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Rolex 16613 Submariner Date

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Submariner › 16613

Rolex Submariner Date 16613LB two-tone Bluesy on its Rolex presentation box
Rolex Submariner Date 16613LB — the blue sunburst dial and blue aluminum insert that gave the reference its Bluesy nickname, on its two-tone Oyster bracelet

The 16613 is the two-tone Submariner Date of the caliber 3135 era, generally dated from 1989 to 2009. It was sold as the 16613LN with a black bezel and dial or the 16613LB with a blue bezel and blue sunburst dial, commonly called the Bluesy. During the run, Rolex changed lume materials, bracelet construction, and the inner rehaut before the Cerachrom 116613 generation replaced it.

LN and LB are Rolex suffixes for black and blue bezel configurations. Bluesy is collector shorthand for the blue-on-blue two-tone configuration.

Core facts

detail value
reference 16613 (LN = black bezel/dial, LB = blue bezel/dial)
family Submariner Date
nickname Bluesy (LB)
production 1989 to 2009 (~20 years)
movement caliber 3135, automatic, 28,800 vph, quick-set date
case 40mm, Rolesor (904L steel + 18k yellow gold), Triplock crown
crystal sapphire with Cyclops
water resistance 300m / 1000ft
bezel 18k yellow gold surround, aluminum insert (60-click unidirectional) — black on LN, blue on LB
dial black gloss with applied gold markers (LN); blue sunburst with applied gold markers (LB); Mercedes hands on both
lume tritium (early), Luminova (~1998), Super-Luminova (late)
bracelet 93153 (hollow end links) → 93253 (solid end links, ~2000)
rehaut plain (early/mid), engraved ROLEX ROLEX (~2005 onward)
predecessor 16803 (caliber 3035, 1984–1988)
successor 116613LN / 116613LB (Cerachrom, 2009–2020)

Where it sits in the line

The 16613 is the Rolesor member of the 3135-era Submariner Date trio. Rolesor is Rolex's term for steel-and-gold construction, with gold in every visible wear surface. The steel 16610 carried the widest market and ran 23 years; the 16613 carried the two-tone configuration with an 18k yellow-gold bezel, gold center links, and a gold crown and crown tube on a steel case; the full-gold 16618 was the maximum-material version of the same architecture. All three share the 40mm case and the caliber 3135 movement.

The blue dial and bezel make the LB more conspicuous than the black 16613LN. Blue and black examples can trade differently, but any price gap depends on condition, completeness, venue, and date. No fixed premium is asserted here. The LN is the quieter half, with gold in every visible position, a black gloss dial, a black aluminum insert, and the Rolesor architecture buyers have known since the 1980s.

The 116619LB Smurf is a 2008-onward blue-on-blue Submariner cased entirely in solid 18k white gold, with a blue Cerachrom insert; the 16613LB is steel and yellow gold with an aluminum insert. The similar blue colour scheme can obscure that difference in construction.

The 16613 replaced the shorter-lived 16803, which had run from roughly 1984 to 1988 on the earlier caliber 3035. The movement changed to caliber 3135, with its own regulation and technical specification; individual performance depends on condition and service history. The Cerachrom 116613LN and 116613LB succeeded it in 2009, bringing the ceramic bezel insert, Maxi case, and Glidelock-equipped 97203 bracelet that defined the next chapter of the line.

Twenty years in one reference

Specifications changed during the run. Early examples are commonly found with tritium lume, a 93153 bracelet with hollow end links, and a plain rehaut; later examples commonly have non-tritium lume, solid-end-link 93253 bracelets, and an engraved rehaut. The exact changeovers are not established by a complete Rolex serial chart. The reference number alone does not identify the parts fitted to an individual watch.

Production outline

Early production (~1989–1998)

Early watches have tritium lume (marked T SWISS T or T<25 at six o'clock), the 93153 bracelet with hollow end links and Fliplock clasp, and a plain inner rehaut. These are the tritium-era 16613 examples, and they sit visually closest to the outgoing 16803 generation.

Mid production (~1998–2005)

The dial lume moved from tritium to Luminova around 1998 and on to Super-Luminova within a year or two. The bracelet moved from 93153 to 93253 with solid end links around 2000. Published sources do not pin either changeover to a single serial band.

Late production (~2005–2009)

Late watches gained an engraved inner rehaut, with repeating ROLEX ROLEX text and the serial number at the 6 o'clock position. The feature appeared somewhere between 2005 and 2008 depending on source. Late examples share some visible features with the following 116613, but parts and service history still need individual inspection.

