Reference:8171

Rolex 8171 Padellone hero — Rolex 8171 Padellone, yellow gold, triple-calendar moonphase

Padellone → 8171

The 8171 is the complication flagship. Launched around 1949 and produced for roughly three years, it is, with its Oyster-cased sibling the 6062, one of only two triple calendar moonphase references Rolex ever put into series production. Day, date, month, and moonphase, in a 38mm round case at a moment when dress watches were 32mm or smaller. Automatic caliber A.295 with a complete calendar module, the same A.295 platform that powers the Ovettone Datejust underneath the added complication. Non-Oyster, snap-on caseback, non-waterproof. The thing Rolex would not compromise on its sport references was exactly what it gave up to build a dress complication.

Italian collectors named the watch Padellone, "big pan": padella is Italian for frying pan and the -one suffix is an augmentative. The nickname is affectionate, registering a diameter that stood out far enough from its 1950s contemporaries that "big pan" was the first thing to say. The reference is now the most expensive non-chronograph vintage Rolex outside the Daytona lineage, and one of the most expensive Rolex watches ever sold at auction.

Core facts

detail	value
reference	8171
nickname	Padellone (Italian: "big pan")
family	Padellone / triple calendar moonphase
production	c. 1949 – c. 1952/1953
total production	about 1,000–1,200 units (collector estimate)
case diameter	38mm
case construction	two-piece, snap-on caseback (non-Oyster)
water resistance	none — non-Oyster case
case materials	18K yellow gold (most common); 18K pink gold (rare); stainless steel (very rare)
movement	Cal. A.295 CPL (automatic, in-house Aegler)
complications	day, month (apertures at 12); date (peripheral pointer); moonphase (aperture at 6)
crystal	acrylic, domed
dial signature	"Rolex Oyster Perpetual" + "Officially Certified Chronometer" or "Precision"
bracelet	leather strap, period Rolex buckle
italian nickname	Padellone — parallel to Ovetto/Ovettone diminutive-augmentative pattern

What the 8171 is

By the late 1940s Rolex had Oyster, Perpetual, chronometer, and date. What it did not have was a flagship complication watch. The answer was a pair: the dressier 8171 and the Oyster-cased 6062, both triple-calendar moonphases on the same A.295 base. Rolex never returned to this kind of watch after the mid-1950s.

Within the 6062/8171 pair, the 8171 is the non-Oyster dress watch. That is the simple line to remember.

Padella and Padellone

Padella is the Italian word for frying pan. -one is the Italian augmentative suffix; applied to a noun, it produces a bigger version. Padellone is "big pan." Italian collectors used the nickname as the reference circulated through the Italian auction and dealer market from the 1980s onward, and it stuck.

The naming follows the same diminutive-augmentative pattern as the Bubbleback-era Ovetto/Ovettone distinction. Ovetto (little egg) is the 32mm Bubbleback. Ovettone (big egg) is the 36mm Big Bubbleback, including the 4467. For the 8171, the augmentative -one operates on padella directly. The 38mm case was, for a 1950s dress watch, conspicuously large. A period-correct dress watch of 1950 was 32–34mm, often 30mm. A 38mm dial sat on the wrist like a flat, wide plate, hence a big pan.

"Padellone" is now the universal collector-market term for the reference. Phillips, Sotheby's, Christie's, Bonhams, and Antiquorum all use it in lot titles.

The 38mm case

At 38mm, the 8171 was about 4–6mm larger than its dress-watch contemporaries and roughly 2mm larger than the 6062. The case is round with tapered, fluted lugs and a smooth stepped bezel. No decorative fluting, no engine-turning, no anniversary flourish. The visual weight lives in the diameter and in the dial: eight pieces of information (hour, minute, second, day, month, date, moonphase, moon age indicator) sit inside the chapter ring, arranged around apertures at 12 and 6 and a peripheral date track read by a central blued-steel pointer.

