Reference:1002: Difference between revisions

The 1002 is the plain-bezel member of the 4-digit no-date Oyster Perpetual line and the reference the rest of the group is measured against. It shares its 34mm Oyster case, 19mm lugs, screw-down back and crown, acrylic crystal and chronometer-rated automatic with the engine-turned [[Reference:1007|1007]] and the fluted [[Reference:1005|1005]]. What it does differently is nothing at all. The surround is a polished band with no milling and no flutes, and Rolex sold it that way from around 1959 into the 1980s, which makes it the longest-running and the most common of the four.

Its number does more work than its bezel. Rolex stamped 1002 inside the casebacks of steel cases across the family, the Air-King [[Reference:5500|5500]] included, so the mark turns up on watches whose dials and bezels have nothing to do with this reference. Houses have catalogued 1002-cased watches as Air-Kings, as Explorers, and once, on a caliber 620 pink-gold watch that cannot be a 1002 at all, as a Bubbleback. The 5500 Explorer is the one steel sibling that mostly escapes this: it typically carries its own 5500-stamped caseback rather than the shared 1002 stamping, though documented exceptions exist on early examples from before about 1970. Reading a 1002 starts with understanding that the number identifies a case rather than a watch.

| c.1959 into the 1980s

| stainless steel; 14k and 18k yellow gold; 18k pink gold; 9k gold for the British market, catalogued 1002/8; steel with a gold bezel

| caliber 1530 on the earliest examples, then caliber 1560 (to c.1965), then caliber 1570

| screw-down, inside stamped 1002 on steel cases and 1005 on gold, with a Roman-quarter date code

The 4-digit no-date Oyster Perpetuals are one watch offered with a choice of bezel. The 1002 takes the smooth polished surround. The 1003, 1006, 1007 and 1008 take engine-turned bezels of varying patterns, and the [[Reference:1005|1005]] takes the fluted bezel, which in this family is always cast in gold. Everything behind the bezel is common property: the 34mm three-body case, the drilled 19mm lugs, the Twinlock crown, the acrylic crystal, the chronometer-rated no-date automatic.

Two neighbours matter more than the siblings. The [[Reference:5500|5500]] Air-King is the same 34mm case fitted with a non-chronometer caliber and Air-King dial text, sold at a lower price; the case-middle tooling is shared, which is why 5500 casebacks from the late 1960s onward carry a 1002 stamp. The [[Reference:1018|1018]] is the 36mm version of the same idea, and its case is the one the Explorer [[Reference:1016|1016]] is built on. The 1002 sits at the volume end of that spread. It was the ordinary Rolex, the one bought as a first good watch and worn for thirty years, and the survival rate reflects it.

Rolex published no production figure for the 1002 and no dated catalogue page fixes its introduction. Caliber 1560 entered production in 1959, which sets the practical start of the run, and the earliest documented case number sits right on it: 487,864, a pink-gold example Artcurial has catalogued twice, dating it circa 1966 in 2016 and circa 1976 in 2021. Neither date agrees with the serial, and the serial is the better guide.

The middle of the run is densely documented. Bonhams catalogued a caliber 1530 example bought on 3 September 1962 with its receipt, guarantee card and swing tag intact. Case number 1,047,802 is dated by Christie's to circa 1964 and case number 1,354,811 to circa 1966. Case number 1,678,569 came with a Bureaux Suisses chronometer certificate dated 9 February 1968, the tightest date anchor on the reference. Case numbers around 2,190,000 reach 1970, 2,818,213 carries a caseback stamped III.71 inside, and 2,981,934 is catalogued circa 1972.

The end of the run is where the sources part company. Case number 4,710,813 is catalogued circa 1976 and case number 5,218,806 as 1977 to 1978. Artcurial dated case number 8,024,591 to circa 1983. Sotheby's Hong Kong went further and catalogued an L-prefix example, case number L962520, as circa 1989, which would put it years after caliber 1570 left production and after every other account closes the reference. The L-serial watch is the outlier in the record and no second late example has surfaced to support it.

Three calibers appear in documented 1002s. Caliber 1530 turns up on the earliest examples: Bonhams catalogued a 26-jewel 1530, movement number D675858, in a 1002 sold in September 1962, and a matching 1530 in a [[Reference:1003|1003]] carrying a chronometer certificate dated December 1960. The Watch-Wiki caliber concordance does not list the 1002 against the 1530, giving it only to the 5500 family, so the two Bonhams lots stand against the published table rather than beside it.

Caliber 1560 is the movement of the reference's first decade, a rhodium-plated automatic of 25 or 26 jewels beating at 18,000 vph, adjusted to temperature and five positions, with a free-sprung balance carrying Microstella screws and a self-compensating Breguet balance spring. The earliest examples run the butterfly rotor. Caliber 1570 takes over from 1965 and lifts the rate to 19,800 vph with a power reserve near 48 hours; the architecture is otherwise unchanged. Hacking seconds arrived across the 1500 family in 1972, which splits late 1002s from everything before. Chronometer certification is the reason the dial carries the Superlative Chronometer Officially Certified line, and it is what separates the 1002 from the Air-King running on the same case. The [[Reference:Movements|movement reference]] holds the full lineage.

