1016 " space dweller " at auctio

[carwashchris]

Hammer at 190k usd in nyc a few hours ago. Wow

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[TuRo]

Jeez that's crackpottery... Ps Wonder if Jose has photos of the 3 loose SpaceDweller dials sold at auction a while back compared to this one ;-)

[pereztroika]

Originally Posted by TuRo

Jeez that's crackpottery... Ps Wonder if Jose has photos of the 3 loose SpaceDweller dials sold at auction a while back compared to this one ;-)

This would make a great Christmas story but unfortunately I don't have those photos. Where can I find them?

Cheers
Jose

[77T]

Originally Posted by pereztroika

This would make a great Christmas story but unfortunately I don't have those photos. Where can I find them?

Cheers
Jose

https://www.phillips.com/detail/rolex/NY080223/23


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[pereztroika]

A quick search shows there is no clear case number pattern. The known examples are all over the place:

- 90x,xxx (Menta watches)
- 1,041,729 (Christie's 2006)
- 1,284,906 (Christie's 2020)
- 1,734,971 (Phillips 2023)


Cheers
Jose

[77T]

Ah - I think I misunderstood the photos you sought. It was the sale of the 3 dials instead of what I posted.

Having spare dials floating around means one could make up a space dweller from many different case numbers.


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[TuRo]

Originally Posted by pereztroika

This would make a great Christmas story but unfortunately I don't have those photos. Where can I find them?

Cheers
Jose

Took some finding but here you are....over to you Sherolex Holmes

https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?q...st&tab=objects

[pereztroika]

Originally Posted by TuRo

Took some finding but here you are....over to you Sherolex Holmes

https://www.sothebys.com/en/search?q...st&tab=objects

And... we've got a perfect match:




https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions...4/lot.108.html

At least the 90x,xxx watch is without a doubt made-up. The official story of this watch is that it came from the son of the Japanese ambassador to Venezuela


Cheers
Jose

[Mark020]

+1!

Intruiging that there also appears to be some kind of mold on the outer ring

[TuRo]

Originally Posted by pereztroika

And... we've got a perfect match:




https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions...4/lot.108.html

At least the 90x,xxx watch is without a doubt made-up. The official story of this watch is that it came from the son of the Japanese ambassador to Venezuela


Cheers
Jose

Brilliant and we have 3 dots running through the 12 too, a dot on the bottom of 9, top right of 3 and some tritium overrun on the front of the middle prong of 3 and the left side of the 6 too !!! As you say 100% match and the fungus mould just 15 years of wearing / storing in non airtight case perhaps eg crown left out....

Auction house are swines...what a jug of arse-gravy their description probably is - merely a humble 1016 Explorer zhuzhed-up

Well done sir (with a little help from Watson-TuRo)

ps a select few have the Rolex serial number FACTORY SRL GROUPING DATABASE - If Tommy or Haywood are passing by, your thought please on the serial range (eg range of a 'cooking' 1016 !?) if you'd be so kind Gents.

[offrdmania]

Originally Posted by Mark020

+1!

Intruiging that there also appears to be some kind of mold on the outer ring

Humidity intrusion, probably when it was slapped together in the back office of the auction house

[MrBlobby]

Good spot!

How do we know that it didn’t already have a space dweller dial but that it was swapped over for a better looking space dweller dial?

Would that be an issue? I suppose it would be nice to then have both dials and for the seller to declare what they had done?

Also if you have the loose space dweller dials then what are you meant to do with them?

[MrBlobby]

Hold on….we’re saying the watch on Menta matches one of the dials
https://mentawatches.com/product/rol...ller-explorer/

We’re not saying we have a match yet on the phillips sale?

[CarlOver]

Originally Posted by offrdmania

Humidity intrusion, probably when it was slapped together in the back office of the auction house

Or forced “patina” to make it look older and help support the story of it being quite old.

This whole cobbling up of watches is amazing. And shameful. And amazing that they make it into these auctions with sketchy stories. Ben Clymer just talked about this watch a few days ago. He has one. I wonder if his is cobbled.

Looking at the spread of serial numbers, is it likely that Rolex actually made the watches and released them spread out over time as the serial numbers suggest? Or the cobblers just grabbed an old case and went to work?

[MrBlobby]

Interesting because the in watch dial has browned in the photo.

Here is it listed in 2016 for $85k

https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/br...august-12-2016

And menta discussing it four months ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK9ZDkJY2Bs

He makes an interesting comment about 12 space dwellers and not being able to confirm it with Rolex.

[1675-David]

Originally Posted by pereztroika

At least the 90x,xxx watch is without a doubt made-up. The official story of this watch is that it came from the son of the Japanese ambassador to Venezuela


Cheers
Jose

I hear he is bigly into watch modding...

[MrBlobby]

I think it would be wrong to assume menta swapped the dial. Here is the same watch? In Amsterdam.

https://hairspring.com/finds/space-d...olex-explorer/

Asking 135k euros.

Dial sold in Geneva in 2008.

Full watch offered for sale in 2016, 2022, and more recently at menta.