Case construction is two-piece: mid-case and snap-on caseback. The caseback snaps into the mid-case with a friction fit and is opened with a caseback knife rather than a threaded spanner. This is standard watchmaking practice for dress watches of the period, and it is the opposite of the Oyster approach. The 8171's caseback carries a serial number and the Rolex coronet but no depth rating, no "Oyster" engraving, and no model-line marking.

Three recessed pushers on the caseband correct the day, month, and moon indications. Date advances with the hour hand through the 24-hour cycle, without quickset, consistent with the A.295 generation. The crown is a small dress-style pushpiece rather than the screw-down brevet crown used on the Oyster cases. Opening and closing the 8171 for service is quick compared to an Oyster, but the trade-off is well documented: snap-on backs lose seal tolerance through repeated service cycles, and many 8171 dials today show moisture-driven patina variability as a direct consequence.

Materials: yellow gold, pink gold, steel

The 8171 was produced in 18K yellow gold, 18K pink gold, and stainless steel. Yellow gold dominates the documented population. The majority of auction lots, dealer listings, and published examples are 18K yellow gold. Pink gold is substantially rarer; collectors estimate the pink gold population at a small fraction of yellow. Steel is the unicorn.

Dealer consensus usually puts steel production around 800 pieces, though the auction survivor count feels much lower. That mismatch is one of the open questions that still hangs over the steel 8171 story.

Why steel exists at all on a dress complication is still not documented cleanly. The practical point is that steel Padellones are the most sought-after configuration, even if the production logic behind them stays unclear.

The dial

Dial text follows the Rolex convention of the period. Coronet at 12, "Rolex" beneath, then "Oyster Perpetual" on two lines. Below 6, above the moonphase aperture, either "Officially Certified Chronometer" or "Precision"; both are correct, both appear on documented examples, and the two configurations do not track cleanly to case material or production year. Day and month are printed in small apertures flanking the 12 position. The date runs around the dial periphery as a printed track, read by a central blued-steel pointer hand. The moonphase aperture at 6 shows the waxing and waning crescent across a starfield, with the moon disc rotating through the lunar cycle.

Most 8171 dials are silvered with applied gilt baton hour markers. The outer minute track is printed black. The outer calendar track, the ring of date numbers 1 through 31 around the edge, is printed blue on silvered dials, producing the two-tone graphic read common to the reference.

Several dial and hand variants are documented. The useful collector split is between the ordinary silvered watches and the rare configurations: grain-finish silver, salmon, black, and the two-tone dial that carried the 2019 Phillips result.

Hand configurations vary with the dial. Most 8171 dials carry gold dauphine hands on gold cases; feuille hands appear on certain configurations. The central seconds hand is typically a simple baton; the date pointer is blued steel with a fine arrow tip that reaches the periphery.

Movement: A.295 CPL

8171 movement and calendar mechanism — 8171 movement with triple-calendar mechanism and moonphase disc

The 8171 uses caliber A.295 CPL, the same A.295 platform (10.5 lignes, 18 jewels, rhodium-plated, self-winding with a unidirectional perpetual rotor, straight-line lever escapement, Breguet balance spring) used in the 4467 Ovettone, with the addition of a complete-calendar-plus-moonphase module. "CPL" is the complication suffix. The movement is chronometer-certified, and dials are marked accordingly.

The caliber matters because it ties the 8171 back to the Big Bubbleback and Datejust world, and because it separates the watch from the Datocompax references of the same era. The 8171 is not Valjoux-based and not a chronograph. The consistent reading across serious Rolex sources is A.295 CPL.

No quickset. Date changes with the hour hand, advanced through a 24-hour cycle. Day, month, and moon are corrected by recessed caseband pushers, pressed with a paperclip or a dedicated tool. The mechanism is sound in period service but, as with any complete-calendar movement of the era, has a few hours around midnight when correction should be avoided; pushing against an engaged change mechanism will damage the teeth.

