A-series Luminova Patrizzi? Really?

Good day all.

I wanted to out of curiosity to hear what other people's thoughts were on this:



It's a very pleasing (to some) Patrizzi or "Darth Vader" 16520 Zenith Daytona or whatever one wants to call it. The subdial apparently have a thin layer of something(maybe silver) that becomes oxidezed and turns them brown and sometimes black. Usually brown ones go for a premium and black ones for a hefty premium.

Apparently this flaw was due to ineffective protective coating that was used on a very specific serial range. If I understand correctly, this was around W serial range.

What makes this weird and eyebrow raising is that this is clearly a A-series Luminova dial.

I personally have never seen this or heard of Luminova dials behaving like this on 16520.

Is this baked, man-made or altered? Or a well know defect in some luminova dials? If the latter is the case, then I apologize for a redundant thread.

Something not right there. I believe it affected s,t & possibly w series (all mid-90s). Definitely not Luminova dials. It may be just be the photo, but that doesn’t even look like the shade of brown the subdials went.

For comparison, the one currently for sale at Phillips (which I find mesmerising even not being a Rolex guy).

The “brown/patina” looks definitely more natural and pleasing (but once again I’m no Rolex expert). The serial range is correct also IMO for this one

Thanks for the replies and thoughts. Something doesn't seem to add up. Unless of course this is a just discovered superrare batch of faulty A-series Luminova dials.

As I understood, Rolex specifically fixed this issue after the W (and S and T) series by altering the protective coating on the dial/subdials. That's why I find this somewhat odd and borderline suspicious.

But in all honesty, I don't know. This could very well be as-is unaltered.

I am not making any claims or accusations just wanted to discuss this with fellow enthusiasts. For some reason my wife wasn't very interested in discussing the peculiarities of Patrizzi dials.😲

It's a man-made baked altered dial.

And all this was done poorly and stupidly on A series.

Another A-series "Patrizzi" , not nearly as dark as the first example but still...


What's going on? ...and for sale with a HEFTY premium of course.

I've seen some A-series subdials take on a light yellowish hue but never like this. Weird. Unless these are from the same "bakery"😜

Looks like damage to me.

Patrizzi cannot be on A-Serie. Potentially very latest 16520 white P-Serie turned creamy but nothing on black dials as far as I know.
The bracelet is not good for A6 Serie. It should be SEL 78390A. Not even talking about the super polished bezel and lugs...

"A" serials are not usually associated with the Patrizzi dials. It would be best if there were better photos of the entire dial. You want to see the entire field of black and you want to see the white gold ring around the subdials. The reason to see the whole dial is because if baked or treated by some other means, then the dial and subdial rings can be effected in a different manner than an actual Patrizzi. Both examples of " A" presented by @Watchcar the subdials look very uniform in their color change and one hallmark of the Patrizzi effect is that the natural oxidation does not occur evenly and looks blotchy and / or sandy.