Hi,
I started researching this reference number 3 years ago. One thing I still haven't found a definitive answer to concerns the bracelet of the watch.
I and was able to study ~30 watches (simultaneously listed watches on Chrono24, watches for sale by dealers and counting my own watch that I own) over these past years and found following bracelet refs:
96660
17000B
17000
When my research started, I found that many people only believed that the 96660 was the "true" bracelet for this watch. What I soon started figuring out was that this was not what the models on offer were representing. A mere third had this bracelet reference, with the other two types equally distributed. That means that if the 96660 was the true bracelet, it would mean that over 60% were damaged over time and changed during service.
Given that the bracelet is very sturdy it was not a watch that was used for diving etc I find it hard to believe that over 60% of these were changed during service. Also, given that only ~1500 watches were produced, I think Rolex used whatever they had on hand and didn't specifically produced an exclusive bracelet for this very transitional reference.
What do you think?
What reference is mounted on your 1530?
There are other things such as the placement/size of the tritium pearls that we can discuss.
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