Movement notes

Caliber 3135 throughout the run. Quick-set date, 28,800 vph, Microstella regulation, roughly 48 hours of power reserve, COSC chronometer certification. Rolex used the same movement in the steel 16610, the full-gold 16618, the Datejust, and many other references from the late 1980s onward. The caliber number remained unchanged throughout the 16613’s run.

Later 3135 specimens received the Parachrom blue hairspring, a paramagnetic alloy more resistant to magnetic fields and temperature swing than the earlier hairspring. The exact transition point for Parachrom on the 16613 is not documented.

Dial map

Two core dial configurations run across the production span: the blue-bezel LB with a blue sunburst dial, and the black-bezel LN with a black gloss dial, both with applied gold hour markers and gold Mercedes hands. Within each suffix, auction and collector sources document standard dials, gem-set Serti configurations, and early dial forms associated with the preceding generation. The fitment and originality of any variant must be checked on the individual watch.

The lume-text branches mirror the wider Submariner family, and dial text is the fastest way to date a 16613. Early dials read T SWISS T or T<25 (tritium), which places the watch pre-1998. A brief transitional window carries SWISS only (Luminova), roughly 1998 to 2000. Late dials read SWISS MADE (Luminova then Super-Luminova), 2000 onwards.

16613LB blue dial

The 16613LB dial is blue with a radial sunburst finish, applied gold hour markers, and gold Mercedes hands. The blue changes from dark navy in low light to brighter blue in direct light. Collector and auction descriptions report differences in sunburst finish between earlier and later examples, but no complete production cutoff is published.

 
The standard 16613LB sunburst blue dial and blue aluminum bezel insert — the canonical Bluesy configuration, without the factory gem-setting shown in the gallery above.

The factory sub-variants of the LB:

  • Standard sunburst blue — the canonical 16613LB dial. Blue radial sunburst, applied gold markers, gold Mercedes hands. Tritium lume on early watches, Luminova then Super-Luminova on later examples.
  • Tropical purple — blue 16613LB dials that have oxidized over decades to a distinctly purple or plum hue. The shift is driven by long UV exposure and slow chemical aging of the blue pigment, and it is progressive and irreversible. Tropical purple dials appear either evenly across the full face or in uneven patches depending on how the watch was worn and stored. The collector market treats an even, attractive tropical purple as a desirable feature rather than a defect, consistent with the broader market for tropical vintage Rolex dials.
  • Factory Serti — silver-base gem-set dial, diamond hour markers, sapphire indices in the cardinal positions. The name comes from the French sertissage (gem-setting). Rolex set these at the factory, and a clean factory Serti carries a substantial premium over an aftermarket gem-set dial that looks similar at a glance. The blue-bezel LB Serti is the more commonly encountered configuration of the gem-set 16613.
  • Sultan dial (factory champagne Serti) — champagne base with diamond hour markers and sapphire accents, typically two baguette sapphires plus a triangular sapphire at twelve. The naming follows the collector convention used by the wider specialist trade: silver-base gem-set is "Serti", champagne-base gem-set is "Sultan". Neither name refers to the Sultanate of Oman or the Khanjar emblem, which is a separate provenance line entirely. Sultan dials are scarcer than silver Sertis and command premiums when papers and serial fall inside a coherent run.

16613LN black dial

 
The 16613LN — black gloss dial and black aluminum bezel insert, the other half of the two-tone pair alongside the LB.
 
The 16613LN gloss black dial, applied gilt-tone indices, gold-painted Submariner Superlative Chronometer text.

The LN dial is black gloss with gold-applied hour markers and gold Mercedes hands. Auction and collector sources document standard, early raised-marker, and gem-set configurations:

  • Standard gloss — black lacquer base, applied gold hour markers, gold Mercedes hands. Tritium lume on early watches, Luminova then Super-Luminova on later examples.
  • Early raised-marker dial — some early examples carry raised markers associated with the preceding 16803/16808 generation; exact fitment should be checked against the case and movement.
  • Serti dial — gem-set examples with diamond and, in some configurations, colored-stone accents. Factory origin and later alterations are difficult to separate from photographs alone, so provenance and movement/case consistency matter.