No 4-digit Oyster Perpetual carries as many documented dials as the 1002, which follows from the length of the run and the number of markets it was sold into. The pattern across the record is straightforward: steel cases take silvered, white, grey and blue dials, gold cases take champagne, gilt and gloss black, and the special dials are corporate, retailer or regional commissions rather than factory catalogue options.

Two entries deserve a caution. The black 3-6-9 dial with Mercedes hands is an Explorer configuration in a 34mm case, and Bonhams offered the watch twice, in November 2020 and February 2021, without selling it either time; a genuine factory Explorer-dial 1002 has not been established, and one unsold lot is a lead rather than a variant. The Antiquorum sale of a loose so-called Zephyr dial catalogued for ref 1002/1008 shows the dial existed for this case group, but no complete Zephyr-dial 1002 has appeared at a major house.

Refinishing is the default assumption on anything unusual. Custom-coloured dials circulate on the whole 100x group, and a colour that appears on no other documented example is more likely a repaint than a discovery.

The case is a three-body Oyster in a tonneau profile, brushed and polished, 34mm across the bezel and around 12mm thick, with a screw-down caseback and Twinlock screw-down crown and drilled 19mm lugs. Catalogue measurements wander: houses have given the same case as 33mm, 33.5mm, 34mm, 35mm and, in one Antiquorum lot, 35.5mm. The 34mm figure is the one that agrees with the bulk of the record and with the [[Reference:5500|5500]] that shares the tooling.

The bezel is a plain polished band, fixed, with no timing scale and no engine-turning. On gold and two-tone examples it is gold and slightly wider in appearance, and Gros Delettrez catalogued a steel 1002 with a gold bezel in 1966, so the two-tone configuration is documented despite the reference being usually described as steel-only. Case material otherwise spreads further than the group's reputation suggests: stainless steel is the volume production, 14k and 18k yellow gold are both common, 18k pink gold appears from 1959, and the British market took 9-carat cases that Bonhams catalogued under the paired designation 1002/8.

Two numbers identify the watch and they do not have to match. The reference engraved between the lugs names the bezel variant; the number stamped inside the caseback names the case-middle tooling. Across the documented lots, steel cases carry 1002 inside and gold cases carry 1005, which is why Sotheby's found a 1005 stamp inside a 14k gold watch it catalogued as a 1002 and why Rolex's own paired designations read 1002/1005, 1002/1008, 1003/1002 and 1005/1035. A Roman-quarter date code sits alongside the stamp and should agree with the serial band.

Christie's sold a steel 1002 in Dubai in October 2021 carrying the signature of Sheikh Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah printed in black across the lower dial, under the applied markers and above the chronometer line. The watch dates to about 1967, runs caliber 1570 and came with product literature, its certificate of guarantee, the COSC certificate for its original movement, the presentation box, a hang tag and the 1989 Rolex service invoice. It is the strongest 1002 result located and the clearest documented example of the Gulf-market personalised dials that Rolex supplied through the 1960s. Antiquorum sold a second Arabic-dial steel 1002, case number 1,678,614, in Hong Kong in 2017.

Coca-Cola gave gold Oyster Perpetuals to employees marking twenty-five years of service, and the programme ran across the whole 100x group rather than one reference. On the 1002 the configuration is a 14k yellow gold case under the paired designation 1002/1005, a silvered dial printed with the Coca-Cola script and the 25 Years Service line, and a caseback engraved with the recipient's name. Christie's Dubai sold one in December 2019 engraved "L. Penasse, April 21, 1966" with its guarantee, a bulletin de marche dated 30 June 1966 and its box; Sotheby's Geneva had sold the same watch, case number 1,354,811, five years earlier. The [[Reference:1003|1003]] and the [[Reference:1005|1005]] carry their own versions of the same award.

Christie's catalogued a steel 1002, case number 2,818,213, circa 1971, with a silvered brushed dial carrying an American Heritage logo and a "$3000" designation, the caseback stamped III.71 inside. The dollar figure is a sales-award threshold rather than a price, and the watch is the clearest documented corporate-award 1002 outside the Coca-Cola group.

Bonhams catalogued a 1976 steel watch as "Model: Air-King, Reference: 1002", silvered dial, Jubilee bracelet, and sold it for more than most chronometer-dial 1002s of the same year. These are Air-King watches in the shared case rather than 1002s with the wrong dial, and the [[Reference:5500|5500]] entry covers the case-sharing in full. The practical consequence for a buyer is that a 1002 stamp inside a caseback proves nothing about what is on the dial.

The 1002 trades in the low thousands as a rule, often without reserve and usually in general watch sales rather than dedicated vintage Rolex auctions. Condition and completeness move the number more than metal does: a steel example with its box, guarantee and chronometer certificate beats a bare gold one often enough to be a pattern. Above that band sit the dials that carry a story. The Al-Sabah watch, the Coca-Cola awards and the gold blue-dial examples reach five figures, and the two strongest results on record are both dials rather than cases.

* [[Reference:1003|Oyster Perpetual 1003]] — 34mm, engine-turned bezel

* [[Reference:1005|Oyster Perpetual 1005]] — 34mm, fluted gold bezel

* [[Reference:1007|Oyster Perpetual 1007]] — 34mm, engine-turned bezel

* [[Reference:5500|Air-King 5500]] — the same case, non-chronometer

* [[Reference:1016|Explorer 1016]] — same calibers, 36mm Explorer dial