Introducing the Tudor Black Bay Chrono Dark Reference 79360DK

Tudor’s Back – Tudor’s Black…All Black

To mark the Rugby World Cup 2019, Tudor have teamed up with the New Zealand All Blacks to present a watch that will have collectors clamouring. And good luck to them, they’ll need it to snag one of these limited pieces! Introducing the Tudor Black Bay Chrono Dark.

Heritage by Name

In 2010 Tudor unveiled a whole new strategy which debuted with the Heritage watches — inspired by references from the brand’s heavy back catalogue. First out of the traps was the Heritage Chronograph, which was a reinterpreted Home Plate watch and then 2011 heralded the Heritage Advisor. It was in 2012, however, that things got really tasty with the launch of the Black Bay. A watch that seems so prevalent and part of our everyday horological landscape today, was born only seven short years ago!

The familiar rugged Osyter-esque case and iconic snowflake hands are now utilised across a vast number of watches that make up the Black Bay family. Red, Black, Blue, the 58, Chrono, Steel and Gold, Bronze, GMT and so on, all have the familiar DNA that has made Black Bay one of the hottest watches on the market.

When Tudor announced that New Zealand’s national rugby team were joining the family of ambassadors, there was only one watch that was going to come out of the back of the scrum — the Black Bay Dark. Launched in 2016, featuring the in-house calibre MT5602, the Dark was a fully black PVD-coated dive watch with cool red depth rating, red triangle bezel insert and those trademark snowflake hands.

It was the first black PVD watch to officially come out of the Wilsdorf camp. It was the perfect marriage for the All Blacks rugby team. But now, they have their own piece. And as I mentioned before, you’re going to want one.

The Dark Lord

The Black Bay Chrono Dark picks up where the original PVD’d dive watch left off. Created in partnership with the All Blacks, the Black Bay Chrono Dark is a new version of the Black Bay Chrono with recent improvements that we first saw on the Steel and Gold version this year, at Baselworld.

Compared to the first version of the Black Bay chrono, the new models have a two piece bezel (like the early Tudor chronos), a more shallow rehaut which brings the dial nearer the glass (which is a small but visually very obvious tweak) and also a slimmer case, therefore making it wear more like a Daytona than a Big Block. The watch is supplied on a matching black bracelet that is also PVD coated, as are the chrono pushers and winding crown.

Limited Numbers

Read more about the Tudor Pelagos LHD, here.

The big news, especially for collectors, is that this is a limited-edition piece. The only time we have ever seen anything similar to this, was the Pelagos LHD that was individually numbered but not limited.

The Black Bay Chrono Dark is limited to the number of players that have ever been called up by New Zealand to play for their national rugby team, the All Blacks. Since its creation in 1903, up until today there have been 1185 All Blacks players and so that will be the number of Black Bay Chrono Darks made.

But it gets better! Every time a new player gets called up to play, Tudor will produce another Chrono Dark. Conservatively, that could be around six per year. That’s a true limited edition and a first for Tudor or Rolex. The launch of the watch is taking place at a special event to mark the beginning of the Rugby World Cup in Japan this September, at Tudor’s first boutique in Tokyo. What a way to kick off the World Cup!