Black Bay 36
The Black Bay 36 is the smallest, dressiest member of Tudor's Black Bay family, a 36mm no-date three-hander that trades the dive bezel for a fixed polished ring and keeps the snowflake hands, the domed dial, and the vintage Tudor rose lineage. It arrived in 2016 as reference 79500 running an ETA-based automatic, then Tudor rebuilt it from the inside in 2023 as the Black Bay One 36, reference 79640, dropping in the COSC-certified manufacture caliber MT5400 with a 70-hour reserve and a silicon hairspring. We buy and sell both generations across the counter at 19 W 47th Street every week. It is the watch we hand to the person who thinks 41mm is too much and a Datejust is too expensive, and it fits a 6-inch wrist the way almost nothing else in the sub-$5,000 field does. This entry walks the specs, the reference split, the pricing reality on both the retail and secondary side, and what actually matters when you buy or sell one.
Specifications
History
Iconic References
Buying Guide
Pricing & Market Data
Cultural Significance
Collector's Lore
The detail that anchors the Black Bay 36 for collectors is the snowflake hour hand, which Tudor first fitted to the reference 7016 Submariner around 1969 and which is now the single most recognizable Tudor design cue. That the brand carries it onto a bezel-less dress-leaning 36mm is the whole point: it keeps the tool-watch pedigree on a watch that will just as happily go under a cuff. The 2023 switch to the MT5400 is the other story collectors track, because it took the smallest Black Bay from an ETA base to a co-owned Kenissi manufacture chronometer with a silicon hairspring, the same movement philosophy Tudor uses across its serious pieces. The two-tone 79643 S&G is the sleeper of the line, a steel-and-gold 36mm chronometer that quietly undercuts the two-tone Datejust it clearly has in its sights.
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