Tropic are swiss made rubber straps made in the 60s and 70s and were sold on various watches from Rolex, Enicar, Nivada, Heuer and many more.

They are very comfortable and thin compared to todays rubber straps, flexible and and non-sticking (can´t find the word in english ).
Durable and a lot of them looks and feels just as good today many years later.

But they come with a price, finding nice examples probably costs around 50-200$ depending on size and colour.

 

if you look hard enough some of these skindivers haven't been robbed of their tropic strap...so that 100/200 watch could be free

thing is now they're making new, tropic and tropic like straps and their being slapped right back on these

 

Airain (Dodane) skin diver with parmentier crown

 

Yep, if you can find a skin diver (or any watch) on a vintage tropic for that money the watch would come free with the strap.

Its alot of compny making new rubber straps who looks like the original tropic and now there is also the original Tropic company who recently started making modern ones.
But you can ”easily” spot the real vintage ones from the new ones!

 

Baume et Mercier Baumatic on Suede

 

I've been looking at rubber straps as I just gave my son a blue dial TAG Heuer Aquaracer for graduation. He loves the diver look and I dove for years with a 1990s TAG 1500 that I still have. There are lots of good choices at Zuludiver. I will buy him the blue PU rubber strap that has a non-decompression table on the backside. How tool-geek can you get but seriously, who is going to unstrap their watch under water to check the table when one is hanging off your BCD? Zuludiver had lots of choice including tropic-style straps. Uncleseiko also had some nice tropic inspired straps in 19mm, which is a hard size to shop.

 

Here is the 1500 quartz that I bought new in Singapore for scuba diving back in 1992. It was my everyday wearer for 15 years until I got my Omega SMP 2254

 

I’ll post the strap it came with. It’s rubber, thin and has swiss made on it and looks old!!

 

its a dive watch that predates scuba gear, so that would be skin diving then...

 

I’ll post the one it came with. It sounds just like it.

 

Love these! Where did you get that 16mm strap?

 

Fossil! Yes, its a fashion leather place... but since they carry a lot of ladies quartz fashion watches its a pretty good source of 16mm stuff.

unfortunately most of it is pink or pastel, but there's some nice plain straps that suits the military stuff.

I even found a nice Melanese mesh for my 60s Seamaster and a blue leather band for my RCAF Waltham that's a reasonable match for the government issue ones.

Thank goodness for girly fashion watches.

 

Lovely skin divers folks!
I used to own the Limit and currently rock the Gigandet and the Aquastar on rarer occasions

 

Keep these lovely images coming. Here’s another couple I took in the sun.

 

love this thread! Had an old Caravelle 666 "devil" skin diver a while back.

 

Kingston mid-60s German skin diver on military green Perlon:

 

This is the old rubber strap that came with my Monvis.

 

Silly question - does anyone know why they were called skin diver? And what’s the definition of a skin diver?
Thanks for helping me reach enlightenment.

 

I think it refers to shallower diving that does not entail scuba gear (e.g. a wetsuit).

 

Sea Hunt TV show

"Skin Diver"