Where to Buy Rolex Oyster Perpetual Watches | High-Price Purchases | JEWEL CAFE

The history of Rolex begins in London. Today, there are around 600 watchmakers in Switzerland, many of which have been around for over 100 years. However, only a handful have continued to produce uninterrupted work. One of them is Rolex. In 1881, Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf was born in Bavaria, Germany. After losing his parents at the age of 12, he worked at Clio Conten in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, after graduating. He then found a job exporting watches to England, where he developed his business acumen and gained experience at a young age. Then, in 1903, at the age of 22, he moved to London, where two years later, in 1905, he founded Wilsdorf & Davis, the predecessor to Rolex. Five years later, in search of a "creative and easily pronounceable word for everyone in the world," the brand we all know and love today, Rolex, was named. The company then signed a supply contract with Egler, a Swiss firm specializing in precision instrument manufacturing, to supply watch movements. In 1910, the company was awarded the highest grade in the Official Swiss Accuracy Tests, and in 1914, it was awarded the highest prize at the Kew Observatory. Hans Wilsdorf's next goal was to develop a robust case to protect the movement from dust and moisture. In 1926, with the help of the Oyster Company, he developed and patented a case made of a hollow metal block with a screw-down crown. Thus was born the Oyster Case, synonymous with mechanical Rolexes that has survived to this day.

The Oyster Case's capabilities became known worldwide through an event that would soon become legendary: the crossing of the Strait of Dover by Miss Mercedes Gleitz, a London stenographer, in 1927. She achieved this feat in a record time of 15 hours and 15 minutes, wearing a Rolex Oyster on her wrist. The Rolex's continued performance under these harsh conditions demonstrated the Oyster Case's water-resistant capabilities, and this sparked a rapid development of waterproof watches throughout the watchmaking industry.

With the success of the Oyster Case, Rolex made its technology known worldwide, but their next step was to create a self-winding mechanism, a development of the so-called perpetual. In 1931, it became the first watch in the world to achieve a full 360-degree self-winding mechanism, successfully overcoming the previously problematic inefficiencies of automatic winding. This marked a major leap forward in winding efficiency and further enhanced Rolex's competence. Rolex's famous Oyster case, which housed the perpetual movement, gave birth to the Oyster Perpetual, known as the "Bubbleneck" in today's antiques market.

The rotor used to wind the mainspring was mounted in such a way that it encloses the movement, making it thicker than before. To accommodate this, the caseback expanded like a bubble, hence the name. In 1945, the Oyster Perpetual was equipped with a revolutionary new invention that gave birth to another new model, the DateJust. As its name suggests, the calendar date would change immediately at midnight, a groundbreaking mechanism at the time. Three major Rolex inventions, the Oyster case in 1926, the Perpetual movement in 1931, and the Datejust movement in 1945, marked the completion of Rolex's vision of a practical watch.