Reference Points: The Rolex Sea-Dweller

[Music] today we're back at her dinky headquarters for another episode of reference points and today we're not talking about the Samara but instead the sea-dweller from Rolex with us is Louie westfalen our vintage watch expert so Louie tell us a little bit about the the sea-dweller so you mentioned the Submariner the sidwa is kind of like an incredible Submariner because it was aimed at going twice as deep as the same marina so you're taking one of the best dive watches ever made and you're making it twice better in a way so if you could let's walk through a little bit of the the lineage of the sea-dweller sure so the the seed oil has started with the reference one six six five it's also called often the double red sea-dweller because the first dials add those two red lines that's not exactly correct in the sense that you had some now they're considered more prototypes with a single red line those are extremely rare and expensive yes definitely and on the case back there is a difference with the single red where you see patent pending and the double red sidwell where you see Rolex patents because Rolex had applied for the patent in 1967 and you know at the time it had not been granted and so to be clear there are some double red sea dwellers that are also patent pending so any watch made in 1967 or early 1968 whether it's single red or double red could say pad yeah and what's interesting with the double red Sidora you have a lot of dye variation collectors counted up to seven it also includes the service times and so you'll often see when you're looking at sea dwellers online it'll say mark one mark - mark three mark 4 this is as Louie mentioned kind of the most wide range of different dilation of any Rolex really you know we've seen mark 1 and mark 2 Paul Newman Daytona's this goes well beyond that into inter mark 7 there to me feels like a little much yeah small differences that make a difference in the end and I think you see something really characteristic of the seed oil going forward the lack of cyclop you see the date but no cyclop - to emphasize it and one thing also is this silver silver date discs that would last until the next generation then you actually stay with the reference 166 five but you're going to a watch that's called the great white it's the same type of case and the very difference besides the the white writing is the disappearance of the Submariner mm on the dial so suddenly you really have the rise of a complete line it's a totally new model exactly right so similarly with the 1680 which is the date Submariner which is certainly a more understood reference you have the the red submariners around the same family of the double red sea dwellers and then that also transition to what exactly and then you move to a reference that changes everything reference one six six six zero it's nicknamed the triple six from the reference number and it's really the leap into modernity for me it's introduced in 1978 and you see it's completely different in form factor but you still have you know the mad dial painted the indexes at least in the beginning but figure case much video Allium valve and that's the big change the sapphire crystal it's not the first Rolex watch to have a sapphire crystal but it's among the first ones and it changes things in the way that if you add both the deft writing just double it's a watch that in the end changed to lhasa dials as well with white gold surround so you can find this reference with both exactly similarly to the 55 13 which you can write yes and it's interesting too I know it's crucial to know the difference and the timing basic leader changes around 8.5 million in serial so 84 because the service tiles also Dossi which is called surround so any triple six that you have with the glossy dial and gold surrounds that's before 84 that's basically service time and there are many of those and so to me like this is modernity because if you compare to to what has been brought up after the changes are not that big especially if you go to the next reference 1 6600 which was introduced at the end of the 80s and one of the longest standing Sidwell I ever made you cannot have the same type of case same type of dial same depth writing it's a bit more modern and you know I then it gets the upgrade in luminous so it goes from tritium to lumen over to super-luminova but you know it looks fairly similar the really big change that happened was this big guy this is the reference one one six six six zero it's a seed wallah but it's also a deep sea and deep sea refers to alter the prototypes made by Rolex in the early 50s through the 60s and those watches went really really deep up to like 3,000 meters the first time 10,000 meters a second but they were not worn they were put on the side of submarines exactly so it doesn't look like any others see Dwolla it's much bigger you're talking about a diameter that went from 40 millimeters to 44 the thickness is almost double I would say it was released first in 2008 with a black dial and then in 2014 was released with a deep blue dial to commemorate James Cameron dive that said the sea dweller like this simple Scylla never really disappeared from the Rolex liner in the sense that it came back in 2014 with a reference one one six six zero zero so from 2008 to 2014 there was not a traditional sea dweller in the catalog no there was the bigger the big the bigger exactly the big boy and then this one came up and gathered a lot of excitement at first it's pretty much the modern evolution we went back to a 40 millimeter diameter but it gets the ceramic bezel and video indexes upgraded luminous material so it's very much like the modern the modern sea Dwolla it gathered a lot of interest in when it was launched also because the lugs were thinner than on the regular Submariner so it really kept the form factor of the whole lineup of the Scylla then something happened it was discontinued to give way to the very new sidwa reference one two six six zero zero that had a lot of changes the most obvious one is the cycle which had never been in any till then the case got bigger not as big as forty four but forty three millimeter and in that sense it kind of like departed from all the seed water that we've looked at so far that said there is also something that ties it back to the very first seed Walla that's the single red line the one we had mentioned about the prototype its back and it's it's a nod from from Rolex about you know the whole history and it's a nice note because we're talking about a watch that's exactly 50 years old it's also bigger - it's more distinctive in comparison to the Submariner and I think this is where the sea-dweller was struggling traditionally it's an amazing watch as a tool watch it's it's really the watch you want if you're diving in saturation diving situations but at the same time like both on you will never do that and yourself maybe so the the Samarin air we've seen on the wrists of James Bond a few times on the wrists of actors models things like that the Samara is a part of our cultural DNA you know people know the Samara even if you don't know watches at all the sea dweller is not that the sea dwellers something else it is as I've said before arguably one of the least commercial products they make they don't make that many of them because people just don't buy that many of them it is something that represents the other side of Rolex so there's the commercial side which is selling the two-tone date just to every mom in suburbia and then you also have this side where they are truly innovating and pushing things forward in a way that almost no other commercial watch brand does so the sea dweller represents kind of the pinnacle of engineering as well as kind of this niche niche flexible world yeah definitely it's 50 years of focus it's incredible to think you know saturation diving has been around but like they've spent 50 years improving step by step to make sure that a couple of people who are doing it yet the best instruments possible [Music]

Channel: Hodinkee

Views: 317,447

Keywords: HODINKEE, HODINKEE Reference Points, Rolex Sea-Dweller, Reference Points Rolex Sea-Dweller, Rolex, Sea-Dweller, Rolex 1665 Double Red, Rolex 1665 Great White, Rolex 16660 Triple Six, Rolex 16600, Rolex 116660 Deepsea, Rolex Deepsea, Rolex 116600, Rolex 126600

Id: Xc-8UlBqOyM

Length: 8min 40sec (520 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2017