mid 1950’s followed an explosion of interest in diving following WWII. WWII made the super powers of the world understand the significant role that divers could play in their war efforts. The opportunity to have elite divers target, approach, and depart key enemy locations without ever being detected gave forces an element of surprise, an invaluable upper hand.

The 1940’s through the early 1950’s saw great progress in the development of dive watches, a critical tool for divers, progress we see in most dive watches to the present day. At the same time, development of the other critical tools, and SCUBA in particular, required for divers was moving very quickly and what was initially an almost exclusively military activity, became very popular and quite commercial.

Rolex and Tudor were present at the beginning of this boom in commercial interest with some exceptional offerings that remain highly collectible to this day. Initially Rolex and Tudor offered a few references with no crown guards which led to more robust references with no crown guards and higher depth ratings (see Lot 25 for a Tudor 7924 offered in this sale for the earliest big crown Tudor), which ultimately led to a family of watches born in late 1959 with crown guards, the characteristics of which are still present in their catalogs today.

One of the most iconic and recognizable Tudor references in the years that followed the early development is the Tudor Submariner with “snowflake” hands, or more specifically, “snowflake” hour and sweep hands, as collectors call them. There are theories about who may have influenced the development of the snowflake hands, all interesting, though it’s clear that the extra and very specific placement of the luminous material in these new hands made it easier for a diver to immediately understand, in murky water or at night, which hand was the minute hand and which hand was the hour hand; a significant detail when you’ve employed your rotating bezel to keep track of elapsed time underwater in conjunction with your minute hand.

The present watch is Tudor reference 94010, made in the late 1970’s, and exhibiting, among other things, the iconic “snowflake” hands. This particular example, consigned by a friend of the original owner, has to be one of the finest examples of the reference ever to come to market. The watch is not only incredibly crisp with its original bevels intact, demonstrating factory finishing at its finest, but it offers connoisseurs the rare opportunity to understand the original proportions of the case. And, as if a perfectly crisp watch with a flawless deep black dial and original hands with wonderful creamy patina were not enough, this watch also exhibits the rarest configuration of snowflake hands coupled with a dial which has large round markers instead of the most commonly seen square markers. So seldom is this configuration seen that it could cause some collectors to wonder about the combination. In fact, a handful of these watches with this configuration have been found, almost all from members of the Canadian Military, and there are a handful of well written and well documents stories available online from highly respected members of the community. Because a handful of watches with this configuration have come from members of the Canadian Military, it’s been called the “Canadian Milsub” though we have every reason to believe that this was not exclusively a military dial and hand configuration, but rather a very practical configuration made in very limited numbers.

Because of the extraordinary quality and incredible rarity of the dial and hand combination, which is validated by the serial of the watch, this particular Tudor 94010 would make an extraordinary addition to any collection.