Mother-of-pearl dial

A mother-of-pearl 16613LB is documented at Bonhams London (Fine Wristwatches, 19 June 2019, lot 81): movement no. 657****, a mother-of-pearl dial with applied diamond-set gold dot hour markers and sapphire-set quarters, on the early 93153 hollow-end-link bracelet with a blue bezel insert. The watch was first sold on 2 January 1993, placing it at the very start of the 16613's production run. Its inner caseback is stamped 16610 rather than 16613 — the steel Submariner Date reference — a detail Bonhams' cataloguing notes without further comment; whether that reflects a shared case blank across the two references or a later service caseback is not established from the lot alone. The lot did not sell against an estimate of GBP 4,000-6,000. No mother-of-pearl 16613LN has surfaced in this pass.

Service-replacement dial caution

Rolex servicing routinely fitted Luminova dials to tritium-era watches once tritium dials were no longer manufactured. A pre-transition 16613 with a later SWISS MADE dial may have received a service replacement. Rolex service parts can be period-legitimate while no longer matching original delivery. Confirm the change from the dial, hands, movement, service records, and serial context.

Case, bezel, crystal, and crown

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    Wrist presence — two-tone steel and gold with blue dial
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    The 16613LN with two-tone Oyster bracelet and yellow-gold-and-steel case profile.

The case is 40mm 904L stainless steel with 18k yellow gold crown guards and a gold Triplock screw-down crown, rated to 300m. The crystal is sapphire with a Cyclops magnifier over the date window at three o'clock. The bezel is 18k yellow gold carrying a unidirectional 60-click graduated aluminum insert with a luminous pearl at twelve, black on the LN and blue on the LB. The 16613 uses an aluminum insert; Cerachrom arrived with the successor 116613.

Aluminum inserts can scratch, fade, or be replaced. The exact appearance depends on exposure, wear, cleaning, and the insert itself; color change does not by itself prove originality.

Because replacement inserts exist, bezel originality belongs in an authentication review.

The inner rehaut is plain on early and mid-production watches. Late examples, from around 2005, carry the engraved ROLEX ROLEX band that became the signature of the late aluminum-bezel and Cerachrom Submariner.

Hallmarks on the gold components follow Rolex's standard precious-metal marking of the period. Earlier watches carry the Helvetia bust with G Geneva assay mark on the mid-case and bracelet components. After 1995, the St. Bernard dog Barry mark replaced the older Helvetia system.

Bracelets, end links, and clasps

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    The 16613 two-tone Oyster bracelet — steel outer links and 18k gold center links, shared by both the LN and the LB
  •  
    Period-correct delivery: green Oyster presentation case, Submariner booklet, and translation card.

Lume type and bracelet construction help date the components on a 16613. Neither alone establishes the watch’s original configuration.

Early bracelet: 93153 (hollow end links)

The 93153 is a two-tone Oyster bracelet with steel outer links and 18k gold center links, fitted with hollow end links and a Fliplock diver's-extension clasp. It covers early production through about 2000. A 16613 on a 93153 with a tritium dial sits firmly in the pre-millennium collector tier.

Gold-through clasp transition

During the A-serial range (roughly 1999 to winter 2000), Rolex introduced the gold-through clasp, in which the gold extends through the full clasp body rather than sitting only on the exterior surfaces. Early A-serial 16613 examples lack the gold-through clasp; late A-serial examples have it; all P-serial and later watches are expected to carry it. The detail is a useful dating check on examples that sit near the transition.

Later bracelet: 93253 (solid end links — SEL)

The 93253 brought solid end links — SEL, in collector shorthand — to the two-tone Submariner. Solid end links close the gap between bracelet and case more tightly than the older hollow type and give the watch a more substantial feel on the wrist. The transition landed around 2000, parallel to the SEL rollout on the steel 16610 and the gold 16618. Rolex had introduced solid end links on the Sea-Dweller first, then spread them across the Submariner family.

The 93153-to-93253 transition is a key authenticity checkpoint. A late-production 16613 on a post-2000 serial should be on a 93253; a 93153 on a late-serial watch usually points to a bracelet swap or a mismatched example.

Clasp date codes follow the standard Rolex scheme of the period: 1976 = A through 1988 = M, 1989 = N, through 2000 = AB, 2001 = DE, up to 2010 = RS. An S stamp indicates a service replacement clasp. The code dates the bracelet; the watch head can be older, younger, or a later replacement entirely.

