Rolex Explorer 1016 Space Dweller!
credit photo: Amsterdam Vintage Watches. A superb 1016 from 1963, with its gilt dial, as it should be, but here with two words which make a huge difference: Space-Dweller. It is said that a very few were made. Beauty and mystery. Both work very well. Best...
This kind of watches always raises some questions, for sure. I am far from being an expert, but I noticed that in 1963, tritium was used, even from 1961 which is a milestone date for luminous material change.
Even before, this is not because it is written " Swiss " on the dial that this mean that we had radium indices and hands... Hence the exclamation dot and most probably the underline. As for Space Dweller, it is hard to say if the watch is good or not. If ...
Yeah, this one was made from one of the loose dials sold at Sotheby's in 2008
Four 'Space-Dweller' dials incl. dozens of fake 'no-step' Paul Newman dials offered at Sotheby's came from Eric Tortella's liquidation stock that had been confiscated by the Swiss government when he was arrested and sent to jail for misappropriation of mi...
I remember reading about this, perhaps on your website.
Unfortunately it seems like this sort of “intrigue” is more common than we’d like. Thanks for your detective work.
