When Jean-Claude Biver and his partner, Jacques Piguet, acquired Blancpain in 1981, they were positioning Blancpain, a watchmaker mostly dormant since the quartz crisis, as a traditional anecdote to those fancy new quartz watches. While this era of Blancpain is often told mostly as a story of marketing genius thanks to Biver, there was also some real watchmaking. Biver's partner, Piguet, was the son of ebauche maker Frédéric Piguet. Together, Piguet and Biver put together a plan to create what we now call Blancpain's "six masterpieces".

These were six mechanical watches with complications harkening back to the days of traditional Swiss watchmaking, days that many thought might never return after the quartz crisis: a complete calendar moon phase (1983), ultra-thin (1984), perpetual calendar (1986), minute repeater (1988), split-seconds chronograph (1989) and flying tourbillon (1989). And when the split-seconds chronograph was launched, it was the world's first automatic split-seconds movement.

In 1999, in celebration of the 10th year anniversary of the iconic split-seconds chronograph, Blancpain combined the complication with their flying tourbillon and made a limited edition of 99 pieces, cased in the most noble metal platinum and incorporated the flyback function as well on top of the mechanical beast. Last seen 18 years ago in auction, the present number 9 has been kept unworn in a safe ever since and it is accompanied by its full set of accessories.