OysterQuartz In 1955?

[TheVTCGuy]

Ok, I'm not an Oysterquartz expert, I never owned one and really don't know much about that line of Rolexes, but I thought they were introduced maybe late 70s, early 80s(?). I was snooping around E-bay in the Rolex and Collectibles section, and came across this Item number: 170298291690

The seller claims this is an actual advertisement from a magazine in 1955, displaying the Rolex Oysterquartz. Is that possible?

[GradyPhilpott]

The ad can't date from 1955 based on some pretty obvious factors.

In 1955, there were no zip codes or area codes.

And, of course, there is the fact that the OysterQuartz was not introduced that early.

When was the Oysterquartz introduced?

The Oysterquartz first appeared at authorized Rolex retailers in the fall of 1977.

http://www.oysterquartz.net/faq.htm

[Alcan]

With almost 64,000 sales, the seller probably juxtaposed descriptions of 2 items when filling out their listings.

[padi56]

Originally Posted by TheVTCGuy

Ok, I'm not an Oysterquartz expert, I never owned one and really don't know much about that line of Rolexes, but I thought they were introduced maybe late 70s, early 80s(?). I was snooping around E-bay in the Rolex and Collectibles section, and came across this Item number: 170298291690

The seller claims this is an actual advertisement from a magazine in 1955, displaying the Rolex Oysterquartz. Is that possible?

Not possible the first quartz wrist watch movements were made in the very late 1960's by a consortium of mainly Swiss watch companies. After making their prototypes, most of the companies decided not to pursue quartz technology any further. They soon realised that to switch from making mechanical watches to making quartz ones would require a complete re-tooling of their factories and would throw many thousands of watchmakers out of work.

But when Seiko became the first company to offer quartz watches to the public around 1969 with the Astron 35SQ movement.This almost killed of the Swiss mechanical watch industry and many high end Swiss brands started to release quartz models to compete with the heretic Japanese quartz on-slaught.


But there were quartz clocks for sale in the very late 1920s but it was not until the integrated circuit was invented and could be made small enough to fit inside a wrist watch that the wrist watch took of in 1969.Then the quartz watch was born the first Seiko watch was more a hybrid circuit than integrated but later when the IC was invented this was in all quartz watches.Now most of the very accurate quartz watches are Japanese some like Seiko just + - 2 seconds a year.Citizen is now the largest maker of quartz movements with Seiko second and for the Swiss ETA a strong third.

[ErikAalto]

If you look at the auction page itself, you can clearly see that the gallery item does not match the item on the main page. It was a mix-up.

See the picture that says "Lido" Christmas Cruise?

I think that's where the 1955 reference came from.