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Rolex’s Rarest Dials
Following on from our article covering Rolex’s rarest bezels, we’re going to shift focus to another element, one which is inarguably the most important on any watch; the dial.
And I’m going to begin with a quick caveat: I won’t be covering every rare Rolex dial there has ever been! Seriously, there are so many! You could devote a decent size encyclopedia to just the different varieties of gem set dial alone.
What I’ll be doing instead is restricting myself to some of the more interesting rare faces in terms of style, construction and material, and also documenting some of the dials which were never meant to be rare in the first place but wound up like that due to some production defect.
We have a lot to get through, so let’s crack on.
Rolex Co-Signed Dials
The Retailer Dials
In the brand’s earliest days, Rolex was more of a watch assembler than maker. Hans Wilsdorf built his company’s reputation by sourcing components from various manufacturers, combining them into one and selling the finished product to a network of jewelry shops. These jewelers would then print their own names on the dials and sell them on to customers. As a result, Rolex’s first watches did not say Rolex on them anywhere.
Before long, Wilsdorf began sneaking his brand name onto his models, starting with about one in six and increasing the frequency slowly over time.
However, by the 1930s, with a string of successes in the industry behind him, the tables turned. Now it was the retailers themselves who were keen to be associated with Rolex and sought Wilsdorf’s permission to include their names on his watches.
Ever the marketer, Wilsdorf reserved his consent for only a handful of the world’s top stores: Tiffany & Co. in the States, Gübelin in Switzerland, Asprey and Cartier in Europe and Serpico y Laino in South America being the most prevalent.
The practice was most commonplace during the ‘50s and ‘60s but was stopped in the 1990s, leaving the so-called double-signed dials a comparative rarity.
The Logo Dials
Similar but different, these watches feature the logo of a specific company on the dial rather than the store which sold it.
More often than not, Logo dials were created especially for an employee of that company, either as a retirement gift or to mark some form of achievement. Perhaps the most (in)famous examples were the Domino’s Pizza Air-Kings and Oyster Perpetuals the pizza chain commissioned to hand out to restaurant managers who managed to reach a certain level of sales—initially $20,000 a week.
Coca Cola also ordered a number of Oyster Perpetual and Perpetual Date models for workers clocking up 25-years’ service with them while, if you’re very lucky, you might find a few Daytonas emblazoned with the Pan Am logo which the airline once handed out to CEOs and other high ranking execs.
The Crest Dials
Again similar, Crest dials have military insignia or even the emblem of an entire country on them rather than just a company logo.
As you might imagine, these are often extremely rare. There were only 30 Submariners adorned with the badge of the GSPR (Groupe de sécurité de la présidence de la République) for example, the special security unit charged with guarding the French President in the 1990s.
Many of the best known Crest dials were ordered by Middle Eastern countries, with perhaps the Khanjar dial, featuring the Omani dagger which makes up the nation’s coat of arms, the most famous.
Rolex Patterned Dials
The Honeycomb Dials
Rolex have released an almost uncountable number of differently patterned dials through the years. The vast majority were decorated for decoration’s sake, but for one, the pattern served an actual purpose.
When the original Milgauss was launched in 1954, the scientist’s watch boasted an antimagnetic resistance of up to 1,000 Gauss units, thanks to both its inner case and, as it turned out, its honeycomb dial.
The ref. 6543, which otherwise looked like a clone of a certain Rolex dive watch from the previous year, featured a dial made from soft iron, given a crisscross design of copper meshing. In essence, the dial and case formed a Faraday cage which shielded the movement from harmful magnetic fields. However, it was not around for long. Only around 200 of the ref. 6543 were ever made and when its successor came out, the ref. 6541 in 1956, the watch had just a plain dial.
The Stelline Dials
Officially called ‘Galaxy’ dials by Rolex, the Stelline dials take their fan-given nickname from the Italian for ‘Little Stars’.
Extremely rare, here the traditional hour markers have been replaced by small star-shaped indices at the 1, 3, 5, 7 and 11 o’clock points, with sharp daggers in-between.
You will find them most often on the vintage triple calendar moonphase references, the ref. 6062 and ref. 8171. And, of course, the rarest ‘Stelline’ dial (which actually isn’t one at all, technically) is on the famed ‘Bao Dai’, the yellow gold ref. 6062 belonging to the last emperor of Vietnam. That piece, once the most expensive Rolex ever sold, has the unique dial set up of dagger markers at the odd numbers, with diamonds instead of stars at the evens.
The Missoni Dials
The Italian fashion house, Missoni is known for its distinctive zigzag pattern, the Missoni Wave. So it will come as no surprise that the Rolex dial named after them features a highly intricate design of the same nature, fitted very sparingly to the Day-Date ref. 18038 from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.
Enormously obscure, the dials also boast a chapter ring of diamonds and rubies for the ultimate in luxury.
