Rolex 1873 Oyster Royal

A checked version of this page, approved on 23 August 2026, was based on this revision.

The 1873 is one of the rarest 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. The two examples that have actually reached public auction are neither. Both are hand-wound, and both 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 only a handful of 1873s had come to auction in the past thirty years, and that Antiquorum had itself offered exactly one other example. The archive bears that out. Two lots, both at Antiquorum, three years apart. Nothing at Phillips, Sotheby's, Christie's, Bonhams or Heritage.

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 two documented examples happen to bracket that range: one is marked Royal with an Extra Prima movement, the other Oyster Royal Chronometre with an 18-jewel chronometer-grade movement behind a salmon "Scientifical" dial.

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

Neither documented lot gives a year. Antiquorum dated both examples only to "circa 1930s", and no dealer listing, editorial article or book citation surfaced that narrows it. 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.

Two case numbers are on record, 48634 on the 2021 Hong Kong example and 100498 on the 2024 Geneva example, a spread of roughly fifty thousand across two data points. That 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.

Both documented examples are stainless steel. Whether Rolex built the 1873 in gold or two-tone, as it did across much of the contemporary Oyster range, is simply not known from the surfaced record.

Movement notes

Both documented movements are manually wound, and the two lots 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. Neither catalogue 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

Two dials are documented, one described at length in the catalogue and one legible only from the lot photography.

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: the 2765 attribution rests on dealer listings rather than on catalogue photography, 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.

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.

Stainless steel tonneau with a screw-down caseback and screw-down crown, smooth polished bezel, acrylic crystal. Measured at 31mm in the 2024 catalogue and 31.5mm in the 2021 catalogue, ordinary measurement-method variance on a tonneau case, the same half-millimetre 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 neither lot description 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. 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
Antiquorum, Geneva	2024-11-09	282	100498	Salmon "Scientifical", black round indexes	18-jewel chronometer	CHF 10,625 (est. CHF 8,000–12,000)

The Geneva 2024 result is the only realised price on record for the reference. CHF 10,625 against an CHF 8,000–12,000 estimate is a mid-estimate result, which for a reference this scarce says less about the 1873 than it might seem to: with two lots in the public record there is no series to read a trend from. 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 the house later pitched the salmon-dial chronometer.

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 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"