SPD X HGP Diver 200M Automatic

The SPD Edition is our exclusive collaboration with HGP, refined by PDW for the modern field user. SPD Kraken Trident at twelve, signature orange sweep hand, SPD Kraken Trident logo on the caseback. The Monnin case is the same form factor that has been strapped to the wrists of professional divers, military frogmen, and serious sport divers for fifty years. Now it carries the SPD mark. The SPD x HGP Diver 200M Automatic is part of PDW's Special Projects Division, our collaborative line built with watchmakers, knife makers, and tool builders whose standards align with ours. Previous SPD watch collaborations have included the MkII Paradive, the Resco UDT, and the Ares Diver-1 Mission Timer. The HGP collaboration extends that lineage across the Atlantic, bringing one of the most storied dive watch case architectures in European watchmaking into the SPD program.

We love everything about this tool-dive watch. Its design is straightforward, purpose-driven, clean and uncluttered. The SPD x HGP Diver 200M Automatic carries forward what the original HGP did well and removes what fifty years of materials science has made obsolete. Sapphire crystal replaces acrylic. A modern Seiko NH38 non-date automatic movement, hacking seconds, 41-hour power reserve, regulated by HGP's French watchmakers to a tolerance specification tighter than the Seiko factory baseline. Seven layers of Swiss Super-LumiNova on the dial indices. A screw-down crown and screw-down caseback rated to 200 meters / 20 ATM. Assembled by hand in France.

HGP stands for Hommes Grenouilles de Paris, the Frogmen of Paris. From the 1970s through the 1990s, HGP was the Paris dive shop that outfitted individual French Navy Frogmen (Nageurs de Combat) to the city's scuba divers with masks, regulators, knives, and dive watches commissioned from the French and Swiss watchmaking trade. The HGP-signed dial sat on cases produced by Georges Monnin in the Franche-Comté, the same case maker quietly responsible for some of the most recognizable professional diver silhouettes of the 20th century. When the shop closed in the 1990s, the name went dormant. In 2023, HGP returned, rebuilt around the original Monnin case architecture and assembled in France by the team at MNP Solutions Horlogères near Besançon, in the historic cradle of French watchmaking. HGP watches are currently in use by members of the GIGN, French Legionnaires, and other units worldwide.

In the mid-1970s, when Heuer decided to enter the dive watch market without prior experience in waterproof case construction, they outsourced production to a French specialist named Georges Monnin. The case Monnin engineered became one of the most influential dive watch case architectures of the modern era. The same form was adopted under contract by Breitling, Sinn, Aquadive, Zodiac, and HGP, among others. Collectors today refer to it simply as "the Monnin case," one of the few dive watch cases known by its maker's name rather than the brand printed on the dial. What the Monnin case offers is geometry in service of function: a flat, low-profile midcase that wears smaller than its dimensions suggest, protected crown architecture, and lug geometry that distributes load across the wrist without snag points. It was engineered before marketing departments told watchmakers what divers wanted. It was engineered by people who actually built diving equipment for people who actually dove.

The generous 7-layer application of C3 Super-Luminova ensures that the time is legible even in the darkest conditions. Super-LumiNova is a strontium aluminate–based non-radioactive and nontoxic photoluminescent pigments for illuminating markings, typically on watches.

The SPD X HGP Diver 200M Automatic comes with our Titanium-MNPara strap in the signature OD Green w/Orange Tracer colorway and the latest generation of the PDW EWB Compass Kit 2.0. This button sized wrist compass has set the high standard in the industry since its inception and adds a whole other layer of functionality to this tool watch. This versatile combination allows the user to know their time and place.

The SPD X HGP Diver 200M Automatic features a solid stainless steel caseback with the SPD logo mark and wordmark.

The SPD X HGP Diver 200M Automatic is purpose-driven instrument-timer engineered for adventure and exploration. An ideal tool watch for EDC on land or in the the sea. This watch comes complete with the exclusive SPD Ti-MNPara strap in OD Green w/Orange Tracer, EWB Compass Kit 2.0 plus silicone carriers, HGP canvas slip pouch, SPD EDTC thermo-molded zippered case, ASPD microfiber cleaning cloth, presentation-grade kraft drawer gift box, and special edition morale patch.