• Welcome to the DeeperBlue.com Forums, the largest online community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing. To gain full access to the DeeperBlue.com Forums you must register for a free account. As a registered member you will be able to:

    • Join over 44,280+ fellow diving enthusiasts from around the world on this forum
    • Participate in and browse from over 516,210+ posts.
    • Communicate privately with other divers from around the world.
    • Post your own photos or view from 7,441+ user submitted images.
    • All this and much more...

    You can gain access to all this absolutely free when you register for an account, so sign up today!

Information about Match Jopen-Marseille spearguns wanted

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.

DRW

Vintage snorkeller
Jan 5, 2007
410
130
133
I wonder whether anybody can help me with a retirement project I am doing to reconstruct the product list of the now-defunct French underwater swimming equipment company Match Jopen-Marseille, which operated in the 1960s and 1970s. I've already collected plenty of data on the company's masks (standard oval, compensator oval, standard rectangular, Caravelle compensator rectangular), goggles, snorkels (single-bend J-shaped, double-bend S-shaped with ball valve), combined mask and snorkel, fins (standard open-heel, super open-heel, Anti-derive open-heel, Competition closed-heel, Match closed-heel), although I would be happy to receive any more information about these articles if anybody has any. So far I have found next to nothing about the company itself, for example.

One of the sections of the reconstructed product list will be devoted to harpoon guns, which is a subject I am sure others here will be far more knowledgeable about than I am. So far I have unearthed two Match models from a 1962 Lillywhites catalogue:
1. Match 76 cm arbalete
Match_arbalete_1a.png

Match_arbalete_1b.png

2. Match 97 cm arbalete
Match_arbalete_2a.png

Match_arbalete_2b.png

At https://www.leboncoin.fr/sports_hobbies/848798345.htm on the French classified advertisement site Leboncoin I found another Match harpoon gun:
50e1fa82962e74e1244c46f775a2c63f389436d4.jpg

0d53ac2e70385f664a0396fdeda10c18bd117d81.jpg

88f2908b955055c54b2e03b63d3a486187cdc359.jpg

The description reads: "Date des années 60 - 70, "Match Jopen Marseille ". Longueur sans flèche 587 cm, avec 75 cm. Sandow absent mais mécanisme fonctionne", which roughly translates to "Dates from the 1960s/1970s, 'Match Jopen Marseille'. Length without dart 587 (sic!) cm, with 75 cm. Sling missing but mechanism working."

Is the gun being auctioned the same as either of the two Match models that appeared in the Lillywhites catalogue? Can anybody tell me anything more about any of them? I've looked everywhere online without finding anything else about Match spearguns. I'd be very grateful for any further information.

The plan, as I explained at the start, is to recreate a Match catalogue. To better understand what I have in mind, here is "one I did earlier" for the French Hurricane underwater swimming equipment company in business between the late 194os and the early 1960s:
 
Last edited:
You could try here https://www.harpon34.net/contact/

This is the website of a French diving equipment collector; there are a number of pages of speargun photos shown in a deep column format. From memory he has some "Match" spearguns, although quickly looking through the pages right now I cannot see them, but he also has catalogs and listings from the period when guns were on sale.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DRW
Thank you, Pete. I'll follow up your suggestion about getting in touch with the collector at the Harpon.net site, which was really useful when I researched Hurricane gear. I'll also contact the French diving equipment collector at https://divecollect.jimdo.com/contact/ because there are many examples of Jopen-Marseille Match fins and masks displayed on the site.
 
DeeperBlue.com - The Worlds Largest Community Dedicated To Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing

ABOUT US

ISSN 1469-865X | Copyright © 1996 - 2024 deeperblue.net limited.

DeeperBlue.com is the World's Largest Community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving, Ocean Advocacy and Diving Travel.

We've been dedicated to bringing you the freshest news, features and discussions from around the underwater world since 1996.

ADVERT