Reference:1873

Oyster -> 1873

Rolex Oyster Royal 1873, case 100498 — salmon dial with black round indexes and subsidiary seconds at 6, on a beaded steel bracelet. Antiquorum Geneva, November 2024.

The 1873 is one of the scarcer references in the early Oyster catalogue, and one of the most consistently mis-filed. Collector reference lists place it in the 1933 founding group of Bubblebacks, a sibling of the 1858 with the same three-piece case and the same new Perpetual rotor. Every example that has reached public auction is neither. All are hand-wound and all have flat casebacks; the 2021 Antiquorum lot says so in its title. The dial reads Oyster Royal, not Oyster Perpetual.

Antiquorum's own catalogue note on the 2024 Geneva example measures how thin the ground is. The house wrote that in the past thirty years only a handful of the rare reference 1873 had appeared at auction, and that Antiquorum had itself offered exactly one other example. A handful is the right word, and it is more than the pair Antiquorum has sold. Bonhams catalogued two more at Knightsbridge, in September 2021 and November 2023, and one of those is in 9K gold, which settles a question the reference's thin file had left open.

Core facts

detail	value
reference	1873
family	Oyster (manual-wind)
production	1930s; no firm start or end year documented
case diameter	31mm (2024 lot) / 31.5mm (2021 lot)
case shape	tonneau
caseback	flat, screw-down
bezel	smooth, polished
crystal	acrylic
crown	screw-down
winding	manual
movement	17-jewel Extra Prima; 18-jewel chronometer. No caliber number published
case materials	stainless steel (both documented examples)
dial designations	Oyster Royal; Oyster Royal Chronometre
notable dial	salmon "Scientifical" with black round indexes
documented case numbers	48634; 100498

Where it sits in the line

Rolex built two parallel populations of Oyster wristwatches through the 1930s and 1940s. One took the Perpetual rotor and the domed caseback that collectors later nicknamed the Bubbleback. The other stayed hand-wound and kept a flat back, because there was no rotor to make room for. Hodinkee's Bubbleback collecting guide names this second group directly: the "flatbacks", manual-wind watches and even early chronographs that Rolex was building at the same time. The 1873 is one of them.

Within the manual line, "Oyster Royal" is a grade-and-market designation rather than a model in the modern sense. It sits alongside Oyster Precision, Oyster Chronometer and, on some references, Oyster Scientific, dial names that told a buyer what timing work the movement had received. The 1873's documented examples bracket that range: one is marked Royal with an Extra Prima movement, another Oyster Royal Chronometre with an 18-jewel chronometer-grade movement behind a salmon "Scientifical" dial, and Bonhams sold a third, in gold, also marked Oyster Royal Chronometre.

The reference sits close to the 1858 numerically, and that proximity is almost certainly why it ended up on the Bubbleback lists. Rolex allocated reference numbers by case and market position, not by movement type, so numerical neighbours in this era are frequently different kinds of watch. The 2764 and 2765 pair make the same point nine hundred numbers further on: one automatic Bubbleback, one manual flatback, adjacent references, same case diameter.

Production outline

Antiquorum dated both of its examples only to "circa 1930s". Bonhams is more useful. It dated its steel example circa 1939, and it dated the gold one by a London import mark for 1937, which is a hallmark rather than a catalogue estimate and puts at least one 1873 in a named year. The 1933 start year that circulates for this reference comes from the same collector list that assigns it to the wrong family, and carries no independent support.

Four case numbers are on record: 37029 on the gold Bonhams example, 48634 on the 2021 Hong Kong example, 81343 on the 2023 Bonhams steel example and 100498 on the 2024 Geneva example. Bonhams also published a movement number, 11250, on the gold watch. Sixty-odd thousand numbers across four cases is enough to say the reference ran for a while and not enough to say anything else. No production figures exist in any published source.

Rolex did build the 1873 in gold. Three of the four documented examples are stainless steel; the fourth is 9K gold, with a presentation inscription on the caseback and the London import mark that dates it. Whether a two-tone version exists is still unknown.

Movement notes

All four documented movements are manually wound, and the catalogues describe different grades.

The Hong Kong 2021 example carried an Extra Prima with 17 jewels. The Geneva 2024 example carried an 18-jewel chronometer movement that Antiquorum's catalogue note identifies as an ultra prima, which puts both of the hierarchy's upper grades on this one reference. Bonhams adds two more movements. Its 1939-dated steel example is described only as a jewelled manual wind. The 9K gold Oyster Royal Chronometre carries an 18-jewel manual wind with a screwed balance, timed to six positions, numbered 11250. None of the four catalogues names a caliber number, and no other published source supplies one.

