Vintage explorer

[Jblakes]

Afternoon all,

Does this look legit. Needs a clean and service but checking if all looks good.













Regards James

[Danj338]

Hands are replacement, short

[Jblakes]

How can you tell that? What does replacement mean, not rolex? Does the rest look legit?

[Tom1675]

Is that a messy crystal or dial? If you want experts to weigh in you'll need better quality photos.

[waspy1]

Originally Posted by Danj338

Hands are replacement, short

I can’t imagine them any longer without touching the rehaut.


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[Kingface66]

I'd steer clear of all 5500 "Explorers" (like this one). Set your sights on proper 1016 and be safe. Yes, while the price is much higher, there's a reason why.

As our colleague, offrdmania, commented in a post on the subject:

"The problem with the 5500 is that unless you have the original paperwork, there is no way to say that a 5500 was originally an Explorer or and Air-King. Fake Explorer dials and hands are put on 5500 Air-Kings all the time in order to increase their value."

As for those educational threads, here's a few:

https://www.rolexforums.com/showthread.php?t=545063
https://www.rolexforums.com/showthread.php?t=615462
https://www.rolexforums.com/showthread.php?t=145728

[dhknola]

What Kingface says^^
There is more chicanery involved in these '5500 explorers' than in baked to cream color explorere ii's. They pop up all the time bc they are cobbled together.

[Tomas Eriksson]

Hands is never than dial. New crown. Bracelet is also a lot younger than the watch itself.
And as been mentioned, without paperwork one should consider it to be a airking.

[Jblakes]

Thanks for getting back to me. I didnt even know you could swap out bits on airkings and explores.

Back to drawing board it seems.

Regards James

[The Thomas J]

The Air King and Explorer are basically the same watch with different dials. This is why you see a lot of mix and matching. When my Air King became waterlogged and the dial was to far gone I had an Explorer dial and hands put it. Just because I liked how it looked and I never had plans to sell the watch.

Here are my before and after pics.
The first two are after it became water damaged. The plexi had a crack in it. I went swimming and well, yea..I tend to bang my watches up a lot as you will see in the after pictures I cracked the plexi again and need to replace it. It was my daily "beater" until recently

You have to be careful when buying these pieces. If you are set on an vintage Explorer, you may be better off buying the Airking and swapping dials and Hands. This way if you decided to sell it you can have it put back the way it was. At least you know 100% what you have.





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[Haywood_Milton]

I am confident that distinguishing genuine 5500 Explorer dials -- of which there are several variants -- is quite possible to an experienced eye.

I do not believe that this is a correct dial, but the pictures of it are all slightly out of focus or blurred. Since the seller is capable of a focused image on other areas, it does make one wonder why this, though he does a couple of times, never seems to enjoy a clear and precise image.

I would avoid.

Who is the seller?