Vintage Rolex Watches
Vintage Rolex turns up here occasionally, sourced with the same care as everything else and photographed honestly, flaws included. These are one-of-a-kind pieces, so they rarely last long.
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The Rolex Story
Rolex is a made-up word. Hans Wilsdorf registered it in 1908 because it was short, easy to say in any language and fitted on a dial. In 1905 he and his brother-in-law Alfred Davis had opened Wilsdorf & Davis in London to case wristwatch movements from Aegler in Biel, and he set out to prove a wristwatch could be a precision instrument: a chronometer certificate in 1910, the first for a wristwatch by Rolex's count, then Kew Observatory's Class A rating in 1914, previously held only by marine chronometers.
The 1926 Oyster case sealed the movement behind a screw-down bezel, back and crown. Channel swimmer Mercedes Gleitze wore one on a necklace for ten hours in October 1927, and Rolex said so in a full-page Daily Mail advertisement. The 1931 Perpetual rotor wound it on the wrist, so the crown could stay screwed down. Then came the Datejust in 1945, the Explorer and Submariner for climbers and divers in 1953, the GMT-Master for Pan Am crews in 1955 and the Cosmograph Daytona for racing drivers in 1963.
Wilsdorf died in 1960 and left his shares to the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, set up in 1945 and Rolex's sole owner ever since. André Heiniger, in charge from 1963, regarded microelectronics as banal: Rolex made its own Oysterquartz in small numbers from 1977 to 2001 and took its mechanical watches upmarket instead. His son Patrick, from 1992, bought the suppliers: Gay Frères bracelets in 1998 and, in 2004, Aegler, its movement maker since 1905.
Rolex moved to Geneva in 1919 and is building a plant at Bulle in Fribourg, due in 2029. It publishes no figures; Morgan Stanley and LuxeConsult estimated 2025 sales at about 11 billion Swiss francs. It bought the retailer Bucherer, a deal agreed in August 2023 and completed in 2024 after Swiss and EU competition clearance, and marked 100 years of the Oyster in April 2026. The vintage Datejusts and Oyster Perpetuals that come through this shop still rely on the 1926 case and the 1931 rotor.