Rolex, one of the most recognizable luxury brands in the world, crafted a legacy based upon the marriage of two relatively simple yet hugely important technologies: Namely, the Oyster case and the Perpetual automatic movement with 360-degree winding rotor. It was the simple watches that resulted from this marriage—the Oyster Perpetual itself, the Explorer, the Submariner, and others —that cemented the brand’s reputation as a maker of reliable, robust, and highly accurate tool watches. Nevertheless, Rolex did dip its toes into more complicated watchmaking in the mid-20th century: From chronographs such as the refs. 4113 and 3525 to the triple-calendar moonphase ref. 8171 and Oyster-cased ref. 6062, these creations have become hugely collectible pieces—but no small part of that collectability stems from their rarity, and from the fact that Rolex largely stopped making such complicated fare by the 1950s. But the Swiss marque had a trick up its sleeve—a model simpler..
