A Rolex in sheep's clothing? The history of Rolex is closely linked with Aegler who manufactured the watches for Rolex in the 1920s and 30s. Aegler manufactured watches for both Gruen and Rolex in their Bienne factory in Switzerland. Rolex and Gruen came to a mutual agreement with Aegler that Gruen would only sell their watches in the US whilst Rolex would sell to the rest of the world. In the 30s Gruen sold their shares back to Aegler and by 1936 Rolex had agreed to take the complete production of the Aegler factory. This watch has the same movement as the Rolex Prince (Calibre 877) and would easily be mistaken for it's more commonly seen relative. Known and promoted as a doctor's watch it was exceptionally accurate and was the first wristwatch movement to be officially chronometer-certified without being adjusted for the test. This particular watch is really a thing of incredible beauty and not bad for something around 90 years old!
My Rolex Prince duo-dial “doctors watch” says Hi. This is the only one of these movements I have ever seen that had 18-jewels, and being marked adjusted to 6 positions. I am the second owner of this watch. My late father bought this watch 90 years ago, in Canada. Unfortunately, Rolex Canada cased it in a gold filled case.
I collected Gruen bumpers when I was in college (they were affordable and fun for a poor college student), and an older antique dealer had told me there was an early connection between Gruen and Rolex but I thought it was just lore. This is very cool.
Great looking watch. The Gruen Curvex was also a wonderfully designed watch too. I never owned a Curvex, but, I have had a couple of Rolex Prince watches, but, only kept one, the watch I wore on my wedding day over 30 years ago.
As far as I know, the Rolex designers paid the main attention to the quality of watch movements. The endless run for chronometric precision was soon crowned with success. And also the exclusivity of Rolex lies in the fact that it produces a strictly defined amount of each model (no one knows how much). For rarer and more expensive copies, you will have to queue for many years, there even exist special waiting lists for that. And as for me, such these watches is very cool to match the style of clothing called techwear - https://atlas1.co/. The combination of a set of techwear clothing and Rolex watches looks very solid, high-quality, and expensive. Also what I love in it is that both techwear and Rolex make stuff in black-white colors, so it combines very well.