Rolex 1873 Oyster Royal

A checked version of this page, approved on 22 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 is the best measure of how thin the ground is here: the house described it as one of very few examples of the reference to have appeared publicly in thirty years. 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 collecting guide to the Bubbleback names this second group directly — the "flatbacks", manual-wind watches and early chronographs that Rolex was making at the same time and that get much less attention. 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 three 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 — which is a spread of roughly fifty thousand and 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-grade movement. Neither Antiquorum 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 documents the hierarchy at vintagewatchstraps.com: Prima, Extra Prima and Ultra Prima were Rolex and Aegler designations separating otherwise comparable movements by how many positions and temperatures they had been adjusted in, with "Ultra Prima" registered as a mark by Hans Wilsdorf in 1930. 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 "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, not on the dial. The house's own subtitle for the lot calls it a salmon "dot" index dial. The term is best read as a descriptor the trade has attached to this dial layout rather than as 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.

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 across houses 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. 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 converts to roughly CHF 4,800–7,200, so the house was pricing the Extra Prima example well below where it later pitched the salmon-dial chronometer.

The more useful number is the one Antiquorum wrote in prose rather than in the estimate line — that this was one of very few examples to appear publicly in thirty years. The house's own archive, which reaches back to 1974, holds exactly these two lots.

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"

Sources