Rolex Submariner
The diving watch with a rotating bezel that became the model for a whole class of sports watches.
Rolex introduced the Submariner in 1953, the same year as Blancpain’s Fifty Fathoms. The robust Oyster case, which Rolex had launched in 1926, made the watch waterproof at great depths.
The Submariner became the model for diving watches from almost every maker. It has changed a little at a time, and details such as crown guards, date window and indices distinguish the decades.
Materials: Stainless steel, later also gold; sapphire crystal from the 1980s
Manufacture: Made by Rolex in Geneva and Biel with an automatic movement in an Oyster case.
The rotating bezel with a minute scale for timing dives.
Large, luminous indices and hands.
Reference and serial numbers between the lugs, which date the watch.
The Submariner was unveiled in 1953 and went on sale the following year. The first reference withstood a depth of 100 metres, and later references 200 and 300 metres. Sean Connery wore a Submariner in the first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962), and the watch became well known far beyond the circle of divers.
The case is based on the Oyster construction with a screw-down crown and screw-down case back. From the end of the 1950s the crown is protected by two shoulders on the side of the case. The diver sets the bezel’s zero at the minute hand when the dive begins and can then read off the elapsed time underwater.
A black dial with round, oblong and triangular luminous indices, an hour hand with a circle at its tip and a rotating bezel in which the first fifteen minutes are divided into minutes.
A date window with a magnifying lens arrived in 1969. Towards the end of the 1960s models in gold also appeared, and later in steel and gold.
Collectors tell the references apart by the crown guards, the text and colour of the dial and whether the bezel insert and the dial are original. Parts are often replaced during servicing, and a dial with its original patina is valued more highly than a new one.