Rolex vintage watches

If you are an aficionado or a collector of vintage Rolex watches, you know how prized and rare those models are. Let's have a quick overview of some (but by no means all) of these coveted relics of the past.

Straight away, we have the Cushion and Cushion Steel in Rolex's Oyster Line. Both were introduced in the 1920s, so they were among the early models Rolex produced. The "cushion" refers to the outer shape of the case, a slightly rounded square, which bears some similarity to the present-day Danaos in the Cellini line.

Then there's Viceroy watch, launched in the 1930s. Its art-deco design has a round dial encrusted into a square case.

Another Rolex relic of that era is the Prince line of rectangular-shaped watches. Rolex advertising promoted the Prince as "the watch for men of distinction." The seconds subdial positioned below the hours-minutes dial amounted to separate faces, or a "dual" dial. Actually the Prince had nothing to do with royalty per se; it became known as a "Doctor's or Nurse's" watch because the relatively large subsidiary seconds dial was easily readable and useful for functions like pulse readings. As is the case with many vintage watches, it is not known when the Prince was discontinued; it was probably sometime in the 1940s, when this watch lost its sense of grace as tastes changed and Rolex continued to experiment with new designs. However, Rolex re-launched this model in 2005.

In the early 1950's, along with other lines such as the Day-Date, Submariner, Explorer and GMT Master, Rolex also introduced the more forgettable 'Tru-beat' and 'Milgauss.' The Tru-beat functioned as a standard watch, but the second hand jumped from marker to marker instead of sweeping around the dial. Its mechanical movement, by the way, was designed to "tick" only once per second. This deadbeat (no pun intended, naturally) seconds feature wasn't very popular and the watch was discontinued shortly after it was introduced, in 1954. The Milgauss, as the name implies, was built to handle strong magnetic fields in certain industries such as power plants and research labs, but it too lost, erm, power (I know, I'm awful) after a while, and fizzled.

Also, in the mid-1950s, Rolex introduced the Thunderbird model of the Datejust. The only real difference between the Datejust of that era and the Thunderbird was in the bezel. The Thunderbird model contained the Rolex Turn-O-Graph bezel, but the name Thunderbird stuck when the Air Force started to award pilots of the Thunderbirds with this particular watch.

The only viable option for the serious vintage Rolex collector is to buy from reputable dealers. Many of these are, surprisingly, found online, in credible online auction spaces such as eBay (which goes through great lengths to protect its own image by offering insurance and dispute resolution). Naturally, one must insist on getting an official certificate to ensure that one isn't throwing away money into the dustbin.