Rolex 2765 Oyster Chronometer
The 2765 is a manual-wind Oyster of the late 1930s and early 1940s, and it is the cleanest demonstration in the whole early-Oyster catalogue of what actually makes a Bubbleback a Bubbleback. The case is the same 32mm tonneau that the contemporary Oyster Perpetuals wear. The lugs, the bezel, the screw-down crown are the same. The caseback is flat. Rolex domed the back of a Bubbleback to clear a Perpetual rotor; the 2765 has no rotor to clear, so it does not get the dome. Collector reference lists have filed the 2765 among the Bubblebacks for years on the strength of that shared silhouette, and every documented example contradicts them.
What makes the reference worth its own page is the second oddity: the 2765 wore more Rolex model names than almost any other reference of its era. Oyster Chronometer, Oyster Chronomètre, Oyster Royal, Oyster Scientific, Oyster Precision, Ultra Prima — all documented on the same reference number, in a period when Rolex was still using dial text to advertise which grade of movement a buyer was getting rather than which model he had bought.
Core facts
| detail | value |
|---|---|
| reference | 2765 |
| family | Oyster (manual-wind) |
| production | 1930s–1940s; no firm start or end year documented |
| case diameter | 32mm |
| lug-to-lug | about 39mm |
| thickness | about 11mm |
| case construction | two-body, polished and brushed |
| caseback | flat, screwed down |
| bezel | smooth, polished |
| crystal | acrylic |
| crown | screw-down |
| winding | manual |
| movement | 10 to 10½ lignes, rhodium-plated, 17 or 18 jewels, straight-line lever |
| movement grades documented | Ultra Prima (6 positions); 17-jewel adjusted to 7 positions; 18-jewel |
| seconds | centre seconds on some variants |
| case materials | stainless steel (all documented examples) |
| dial designations | Oyster Chronometer / Chronomètre, Oyster Royal, Oyster Scientific, Oyster Precision, Ultra Prima |
| retailer variants | Murdock's, Cape Town |
Where it sits in the line
Rolex did not stop making hand-wound watches when the Perpetual arrived in 1933. It ran two lines side by side for the better part of two decades, and Hodinkee's collecting guide to the Bubbleback makes the point directly: alongside the automatics of the period sat a parallel population of "flatbacks" — manual-wind Oysters, and early chronographs, built on the same case architecture. The 2765 belongs to that parallel line.
Placing it precisely inside that line is harder than it should be, because the auction record disagrees with itself about when the watch was made. Antiquorum dated its Hong Kong and New York examples to the 1930s and its Milan example to the 1940s. Dealer listings put the run at roughly 1936 to 1942. One serial circulates without catalogue backing, 133596, dated to 1941, which is a single data point and not enough to bracket a production run on its own. The honest position is that the 2765 is a late-1930s-into-the-war reference whose exact span nobody has published.
What is clear is the relationship to its automatic neighbours. The numerically adjacent 2764 is a Bubbleback proper: Cal. 620N, domed caseback, sub-seconds, "Super Precision" on the dial. The 2765 sits one digit away with the same case diameter and an entirely different architecture behind it. Rolex was allocating reference numbers by case and market position, not by movement type, which is exactly why a list built from reference numbers alone gets the family wrong.
Production outline
Documentation is thin and clustered. Three Antiquorum lots span fourteen years of sales — Milan in May 1995, Hong Kong in June 2001, New York in December 2009 — and nothing has surfaced at Phillips, Sotheby's, Christie's, Bonhams or Heritage. Below those sits a scatter of dealer listings that establish variants but carry no catalogue authority.
Neither the start nor the end of the run is documented. No case-number range can be constructed: none of the three Antiquorum lots published a case number. For a reference that appears to have been made in reasonable quantity across at least half a decade, the public record is unusually poor, and the reason is probably that the 2765 spent the entire Bubbleback-collecting boom of the 1980s and 1990s being catalogued as something else.
Movement notes
Every documented 2765 is hand-wound, with a movement of 10 to 10½ lignes, rhodium-plated, with a straight-line lever escapement. Three configurations appear across the three Antiquorum lots.
