As we gather to celebrate American Thanksgiving and generally end the year on a high note, mind your p-words around your non-watch friends and family. We’re talking about patina and provenance. While these p-words roll off our tongues and keyboards with little hesitation, to people who are not watch-pilled, they can be a bit jarring. The easiest way to tell on yourself and your journey from someone with cool replica watches for sale to someone who spends a lot of time talking to people they know only by username, is to comment on how the turkey skin resembles your 1950s Rolex Bubbleback’s gorgeous dial patina.
Consider this a safe space, somewhere to share all your provenance and patina thoughts before the big days right around the corner. Provenance is harder to come by but, have no fear, the Hodinkee vintage drop this week features enough patina to fill a gravy boat. The team takes their picks with Rich Fordon focusing on a 1987 AP Royal Oak with plenty of graceful aging, Sean Egan takes us through uncommon perfect fake Rolex Oyster Perpetual Date watches with a dial patina that borders on “tropical,” and Saori Omura brings Gérald Genta’s Universal Genève to the table.
1987 Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Day Date With Moonphase Ref. 25594 Replica Watches
Did I just write about best Audemars Piguet replica watches in last week’s Vintage Watches article? Yes. Did I somewhat discount the Royal Oak in that article? Also, yes – now let me clarify. AP is more than the time-only Royal Oak, in any reference. Let’s just go ahead and link to the same classic Hodinkee article and video I surfaced last Wednesday – Historical Perspectives: Inside The Archives Of Audemars Piguet. The cheap UK copy watches shown in this piece from 2014 represent the core of AP before the Royal Oak in 1972 – precious metals, complicated, made in small numbers, and so, so elegantly designed.
Just like the ref. 25574 that we offered last week, this Royal Oak Day Date With Moonphase hits all the right notes for me. As shown in the Historical Perspectives video, AP has a long history of calendar complications. Therefore, it was only right that in 1983, a day and date was the first complication to be featured in the mid-sized, 36mm case diameter, Royal Oak. Two years later in 1985, this 1:1 UK replica watches, the ref. 25594 was introduced, adding a moonphase to the mix with the caliber 2825 inside. The complication layout on the dial is really well executed as are the fonts which are restrained enough so as to not draw too much attention. In this example, the case and bracelet steal the show more so than on your standard Royal Oak because of the warm, almost rose gold-esque patina – even with the dial complications. In my view, the case and bracelet are absolutely unpolished.
A few smaller, possibly overlooked details of this AAA wholesale super clone watches that are catching my eye include the earlier “block font” Audemars Piguet signature and the creamy dial texture. With the gold case, bracelet, and dial furniture, the warm cream dial tone is a nice change of pace, slightly breaking up the all-gold look and harder-to-find in the vintage market today. Get all the details on this “not your father’s Royal Oak” right here.
1977 Rolex Oyster Perpetual Date Ref. 1530 Fake Watches
When I was working in a retail watch shop, a question I got more than once was, “Rolexes don’t tick, right?” and it took me a while to come up with what I thought was a satisfactory answer. The best I could come up with was: “no, modern Rolex watches do not tick.” As enthusiasts, we know that while top Rolex replica watches made several different models that did in fact tick over the years, but I wasn’t about to drag unexpecting shoppers through a history of the Tru-Beat and Oysterquartz. Every once and a little while someone would volunteer to listen to my rants, and I would hope that their eyes wouldn’t glaze over.
That rant was what I thought I was going to share until I took a closer look at the watch we have today. The legend told about the luxury replica Rolex Oyster Perpetual Ref. 1530 watches is that the Crown had started development of the Beta 21 quartz movement, and wanted to put this movement in a new case. However, they’d finished designing the case before the movement could be completed to their satisfaction, so they decided to load up their new case with their Datejust movement and make some China fake watches in the meantime. Given Rolex’s tight-lipped nature we’ll likely never know if this is the truth or just watch nerd apocrypha. This story does seem all the more likely given the very short (two-ish year) production run of the 1530 and after 1977 we only see this case fitted with quartz movements.