I just bought this 90s Sub from a dealer and the lume on the indices is completely missing... Opinions?

 

Looks like tritium.. try to charge it with a torch in the dark and observe its behaviour, tritium would dim slowly after you put the light source away.

 

I did, the hands and pearl light up immediatly, but the undices are dead. 0 lume

 

Tritium on a 25+ years old Rolex is usually absolutely dead. Dial doesn't look like the lume is missing or stripped. The hands might have been replaced later in a service. How long do they glow?

 

That is strange indeed.
So it doesnt even light up while the light is on?

 

A fe

A few minutes max

 

No, n

No, not even a little bit. As dark as it gets

 

i've seen older 1675 from the 60s where the tritium is non-reactive even with a UV light. have not seen the same things with neo-vintage from the 80-90s.

However, keep in mind that there have been wildly varying degrees of "lume" response when it comes to tritium, so it doesn't necessarily mean anything.

the more important thing to consider is how much it bothers you. buying from a dealer generally gives you more options if the watch doesn't meet your expectation. make the decision and either keep or pull the plug.

life is short as it is to need to deal with regrets about a watch.

 

It looks like the lume is still there to me.

 

I took a picture of my 90's Rolex under UV light and right after I turned off the light.
14270 with tritium dial and hands.
16610 Tritium dial and pearl, Luminova hands

 

@MadMike2618 I can’t speak for you exact watch but I would say this is pretty normal Rolex tritium lume behavior and that you have nothing to worry about (I assume you mean that the lume doesn’t glow and not that it has been removed from the lume plots?)

Two earlier threads about this, one started by myself after experiencing a “problem” similar to yours

https://omegaforums.net/threads/tritium-lume-doesn’t-light-up-under-uv.81995/

https://omegaforums.net/threads/tririum-dials-and-uv-light.87654/

 

The lume isn´t missing, it's just dead, which is what I'd expect from a 1990s Sub! The tritium lume on my 1996 14060 Sub (SWISS - T < 25 at the bottom of the dial, just like on yours) is completely dead! I think Rolex stopped using tritium lume in 1998. But you still have a great, iconic Rolex, a 5-digit 2-liner. A real tough as nails classic! Wear it and enjoy it! Cheers!

 

Tritium has a half life of 12.5 years, so, as others have said, this is completely normal

 

One of the charms of vintage...bumping around a bit in the dark...

 

Looks fine to me. Nothing missing

 

Nothing is missing.

Rolex has different supplier back then for dial and hands: so you can find watches were indexes and hands have same color and glowing as watches in which hands and indexes have different color and glow differently.

 

Well that's not true.

You can find late 60's lume that still glow (due to multiple mix with zinc sulphide) if stimulated with UV for example, and in someway they even react also with sun light.

90's (and sometimes also very late 80's) lume may still glow a little in the dark after being exposed to light as it should glow under the UV light: 25 years old lume doesn't just stop glowing but it decreases slowly.
If you check it with a UV loupe you can still find some reaction in some examples.

 

Yeah, people should be more specific about what they mean when saying the lume is "dead". Do they mean that the lume glows in the dark without the need for excitation as tritium lume did originally? Do they mean that it doesn't respond to UV? This all depends on not only the age of the tritium but the phosphor formulation, as you noted.