Rolexopedia:About: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 21:37, 28 September 2026

About this project

Rolexopedia is an independent, non-commercial hobby project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Rolex SA; "Rolex" and the model names used here are trademarks of their owners and appear only to identify the watches being described.

Rolexopedia records the history and construction of Rolex watches in one place. The site is written for collectors who need a reference they can check, rather than sales copy or a news feed. Coverage is expanding family by family; some pages remain incomplete.

How this is built

Claims in Rolexopedia articles are tied to named sources. These include Rolex material, books such as the Vintage Rolex Field Manual, auction catalogues from Phillips, Sotheby's, and Christie's, specialist archives, and documented collector research. When sources disagree, the article identifies the disagreement. When the record is incomplete, it says so.

Where the evidence allows, articles use the same structure: core specifications, production outline, movement notes, dial map, case and bezel details, bracelet fitment, special branches, and market context. That makes a page easier to check while keeping uncertainty visible.

Contribute

The project accepts careful corrections, sources, and photographs.

Improve an article: check the sources and edit the page when you can make a claim clearer or more accurate
Bring sources: auction results, dealer archives, and published research are useful when they support a specific claim
Upload photos: images of watches you own are welcome; see the image policy first
Flag errors: report a wrong attribution, date, specification, or image so it can be checked

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-|title=About BezelBase
+|title=About Rolexopedia
-|description=How BezelBase is built — methodology, sourcing standards, and how to contribute.
+|description=How Rolexopedia is built — methodology, sourcing standards, and how to contribute.
-|keywords=BezelBase, about, methodology, contribute, watch reference
+|keywords=Rolexopedia, about, methodology, contribute, watch reference
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 == About this project ==
-BezelBase is a hobby project with a simple ambition: capture the historical record of Rolex watches in one place, as thoroughly and honestly as possible. Not a blog, not a dealer site — just a reference, built by enthusiasts who keep falling deeper into the details and figured other people might want to read what they found.
+Rolexopedia is an independent, non-commercial hobby project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Rolex SA; "Rolex" and the model names used here are trademarks of their owners and appear only to identify the watches being described.
-The long-term goal is to cover every Rolex family.
+Rolexopedia records the history and construction of Rolex watches in one place. The site is written for collectors who need a reference they can check, rather than sales copy or a news feed. Coverage is expanding family by family; some pages remain incomplete.
 == How this is built ==
-BezelBase articles are original writing — researched, cross-referenced, and structured from scratch. We study the same primary material any serious collector would: Rolex documentation, published reference books, auction catalogues, and decades of discussion across the watch collecting community. We then distill that into a single narrative for each reference, verifying claims across multiple sources and flagging contradictions rather than hiding them.
+Claims in Rolexopedia articles are tied to named sources. These include Rolex material, books such as the Vintage Rolex Field Manual, auction catalogues from Phillips, Sotheby's, and Christie's, specialist archives, and documented collector research. When sources disagree, the article identifies the disagreement. When the record is incomplete, it says so.
-A lot of Rolex knowledge lives in the heads of serious collectors and experienced watchmakers — shared in passing on forums, mentioned in conversation at watch fairs, or buried in threads that get fewer views than they deserve. We try to capture those facts before they disappear and bring them together in one place. The goal is to go deeper than the usual overview articles — into the odd references, the short-run experiments, the dial variants that only matter to people who actually care. Rolex's history is more interesting than its current catalog, so there is a deliberate emphasis on documenting vintage and transitional models in detail rather than building an exhaustive list of every modern reference.
+Where the evidence allows, articles use the same structure: core specifications, production outline, movement notes, dial map, case and bezel details, bracelet fitment, special branches, and market context. That makes a page easier to check while keeping uncertainty visible.
-Every article follows the same architecture: core specifications, production outline, movement notes, dial map, case and bezel details, bracelet fitment, special branches, and market context. Each carries a source list at the bottom identifying the publications and researchers whose published work informed the article.
-== Acknowledgments ==
-The watch collecting community has spent decades building a body of knowledge that no single person could have assembled alone. Much of what appears on BezelBase exists because collectors, forum members, dealers, and independent researchers did the original work — photographing their watches, documenting dial variations, debating serial ranges, and sharing hard-won insights in places that were never designed for permanent archiving.
-Forum threads get buried. Websites go offline. Photobucket breaks its links. Dealer archives disappear when a business closes. The research persists only as long as someone remembers where to find it. Part of what BezelBase does is preserve that work — gathering scattered findings into a single, structured, and properly attributed reference so that the knowledge these contributors built does not quietly vanish.
-Every article carries a source list that names the people and publications whose research informed it. Where an individual collector's original analysis shaped a section — Mark Lerman's Red Submariner primer, Beaumont Miller II's matte dial taxonomy, Tomvox's Maxi dial research, Marcello Pisani's coronet classification, Ed Delgado's Pre COMEX identification — they are credited by name. Where photographs from collectors, forum posts, or reference sites appear, they are used in the spirit of preservation and attribution, not appropriation.
-If your work appears here and you would like it credited differently, expanded, corrected, or removed, please email us at '''contact@bezelbase.org'''. The people who built this knowledge base deserve to have their contributions recognized properly, and we take that seriously.
 == Contribute ==
-This is an open project. If any of this interests you, there is plenty of work to do.
+The project accepts careful corrections, sources, and photographs.
-* '''Improve an article''' — every page is a working draft; click ''Edit source'' and make it better
+* '''Improve an article''': check the sources and edit the page when you can make a claim clearer or more accurate
-* '''Bring sources''' — auction results, dealer archives, published research, anything that strengthens a claim or fills a gap
+* '''Bring sources''': auction results, dealer archives, and published research are useful when they support a specific claim
-* '''Upload photos''' — images of watches you own are welcome (see the [[BezelBase:Image policy|image policy]])
+* '''Upload photos''': images of watches you own are welcome; see the [[Rolexopedia:Image policy|image policy]] first
-* '''Flag errors''' — if something is wrong, say so; getting it right matters more than getting it finished
+* '''Flag errors''': report a wrong attribution, date, specification, or image so it can be checked
 </div>
-[[Category:BezelBase]]
+[[Category:Rolexopedia]]