Naming a caliber here would be a guess. "Extra Prima" is a grade, not a caliber. David Boettcher's research at vintagewatchstraps.com traces the sequence to Aegler, which began marking the better movements it supplied to Rolex as Prima in the 1920s and added Extra Prima and Ultra Prima later; Hans Wilsdorf registered "Ultra Prima" on 9 December 1930. Boettcher is careful about what the words actually bought. He finds the graded movements otherwise identical to standard ones, which puts the difference in adjustment work, to poise and isochronism, and he reports Prima on 15-jewel movements timed in six positions with both Extra Prima and Ultra Prima on 18-jewel movements, while saying the gap between the top two grades is not clear. The Hong Kong example sits outside that pattern: an Extra Prima with 17 jewels. Reading a grade word as a caliber number is a recurring error in dealer listings for early Rolex, and the 1873 has too few documented examples to absorb a guess. Until a movement photograph or a Rolex parts document supplies a caliber, the grade and the jewel count are the record.

Dial map

Four dials are documented. Two come from Antiquorum, one described at length in the catalogue and one legible only from the lot photography, and two more from Bonhams.

The salmon dial in detail: ROLEX OYSTER ROYAL over CHRONOMETRE, black round indexes, blued steel hands and a sunk subsidiary seconds register at 6.

The salmon "Scientifical" dial on the Geneva 2024 example is the reference's signature. Antiquorum put it in the lot title and described it as an extremely rare original, with black round indexes and original hands, on a 31mm steel case numbered 100498. Salmon dials from this period are sought in their own right, and one on a reference that surfaces roughly once a decade is an uncommon combination.

The catalogue photography settles what the word is doing there. The dial reads ROLEX OYSTER ROYAL over a CHRONOMETRE marking above the subsidiary seconds, and nothing else. "Scientifical" appears in Antiquorum's lot title and in quotation marks, never on the dial. The house hedges it in the note as well, calling the dial a "so called" scientifical and tying the name to the black round indexes, and its own subtitle for the lot calls the watch a salmon "dot" index dial. The term is a descriptor the trade has attached to this layout, not period Rolex dial text.

The word is not confined to this reference. "Oyster Scientific" is reported as one of several dial markings used on the ref 2765, a near-contemporary manual Oyster with the same flat-back construction, so the vocabulary travelled. What has not been shown is a photographed dial carrying either spelling: Bonhams catalogued a 2765 under that model name twice, which moves the attribution from dealer listings into auction-house records, and the one 1873 dial that can be examined does not carry the word. Whether Rolex ever printed Scientific or Scientifical on a dial, or whether the term belongs entirely to the trade, is unresolved.

Two-tone silvered dial with gold Arabic 12, 3 and 9, applied gold indexes and subsidiary seconds at 6, on a riveted Oyster bracelet. Antiquorum Hong Kong, April 2021, case 48634.

The Hong Kong 2021 example carried a patinated dial with original hands, and the catalogue says no more than that. The lot photography fills in the layout: a two-tone silvered dial with a sunk outer track, gold-toned Arabic numerals at 12, 3 and 9, applied bâton indexes at the remaining hours, luminous plots around the chapter ring, and a subsidiary seconds register at 6, with blued steel hands carrying luminous inserts. It is a markedly different watch from the salmon example, dress-sector layout against plain dot indexes, on the same reference number.

The two Bonhams dials extend the range without breaking it. The 1939 steel example carries a silvered dial with black alternating baton and Arabic numeral hour markers, subsidiary seconds at 6, and blued steel dagger hands with luminous inserts. The gold Oyster Royal Chronometre is silvered with an applied gilt minute track, applied luminous Arabic numerals, subsidiary seconds and blued leaf-form hands with luminous inserts. Subsidiary seconds at 6 is the one constant across all four.

That is the whole documented dial range for the reference. Anything more specific about 1873 dial configurations would be extrapolation from sibling references.

Case, bezel, crystal, and crown

Three-quarter view of case 100498, showing the tonneau flank and the screw-down crown.

Tonneau case with a screw-down caseback and screw-down crown, smooth polished bezel, acrylic crystal. Stainless steel on three of the four documented examples, 9K gold on the fourth. Measured at 31mm in the 2024 catalogue, 31.5mm in the 2021 catalogue, 31mm on the gold Bonhams example and 32mm on the steel one, ordinary measurement-method variance on a tonneau case, the same spread that follows the 31/32mm Bubblebacks around.