The Milan 1995 example carried a 10-ligne Ultra Prima, 17 jewels, anchor escapement, monometallic balance with Breguet hairspring, regulated across six positions and temperatures. The Hong Kong 2001 example carried a 10½-ligne with 17 jewels, Rolex Superbalance and a self-compensating Breguet balance-spring, adjusted to seven positions. The New York 2009 example carried a 10½-ligne with 18 jewels and a straight-line lever.
"Ultra Prima" is not a caliber. It is the top tier of the grade hierarchy Rolex inherited from Aegler — Prima, Extra Prima, Ultra Prima — which separated otherwise similar movements by how many positions and temperatures they had been timed in. David Boettcher documents the scheme at vintagewatchstraps.com and notes that Hans Wilsdorf registered "Ultra Prima" as a mark in 1930. Dial text and movement grade advertised the same thing — how much adjustment work had gone into the watch.
No Antiquorum catalogue names a caliber number for the 2765. Dealer listings routinely identify the movement as Cal. 700, an 18-jewel adjusted to six positions, and that attribution is consistent with the Milan lot's grade and position count. It is also unverified. Until a movement photograph with a visible caliber marking or a Rolex parts document surfaces, the ligne size and the grade are what the record supports. Cal. 700 stays unverified.
Dial map
The 2765 produced a wide dial range for a reference with so few catalogued examples, and the three Antiquorum lots happen to show three quite different watches.
The Milan 1995 dial is silver and rose-coloured, with printed Arabic numerals and indices and burnished steel leaf hands — the most restrained of the three, and the most obviously a dress watch. The Hong Kong 2001 dial is bronze-coloured with mixed radium-coated Arabic and Roman numerals, triangular and bâton indexes, and radium-coated "skeleton" hands; Antiquorum graded the dial 4-7-01 and the watch overall A (Good). The New York 2009 dial is copper-coloured with luminous Arabic numerals and an outer one-fifth-seconds track carrying five-minute Arabic markers, paired with luminous blued steel baton hands.
Beyond the auction record, dealer listings add a two-tone silvered configuration with black baton markers and alternating Arabic numerals, a sector dial, and at least one tropical example from 1941 in the United Kingdom. Blued steel dagger hands with centre seconds recur on the Scientific and Royal variants.
The dial designations are the reference's real signature. The same case appears marked Oyster Chronometer, Oyster Chronomètre, Oyster Royal, Oyster Scientific, Oyster Precision, and Ultra Prima. Rolex was naming the watch after the grade of movement inside it, which is why a single reference number can carry six different lines of dial text. The "Oyster Scientific" marking is the same vocabulary as the salmon "Scientifical" dial Antiquorum documented on the near-contemporary ref 1873 in 2024, so the term travelled across at least two manual Oyster references.
Case, bezel, crystal, and crown
Two-body stainless steel, polished and brushed, tonneau-shaped, 32mm across, roughly 39mm lug-to-lug and about 11mm thick. Screwed-down caseback and screw-down crown, which is what earns the Oyster name. Smooth polished bezel. Acrylic crystal, as the era requires.
The caseback is the whole story. It is flat. Every listing that troubles to describe it says so, several of them in the listing title, and the Antiquorum descriptions carry no mention of a domed or bulged back on any of the three examples. A 2765 offered as a Bubbleback either has the wrong caseback fitted or is being described by someone working from a reference list rather than from the watch.
Stainless steel is the only case material documented. No gold, gold-shell or two-tone example appears in the record, though on a sample of three catalogued lots that absence carries little weight.
Bracelets, end links, and clasps
Nothing is documented. None of the three Antiquorum lots was sold on a Rolex bracelet, and no period bracelet fitment for the reference appears in the surfaced record. The Hong Kong 2001 example came with a fitted box, which is the closest thing to original accompanying hardware anywhere in the reference's file.
Retailer variants
One is documented: the New York 2009 example was retailed by Murdock's of Cape Town and carries the retailer's signature. Retailer-signed Rolex of this period is its own collecting category, and a South African signature is uncommon, but a single example establishes that Murdock's carried the reference and nothing more.