The 6062 and the complication pair

The 8171's sister reference is the 6062, the Oyster-cased version of the same complication set, produced concurrently in 18K yellow gold, 18K pink gold, and stainless steel. Same A.295 CPL movement, same day-month-date-moonphase complication set, same general dial architecture. The differences are case construction and case size. The 6062 is an Oyster: 36mm, screw-down caseback, screw-down crown, waterproof. The 8171 is non-Oyster: 38mm, snap-on caseback, dress crown, non-waterproof.

Within Rolex history, the 6062 and 8171 are treated as a pair. Collector vocabulary uses both names without hierarchy. Auction catalogs cross-reference: Phillips, Sotheby's, Christie's, and Bonhams all describe the 8171 and the 6062 in each other's terms when one surfaces. The 6062 produced the Bao Dai result: Phillips Geneva May 2017, CHF 5,066,000, the black dial diamond-marker example commissioned by the last Vietnamese emperor. That lot is not an 8171 lot, but it is the apex of the complication pair's market history and sits on a watch that is mechanically identical to the 8171 beneath the Oyster case.

The distinction is simple. The 6062 is the Oyster complication watch. The 8171 is the dress complication watch. Rolex stopped making either kind after the mid-1950s.

Auction record

The 8171's public auction history is dominated by four or five landmark results, with a deeper tier of yellow gold standard-configuration sales establishing the reference's baseline.

Venue	Date	Lot	Material	Configuration	Result
Christie's New York Important Watches ("Sleeping Beauty")	Dec 2002	—	stainless steel	triple calendar moonphase	USD 1,145,000 (est. 250,000–350,000)
Phillips Geneva Watch Auction Nine	May 2019	68	18K YG	two-tone dial, original hang tag and box	CHF 980,000
Phillips Geneva Watch Auction Ten	Nov 2019	175	stainless steel	exceptional preservation	CHF 1,028,000
Sotheby's Important Watches Part I	2023	—	18K YG	circa 1950	— (standard-tier result)
Sotheby's Important Watches	Dec 2024	—	—	—	USD 203,200
Phillips Bacs & Russo	Dec 2024	—	—	—	USD 100,205

The Christie's December 2002 "Sleeping Beauty" sale is the historically important result. Estimated at USD 250,000–350,000, the watch sold for USD 1,145,000 after a multi-country bidding contest, setting at the time a world auction record for a Rolex wristwatch. The "Sleeping Beauty" nickname attached at the moment of sale, a play on the price surprise and on the watch itself, a stainless steel 8171 that had been quiet in the market until that night. The sale restructured collector perception of the 8171 and of complicated Rolex in general; in 2002, seven figures for a non-chronograph Rolex was without precedent.

Phillips' 2019 pair is the modern market benchmark: CHF 980,000 for a top yellow-gold watch and CHF 1,028,000 for a benchmark steel one. That pair is still the clearest marker of where the reference sits.

Standard yellow gold 8171 results run well below these landmarks. The 2024 cycle produced results in the USD 100,000–200,000 range for mid-tier examples. Condition, preservation of factory finishes, originality of dial, presence of original paperwork and packaging, and material (gold versus steel) all move the result meaningfully within the tier. Dealer asking prices for yellow gold 8171s typically run USD 120,000–300,000+ depending on configuration; steel examples rarely surface at retail at all.

The market tier structure for the 8171 is clear in outline: steel at the apex (seven-figure ceiling, mid-six-figure baseline); pink gold as a scarcity-premium tier above standard yellow gold; yellow gold as the volume tier, itself heavily stratified by dial, provenance, and preservation.

What the 8171 established, and did not

The 8171 did not found a line. No 8171 successor reference exists. Rolex did not continue the complete-calendar-moonphase programme past the 1950s, did not reissue a 38mm non-Oyster dress complication, and has not revisited the moonphase as a series production complication in any wristwatch reference since. The 8171 and the 6062 are a closed chapter.