The caseback is flat. The 2021 Hong Kong lot title puts "FLAT BACK" in capitals, which is Antiquorum flagging the trait as identifying rather than incidental, and none of the four lot descriptions mentions a dome, a rotor or self-winding anywhere. On a reference this scarce, that is the first thing to check on any example offered for sale: a domed back on a 1873 means either the wrong caseback or the wrong reference.

Bracelets, end links, and clasps

The 2021 Hong Kong example was accompanied by a Rolex stainless steel rivet bracelet measuring roughly 170mm overall. Rivet-link Oyster bracelets are period-plausible for a 1930s steel Oyster, but a bracelet dates itself and not the watch head, and Antiquorum did not present it as original delivery. It counts as accompanying hardware and nothing more. The Geneva 2024 example came on a beaded steel bracelet of roughly 175mm, catalogued as a "Private Eyes" bracelet. Antiquorum did not put the Rolex name on that one the way it did on the Hong Kong rivet bracelet, and whether it left the factory on the watch is not established either way. Neither Bonhams example came on a bracelet at all: the 1939 steel watch was on an associated brown leather strap with an associated gilt buckle, the gold one on brown leather, again with an associated gilt buckle. No end-link or clasp reference is documented for the 1873 anywhere in the published record.

Auction record

Venue	Date	Lot	Case No	Dial	Movement	Result
Antiquorum, Hong Kong	2021-04-25	233	48634	Patinated, original hands	Extra Prima, 17 jewels	Est. HKD 40,000–60,000; result not published
Bonhams, London Knightsbridge	2021-09-07	51	37029	Silvered, applied gilt minute track, luminous Arabic (9K gold)	18-jewel, screwed balance, 6 positions, No. 11250	GBP 2,167.50 incl. premium
Bonhams, London Knightsbridge	2023-11-22	54	81343	Silvered, alternating baton and Arabic, dagger hands	Jewelled manual wind	GBP 1,280 incl. premium
Antiquorum, Geneva	2024-11-09	282	100498	Salmon "Scientifical", black round indexes	18-jewel chronometer	CHF 10,625 (est. CHF 8,000–12,000)

Three realised prices are on record. The Geneva 2024 salmon-dial chronometer took CHF 10,625 against a CHF 8,000–12,000 estimate, a mid-estimate result. Bonhams sold the 9K gold example for GBP 2,167.50 including premium in September 2021 and the 1939 steel one for GBP 1,280 including premium in November 2023. The Hong Kong 2021 estimate of HKD 40,000–60,000, which the catalogue itself converts to CHF 4,800–7,200, put the Extra Prima example well below where Antiquorum later pitched the salmon-dial chronometer. Four data points spread across three years and three currencies are not a price history, but the salmon-dial chronometer sold well above either Bonhams watch.

Antiquorum's prose carries the more useful number. The catalogue states that only a handful of 1873s had come to auction in thirty years and that the house had offered exactly one other example in its entire history, which is as close to a rarity figure as this reference has. The two Bonhams lots show that "a handful" was meant literally rather than as a flourish. The Geneva watch came out of a Japanese collection.

Related references

• Oyster Chronometer 2765 — manual flat-back sibling, shares the "Scientific" dial vocabulary
• Oyster Royal 2574 — pre-war manual Oyster, boy's size
• Bubbleback 1858 — the first Oyster Perpetual, 1933
• Bubbleback 2240 — self-winding contemporary
• Bubbleback 2764 — Cal. 620N "Super Precision"

See also the Bubbleback family index, movement reference, bracelet & clasp guide, and serial numbers by year.

Sources

• "ROLEX, SWITZERLAND, REF. 1873, OYSTER ROYAL CHRONOMETRE, SALMON SCIENTIFICAL DIAL, STAINLESS STEEL", Antiquorum, 2024-11-09
• "ROLEX REF 1873, ROYAL, FLAT BACK STEEL", Antiquorum, 2021-04-25
• David Boettcher, "Prima, Extra Prima and Ultra Prima", vintagewatchstraps.com
• "Buying, Selling, & Collecting: The Rolex Bubbleback And Why It Still Matters", Hodinkee
• "A Collector's Guide to Rolex Bubbleback Watches, From 1931 to the 1950s", Robb Report
• "Rolex Oyster Chronometer, Ref. 2765, retailed by Murdock's, Cape Town", Antiquorum, 2009-12-09
• "Rolex. A 9K gold manual wind wristwatch, Oyster Royal Chronometre, Ref: 1873, London Import mark for 1937", Bonhams, London Knightsbridge, 2021-09-07, lot 51
• "Rolex. A stainless steel manual wind wristwatch, Ref: 1873, Circa 1939", Bonhams, London Knightsbridge, 2023-11-22, lot 54
• "List of Bubbleback models (user w-v-m)", RolexForums