Affordable Vintage: O&W Caribbean 1000

As you well know, there are tons and tons of vintage divers out there, something for everyone’s taste. With that said, there are some that stand out from the crowd a bit, and the Ollech and Wajs Caribbean 1000 is one of them. Ollech and Wajs (O&W) made a plethora of great divers and chronographs in their heyday in the sixties and seventies, but by far the most desirable is the Caribbean 1000. O&W teamed up with the Jenny Watch company and used their reference 702 case for this model. Jenny made several cases that were branded with a variety of different makes just like the EPSA Super Compressor and Squale case makers. The O&W Caribbean was only made for a few short years during the mid to late 1960’s. The Jenny reference 702 case housed many other brands like Jaquet Droz, Haste deLuxe, Philip and Jenny themselves to name a few.

The Jenny 702 is a monobloc (one piece, front loading) steel case measuring 40mm wide by 45mm long with a thickness of 16mm and 20mm lugs. 40mm sits right smack in the sweet spot for a vintage diver for me, and this watch wears so beautifully on the wrist. The lugs are unique in that they are angled inwards, the space between them narrowing as they progress towards the case, giving them a distinctive fang-like look.

Being a monobloc case, the dial and movement are accessed through the crystal. After the bezel is removed, there is a threaded ring that holds the crystal in place. Not having a removable caseback leaves one less seal to fail during diving, although it does make for a pain to service! The bezel is a real beauty, steel with an inlaid acrylic insert with numbers and triangle makers under the acrylic. There were both 12 hour and 60 minute versions available on the Caribbean 1000. The earlier versions of the bezel had flat triangles, while the later variations had 3D triangles.