Rolex

Comex (Compagnie Maritime d'Expertise) was founded in 1961, in Marseille, at a time when industrial deep-sea diving did not yet exist. Very soon, however, Comex promoted new technology and became a pioneer in deep sea diving operations for the offshore oil industry. Today, Comex has over 2000 employees and 800 divers located all over the world. At the end of the 1960s, Comex asked Rolex to create a watch that could sustain high pressure in deep waters as the compressed and saturated air began causing a built-up of pressure in the standard Submariner cases destroying its mechanism. Rolex rapidly came up with a patented solution by installing a one-way pressure relief valve on the side of the watch case, beside the 9 o'clock position, that allowed the release of helium from the case. At first, the gas escape valve was featured on special Reference 5513 models, however, the model was re-named Reference 5514.

Despite the partnership spanning a lengthy 27 years from 1970 to 1997 and seeing the release of 9 watches—references 5513, 5514, 1665, 1680, 16660, 16800, 16610, 168000, 16600—in both Submariner and Sea-Dweller series, Rolex-COMEX watches were produced in an extremely limited quantity. Furthermore, these already-limited watches had such a narrow, specific focus for underwater exploration that they were never sold publicly. And, having undergone extensive testing in highly extreme conditions, the small handful of watches were damaged over time. Thus, to have one’s hands on a COMEX watch is an utmost rarity.