At Madison Square Garden in New York City on November 9, 2017, at the G-Shock 35th Anniversary Celebration, G-Shock creator Kikuo Ibe showed off three sapphire-crystal prototype watches: one clear, one ruby, and one sapphire blue. Because machining sapphire was so difficult at the time, each watch took over a month to produce.
\n\nThese were built with, for the time, high-end Casio features such as Tough Solar power and Multiband 6 radio-controlled timekeeping—but as they didn’t meet the G-Shock shock-resistance standards, the trio was never intended for sale. They were primarily a symbol of innovation for the Japanese brand, which started in 1983 specializing in super-tough performance timepieces.
\n\nNow, nine years later, in what Casio is calling the culmination of an “eight-year project” (so presumably the ball started rolling soon after the excited reception Ibe’s crystal concepts got on stage at MSG), G-Shock is launching a three-watch collection using blue sapphire as an expression of what happens when G-Shock toughness meets Japanese engineering. The flagship model, and by far the most expensive, is the $80,000 MRG-D5000, the first-ever retail G-Shock with an outer case and bezel hewn entirely from blue sapphire crystal.
\n\nThe collection is called the “Blue Rose Project”…
Original source: https://www.wired.com/