The Monnin case doesn’t get talked about enough. If you collect CWC watches, you already know the geometry. That flat, low-profile midcase with protected crown architecture and lug geometry that distributes load cleanly across the wrist. What you might not know is that Georges Monnin, the French case maker behind it, was also the guy Heuer turned to in the mid-1970s when they wanted to enter the dive watch market and had no prior experience building waterproof cases. Breitling, Sinn, Aquadive, and Zodiac followed. It’s one of the few dive watch cases collectors know by its maker’s name rather than whatever brand happens to be printed on the dial. Prometheus Design Werx just put it on a $649 watch, and it’s worth paying attention to.
The collaboration is between PDW’s Special Projects Division and HGP, which stands for Hommes Grenouilles de Paris. HGP ran as a Paris dive shop from the 1970s through the 1990s, outfitting French Navy frogmen and civilian divers with masks, regulators, and dive watches commissioned from French and Swiss partners. The shop closed in the 1990s, the name went dormant, and in 2023 it was revived and returned to production at MNP Solutions Horlogères in Pierrefontaine-les-Varans, in the Franche-Comté. Each watch is assembled by hand in France, with movements regulated in-house by HGP’s watchmakers to a tolerance tighter than Seiko’s factory baseline.
The SPD x HGP Diver 200M runs a Seiko NH38 non-date automatic—hacking seconds, hand winding, 41-hour power reserve at 21,600 BPH, no date window cutting into the dial. The case is 316L stainless steel at 42mm diameter, 47mm lug-to-lug, and 13.2mm thick, with a flat sapphire crystal and single inner anti-reflective coating. The dial is black finished brass with seven layers of C3 Super-LumiNova on the indices, and the hands are skeletonized and lume-filled as well. Unidirectional 60-click dive bezel with a steel body and anodized aluminum insert. Screw-down crown, screw-down caseback, rated to 200 meters. The watch ships on PDW’s Ti-MNPara strap in OD Green with orange tracer, along with their EWB Compass Kit 2.0, an HGP canvas slip pouch, and a morale patch. The full kit is $649.
PDW makes good incredible straps (and you guys ask me about them in the comments, a lot) so what’s bundled here isn’t an afterthought. The SPD Kraken Trident at twelve and the orange sweep seconds hand are clearly aimed at the EDC and tactical gear crowd that already buys from PDW, and that’s fine. The watch holds up as a tool watch regardless of whether that visual language resonates with you. At this price, with this case, this movement spec, and French assembly, the value case is straightforward.
The harder reality is that this run was extremely limited and is probably already gone. Even so, it’s a watch worth knowing about—and if PDW and HGP come back with another run, or a variant without the SPD markings, that would be worth watching for.
Co-Founder & Senior Editor
Michael Peñate is an American writer, photographer, and podcaster based in Seattle, Washington. His work typically focuses on the passage of time and the tools we use to connect with that very journey. From aviation to music and travel, his interests span a multitude of disciplines that often intersect with the world of watches – and the obsessive culture behind collecting them.