The Golden Embroidery Dials
Among the many haute horlogerie embellishments Rolex has never gone in for is the concept of the openworked dial; a skeletonized face through which the wearer can spy their watch’s movement working away.
However, on unbelievably select examples of the Day-Date and Datejust, the brand did fit their Golden Embroidery dials, exquisitely intricate faces which resembled chainmail armor, with tiny diamonds embedded into the weave. If you looked very hard, you could just make out the caliber underneath.
The Cloisonné Enamel Dials
Tragically, this is something else Rolex never does anymore. As recently as the 1950s, the brand was still making watches with remarkable cloisonné enamel dials from legendary cadranier Stern Freres.
The painstaking technique involves laying out the framework for the design with thin strips of gold to construct partitions, called cloisons, and filling them with different colored enamels to create a vibrant, glossy image. Exceedingly labor-intensive, and with a high failure rate, each dial can take weeks or even months to complete.
Today, Rolexes with cloisonné dials change hands for sums easily into six figures.
Rolex ‘Error’ Dials
Rolex has a fairly strange distinction of being both an exclusive luxury watch brand and a mass producer of watches at the same time. And, as with any mass producer, of anything, the occasional mistake is bound to show up.
Yet, unlike most other manufacturers, with Rolex, their mistakes tend to add to the value of their products rather than subtract—because it makes them even more exclusive.
Below then are some of the most well-known examples of these errors.
The Air-King ‘Double 9’
Rolex’s ‘Warrior’s Watch’ has one of the longest histories of any of the brand’s models, starting out in 1945 and continuing on until the present day, with only a couple of years off from 2014 to 2016.
The comeback reference after its brief hiatus, the ref. 116900, brought with it a complete redesign based on the cockpit instruments Rolex supplied for the Bloodhound SSC land speed record-breaking car.
That model featured the busiest face of any watch the manufacture had ever released, with Arabic numerals at every five-minute mark, and extra large numbers at the 3, 6 and 9. Or, in one particular case, at the 9, 6 and 9.
That’s right, somehow the brand managed to release into circulation a single example of the ref. 116900 with another 9 index where the 3 should have been. With the number of stages every Rolex has to go through, it almost defies belief that such a mistake could happen, but happen it did and the Double 9 stands as testament that even the best of us can have an off day.
The Explorer ‘Double 9’
Or even two off days.
Yup, floating around somewhere is an Explorer ref. 14270 with its own Double 9 dial, which will likely sell for a healthy premium over a ‘correct’ model someday.
The Spider Dials
The 1980s were a bit of a time for Rolex. They had upgraded their movements to the superb Cal. 30XX series, their first collection of high beat calibers, and then quickly upgraded them again to the even better Cal. 31XX series. As a result, the watch references containing the former were not around for very long and most of them are considered transitional models these days.
If that wasn’t chaotic enough, they were also in the process of changing the paints with which they colored their dials—and that brought up a whole host of other problems.
On many of the watches, the paint was simply not up to the job and introduced a slew of defects; defects which have since led collectors to seek out these ‘damaged’ pieces specifically. The Spider dials are one example.
Simply put, Spider dials are those on which the surface has cracked, or ‘crazed’ due to exposure to UV light or high temperatures, leaving a network of thin fractures which resemble a spider’s web.
Most commonly found on black dialed models from the late ‘70s to the late ‘80s, the flaw can often lead to an increase in collectability.
The Panna Dials
Another victim of the late 20th century, Panna dials affect the white-faced versions of models such as the Explorer II, Datejust and Daytona.
Watches of this vintage, and especially those worn in the sun for extended periods, have seen their dials discolor, with the formerly bright white paint fading to a warm creamy color. And again, as no two fade the same, these have become sought after by vintage collectors.
The Patrizzi Dials
Probably the most famous example of a Rolex dial error, the Patrizzi dials are named after Osvaldo Patrizzi, an Italian collector and founder of Antiquorum. He was the first to notice the edging around the totalizers on his black dial Zenith Daytona had changed from silver to a pleasant brown color.
The culprit this time was a new type of varnish, an organic substance called Zapon. Not able to prevent oxidization from occurring on watches exposed to UV light, Zapon was used only briefly and on very specific models, namely the all-steel ref. 16520 Daytonas made between 1994 and 1995, fitted with what is now known as the Mark IV dial.
Regular ref. 16520s are some of the least expensive examples of the Cosmograph, but those with Patrizzi dials tend to command prices of at least double the standard models, and for the same reason as the Panna dials above; exclusivity. Each Patrizzi is unique, and the discoloration only increases as time goes on.
As mentioned at the start, I am barely scratching the surface of all the weird and wonderful rare Rolex dials. We’ll put out a Part 2 (and 3 and 4) in the near future. In the meantime, look out for our next article in the series where we check at the rarest Rolex watches as a whole.
Featured Photo: Mixed art by Oriol Mendivil for BKT Archive.