What the 8171 did establish was that Rolex could, when it chose to, produce a complete-calendar-plus-moonphase complication at the same level of finish and chronometer certification as its three-hand watches. The A.295 CPL movement was not an outsourced module in the Datocompax sense; it was an in-house Aegler platform with an added complication. The 8171 and 6062 showed, briefly, what a complicated Rolex could look like. The firm's subsequent decision to orient around sport-watch specialization (Submariner, GMT-Master, Day-Date, Daytona) relegated that demonstration to a single reference pair and closed the door on a path the 8171 had opened.

The market recognized the closure retroactively. Through the 1970s and 1980s, 8171s traded quietly. Through the 1990s, collector attention grew. The 2002 Christie's "Sleeping Beauty" sale marked the moment the reference became an apex collector artifact. The 2017 Bao Dai 6062 result at CHF 5M extended that status to the pair. By the late 2010s, Phillips Geneva auctions had established both the yellow gold benchmark (CHF 980,000) and the steel benchmark (CHF 1,028,000) for the 8171 in isolation.

Related references

The 6062 is the Oyster-cased sibling: same A.295 CPL movement, same complication set, 36mm screw-down Oyster case, produced concurrently in yellow gold, pink gold, and stainless steel. The Bao Dai 6062 (Phillips May 2017, CHF 5,066,000) is the highest public result for the complication pair.

The Rolex Datocompax chronographs (4767, 5036, 6036, 6236) are chronograph-plus-calendar references of the same era, using the Valjoux 72C ébauche with Rolex finishing. They are not mechanically related to the 8171 (different base caliber, chronograph function), but they occupy the same complication-flagship segment Rolex addressed in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The 6236, produced from 1958, is known as the "Jean-Claude Killy" after the skier's ownership of one.

The 4467 is the Big Bubbleback Ovettone. It shares the A.295 movement platform without the CPL complication module. The 4467 and the 8171 are the two most prominent A.295-family dress references, one with a date, one with a full calendar and moonphase. Naming follows the same Italian augmentative pattern: Ovettone (big egg), Padellone (big pan).

The 6305 is the first Datejust with a Cyclops (1954): Oyster-cased, single date complication, Cal. 1030. It is the Oyster-cased continuation of the dress-with-date programme, while the 8171 and 6062 are the non-continuation of the dress-with-full-calendar programme.

The Padellone sits at the chronograph-and-complication tail of the same era as the pre-Daytona chronograph line; the 8171 carries the calendar-and-moonphase complication while the 3525 / 4xxx / 6034 / 6234 / 6238 references carry the chronograph complication into the 6239 and the Cosmograph Daytona.

Collecting considerations

The 8171 occupies a narrow but well-defined collecting slot. It is a bona fide rarity in absolute terms, the complication flagship of the Bubbleback-era Rolex, and a reference whose market has been established at auction for more than two decades with a clear tier structure.

The configuration hierarchy runs from steel at the apex to standard yellow gold at the base. A stainless steel example with original dial, hands, case finish, and paperwork sits at the top, the Phillips November 2019 Lot 175 tier. An 18K pink gold example with original dial and paperwork carries a scarcity premium over yellow gold but falls below steel. An 18K yellow gold example with a rare dial (salmon, black, or two-tone) plus box and paperwork is the Phillips May 2019 Lot 68 tier. Below that sits the yellow gold standard-silvered-dial example with box and paperwork, and below that the same without paperwork.

Authentication on the 8171 comes down to a short checklist. Case metal first: yellow gold, pink gold, and steel all exist, so swapped cases matter. Movement next: it should be A.295 CPL throughout. Dial originality is critical, especially on salmon, black, and other rare colours. Case condition matters because the snap-on caseback does not tolerate repeated opening well. Calendar correctors should work cleanly, because parts are not easy to source. Original box, hang tag, and paperwork add major value, as the Phillips 2019 result made clear.

Period-correct leather straps and Rolex buckles in matching metal appear on the strongest auction examples. A gold 8171 on a service strap with a non-Rolex buckle is a routine presentation; a gold 8171 on a period Rolex strap with a matching gold buckle is not.

Sources