[MrBlobby]

Here is what happened to another of the 4 Sotheby dials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=TlQE-r8WKAY

Probably https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions...4/lot.107.html

And this one seems to have aged in the case too.

[77T]

Originally Posted by pereztroika

And... we've got a perfect match:




https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions...4/lot.108.html

At least the 90x,xxx watch is without a doubt made-up. The official story of this watch is that it came from the son of the Japanese ambassador to Venezuela


Cheers
Jose

Jose
An anomaly though?

It appears that the watch’s SWISS - T < 25 ink is the same color as the chapter ring vs. the color on the bare dial that has SWISS - T < 25 in white?

All other ink colors seem to match: Silver/gray SPACE-DWELLER, 2-line OCSC, coronet, etc. The dial appears to have 4 tamping steps: white ink, chapter ring, SPACE-DWELLER, and mis-registered lume material for plots & Arabics


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[MrBlobby]

I think the photo is tweaked or compressed. You can see the more white appearance in the menta listing.
https://mentawatches.com/product/rol...ller-explorer/

See the same photo in the hoodinkee article:
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/br...august-12-2016

You can see that the T Swiss is lighter than the outside of the minute markers.

[logo]

Originally Posted by 77T

Jose
An anomaly though?

It appears that the watch’s SWISS - T < 25 ink is the same color as the chapter ring vs. the color on the bare dial that has SWISS - T < 25 in white?

All other ink colors seem to match: Silver/gray SPACE-DWELLER, 2-line OCSC, coronet, etc. The dial appears to have 4 tamping steps: white ink, chapter ring, SPACE-DWELLER, and mis-registered lume material for plots & Arabics


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I’d suspect it’s just a saturation/exposure issue. Here they are side by side, the black is deeper black on the left, and the yellows seem more yellow and the Rolex text is yellow vs white. I can wash out the cream patina and silver text on my explorer to look white pretty easy if I over expose it.

[77T]

Very possible.

All of Jose’s other data comports.


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[carwashchris]

Wow, when I started this post, I had no idea, these were so rare. I just figured it was a 40k 1016 with a rare dial but not a 150k dial.

Great read guys. Thanks

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[rootbeer7]

Paul & Jose, what a tag team..

[TuRo]

Originally Posted by MrBlobby

Here is what happened to another of the 4 Sotheby dials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=TlQE-r8WKAY

Probably https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions...4/lot.107.html

And this one seems to have aged in the case too.

That's helpful Mr B thanks and the interesting bit of blurb about history/dates of Space Dweller in the video.

So only 2 to account for, perhaps before they end up in the lap of the wealthy, lazy and gullible popinjay auction attendees.

Interesting if anyone can state whether the Menta piece (and other SRL no's J stated ) were in std 1016 serial no range.

* I take your point about the watch selling a couple of times with that dial in-situ before this auction, to be fair to the Auction House *

As a general observation, it seems to me that many of the high ticket auction pieces are dubious as hell, as Jose has to point out far to often. The poor saps who have bought this stuff at auction will be buried in the watch as the info is so readily available on line and hence will be flagged by wary auction watchers.

Indeed, to answer your other point, nothing wrong with using the dials if transparent as the owner in Video has rightly done.

It's just when an auction house does no due diligence and / or works up a cock-and-bull history to puff up a sale of a particular piece, that it's, imho, shiversomely dodgy behaviour and that happens it seems pretty frequently.

[MrBlobby]

Unless I’m reading it wrong I don’t believe we have linked the space dweller at Phillips to any of the dials sold at sothebys.

Jose has picked out one of the dials from sothebys and matched it to a watch that menta has sold, which was previously offered by Amsterdam vintage watches and may have been offered by other dealers. I do not believe that watch has appeared at auction.

There is also the YouTube video where a second space dweller has been created from a dial sold at auction.

I’m not sure if we have been able to draw any conclusions about the space dweller sold at Phillips other than it wasn’t cheap!

Putting a space dweller dial in to an age appropriate case seems like a reasonable use to me. I do agree that it should be disclosed. Also the fact that a space dweller dial has ended up in a watch doesn’t mean that the watch didn’t start out as space dweller however unlikely that is.

[marawl]

Let's look at things from a slightly different perspective for a moment. Let's say the 3-4 dials sold at Sotheby's in 2008 have (or will) make it into other era-correct 1016 cases. That simply increases the total space-dwellers from what, 12 to 16? Or from 20 to 24? Compare any of those figures to the thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of Explorers produced by Rolex. To me the real question is not so much is this a "cobbled" space-dweller, but rather did Rolex ever produce the space-dweller dial in such limited numbers, or is the whole space-dweller dial an after-the-fact invention. Given that we know space-dweller dials existed at least 15 years ago, I lean to the former. But who knows ...

[linesiders]

Oooooh - good hunting

[MrBlobby]

It looks like Jose has an article coming soon on space dwellers. I look forward to that.

[baumare]

Nice that all started here from an innocent comment,
Good job TuRo for "feeding" the Shark ...(Josè)