SPOTLIGHT ON: TAG Heuer Aquaracer Calibre 5 'Green Cross' Limited Edition Watch

WAJ2116.BA0871

In the late 00s TAG Heuer and Leonardo DiCaprio joined forces to champion a pair of environmental charities (Green Cross and NRDC) and this 500M Aquaracer was one of the limited edition watches that came out of that pairing. Limited to 1600 pieces the watch features a blue dial with a 'world' pattern on the dial and the Green Cross logo on the lower portion of the face. The watch also features a display caseback showing off the Calibre 5 movement and a dark blue (ribbed) bezel - often these can look black, but it should definitely be blue if it's original.

 

I really like the WAJ series 500M Aquaracers, I own a grey dial WAJ1111 quartz and it is probably one of my favourite watches. I've long fancied these limited edition blue dial versions and Watchfinder are currenltly selling a WAJ2116 for £1450, which seems a reasonable price but they only have one picture up (and that's not of the actual watch). It's quite hard to find any others to compare; Watches.co.uk had one but it's long been sold and one was also auctioned through Catawiki with an estimate of  1450-1600 Euros, but it failed to meet the reserve and was withdrawn (it doesn't say what the reserve was but the watch was a little bit rough around the edges judging by the photos).

These watches are 43mm in diameter but they are also very chunky and angular so wear pretty big even if you are used to watches of that size. I must admit if I go to mine from something sub 40mm it's a bit of a shock at first, but I find that I soon get used to it again. The crowns on these are quite large too and I worried that it would stab me in the back of the hand, but actually it has never caused a problem.

There are non-limited blue dial versions of these watches, but the dial is nowhere near as cool to be truthful. While I do really enjoy the vertical slats on my grey dial WAJ1111, this glossy looking blue with the world print looks really nice (assuming of course that it lives up to the pictures we see here - I've never actually seen one in real life) and makes the matt blue on the regular models look a little, well... uninspiring.

Considering there are 1600 of these out there I'm quite surprised there aren't more available for sale, which suggests either I'm looking in the wrong places or people are holding on to them. If that's true then I can't say I blame them, I don't think I'd be selling mine either... but does it wow me enough to pay £1450 for one? Probably not right now, but I definitely wouldn't rule one out in the future.