Auction record
| Venue | Date | Lot | Dial | Movement | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antiquorum, Milan | 1995-05-22 | 160 | Silver and rose, printed Arabic, leaf hands | 10′′′ Ultra Prima, 17j, 6 positions and temperatures | Sold; figures reported in lire with ambiguous scaling |
| Antiquorum, Hong Kong | 2001-06-08 | 257 | Bronze, mixed radium Arabic and Roman, skeleton hands | 10½′′′, 17j, Superbalance, 7 positions | HKD 23,000 (est. HKD 20,000–23,000) |
| Antiquorum, New York | 2009-12-09 | 217 | Copper, luminous Arabic, 1/5th-seconds track | 10½′′′, 18j, straight-line lever | USD 1,560 (est. USD 1,500–2,500) |
The Hong Kong 2001 lot is the reference's anchor, and the money is the least of it. It came with a fitted box, a full Antiquorum condition grade of A (Good) with case 4-6, movement 4-6* and dial 4-7-01, and a literature citation: Antiquorum noted that a similar watch is published in Osvaldo Patrizzi's Rolex, Collecting Wristwatches (Guido Mondani Editore, Genova, 1998) at page 278. That citation is the only published-book grounding this reference has, and its wording is careful: the catalogue says "a similar watch", not this reference by number.
The New York 2009 result at USD 1,560 against a USD 1,500–2,500 estimate says something about where the manual Oysters sat in the market at that point: at the bottom of the estimate, in a year when steel sports Rolex was already climbing hard. The Milan 1995 result was reported in lire at a scale that cannot be resolved cleanly, which is why no figure appears against it above.
Related references
- Bubbleback 2764 — the automatic neighbour, Cal. 620N
- Oyster Royal 2574 — pre-war manual Oyster, boy's size
- Oyster Royal 1873 — manual flat-back Oyster, shares the "Scientifical" dial vocabulary
- Bubbleback 2240 — self-winding contemporary
- Bubbleback 1858 — the first Oyster Perpetual, 1933
See also the Bubbleback family index, movement reference, bracelet & clasp guide, and serial numbers by year.
Sources
src-antiquorum-2765-milan-1995-lot160— Antiquorum, Important Collectors Wristwatches Pocket Watches & Clocks, Milan, Palazzo dei Giureconsulti, 22 May 1995, lot 160src-antiquorum-2765-hk-2001-lot15— Antiquorum, Important Watches, Collector's Wristwatches, Clocks and Objects, Hong Kong, 8 June 2001, lot 257src-antiquorum-2765-ny-2009-lot223— Antiquorum, Important Collectors' Wristwatches, Pocket Watches & Clocks, New York, 9 December 2009, lot 217src-patrizzi-rolex-collecting-wristwatches-1998— Osvaldo Patrizzi, Rolex, Collecting Wristwatches (Guido Mondani Editore, Genova, 1998), p. 278src-boettcher-prima-grades— David Boettcher, "Prima, Extra Prima and Ultra Prima", vintagewatchstraps.comsrc-hodinkee-bubbleback-collecting— Hodinkee, "Buying, Selling, & Collecting: The Rolex Bubbleback And Why It Still Matters"src-robbreport-bubbleback-collector-guide— Robb Report, "A Collector's Guide to Rolex Bubbleback Watches, From 1931 to the 1950s"src-everywatch-2765-tropical-1941— EveryWatch lot 2305652, Rolex Precision 2765, tropical dial, 1941, United Kingdomsrc-everywatch-2765-oyster-royal-1940— EveryWatch, Rolex Oyster Royal 2765, silver dial, 1940, United Kingdomsrc-rolexforums-wvm-bubbleback-list— RolexForums, "List of Bubbleback models" (user w-v-m), the circulating reference list that files 2765 as a Bubbleback
Sources
- "Rolex, Oyster Chronometer, Ref. 2765, 1940s", Antiquorum, 1995-05-22
- "Rolex Oyster Chronometre, Ref. 2765", Antiquorum, 2001-06-08
- "Rolex Oyster Chronometer, Ref. 2765, retailed by Murdock's, Cape Town", Antiquorum, 2009-12-09
- Rolex, Collecting Wristwatches — Osvaldo Patrizzi, Guido Mondani Editore, Genova, 1998
- 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
- "EveryWatch lot 2305652 - Rolex Precision 2765, steel, tropical dial, 1941, United Kingdom", EveryWatch
- "EveryWatch - Rolex Oyster Royal 2765, silver dial, 1940, United Kingdom", EveryWatch
- "List of Bubbleback models (user w-v-m)", RolexForums