Special branches

Panama Canal limited edition

 
16613 Panama Canal — black dial with gilt canal emblem above 6 o'clock

Seventy-five two-tone steel and yellow-gold 16613s were produced in 1999 to commemorate the December 1999 transfer of the Panama Canal from the United States to the Republic of Panama, retailed exclusively by Mercurio Joyero in Panama City. The dial carries a gilt Panama Canal emblem above six o'clock with the inscription "Panama Canal — Canal de Panamá"; the caseback is engraved with the limited-edition number around its periphery. A parallel run of seventy-five steel examples uses the same dial layout and circulates as the 16610 Panama Canal. Sotheby's Watches Online March 2020 lot 4 (c.1999, A946579, numbered 57/75, estimate CHF 25,000–40,000) is the strongest documented two-tone example. The Panama Canal commemoratives were issued on black-dial watches; no parallel LB commission is documented.

Khanjar caseback

A Khanjar 16613 — the curved dagger emblem of the Sultanate of Oman — is documented as a caseback engraving rather than as a dial signature. By the late 1990s the Omani commissions had moved off the dial and onto the caseback, fulfilled through Khimji Ramdas, the Omani retailer. Bukowskis lot 1023 (c.1998, serial U365470, Khanjar caseback engraving, Khimji Ramdas warranty card, Khanjar-stamped outer box; 140,000 SEK against 130,000–180,000 estimate) anchors the caseback-Khanjar 16613 in the late-1990s. ItalianWatchSpotter places the dial-to-caseback shift at the start of the 2000s. Khanjar dial 16613 examples are not documented; treat any claimed example as misidentified.

Tiffany & Co. retailer signature

 
A Tiffany & Co.-signed 16613LN — "TIFFANY & CO." printed above SUBMARINER on the black gloss dial.

A Tiffany & Co. retailer-signed 16613 is documented at Sotheby's London (Fine Watches Including Masterworks of Time, 14 April 2021, lot 8, c.1991, serial X723491, black dial, signed case, dial, and movement). The lot text notes Tiffany 16613 examples are rare and that the consigning party was the original purchaser with the signature also present on the original guarantee. Cartier-signed and Bucherer-signed dial examples are not documented for the 16613 — the New York Cartier-retailing window had largely closed by 1988, and Bucherer 16613s typically circulate as non-double-signed certified pre-owned inventory.

Factory Serti and Sultan

The silver-base Serti is the established gem-set configuration on the 16613; the champagne-base Sultan is the rarer factory sibling running the same gem-set architecture. Both appear on LB and LN, with the LB Serti the execution seen most often, and both carry premiums that hold only where provenance is clean and factory origin is unambiguous.

 
Factory Serti dial, silver base with diamond hour markers and sapphire triangle

Market position

Auction catalogues document both suffixes. Blue and black examples can differ in price, but the relationship changes with condition, dial, bracelet, completeness, venue, and date.

Collectors often compare examples by lume era, bracelet construction, rehaut, dial configuration, and originality. These are observations about collecting and auction presentation, not a fixed pricing ladder.

The 116613 successors added Cerachrom and the Maxi Case. The auction table below gives dated estimates and results; those lots should be compared individually rather than converted into current price bands. Gem-set and signed examples require separate provenance and condition analysis.

Auction record

Major-house lots documenting the 16613 across its twenty-year run, covering both suffixes as well as the gem-set and limited-edition branches.

Date House / sale Lot Suffix Configuration Result
2018-09 Sotheby's Important Watches (n09952, New York) 10 LB c.1997, silvered sunburst factory Serti, diamond and sapphire-set indexes, blue aluminium insert, case U190178, on two-tone Oyster est. USD 7,000–9,000
2020-03-26 Sotheby's Watches Online 4 LN c.1999, Panama Canal limited edition no. 57/75, black dial with gilt canal emblem above six o'clock, case A946579, original guarantee est. CHF 25,000–40,000
2020-07-24 Sotheby's Watches Weekly (London) 702 LB c.2004, blue sunburst dial, case F605993, full set with guarantee, booklets, presentation case, anchor est. GBP 5,000–7,000
2020-08-04 Sotheby's Watches Weekly (New York) 1056 LN c.1991, black tritium dial, case N221047, on two-tone Oyster with folding clasp est. USD 8,000–12,000
2021-04-14 Sotheby's Fine Watches Including Masterworks of Time (London) 8 LN c.1991, retailed by Tiffany & Co., signed case, dial, and movement; black tritium dial; case X723491; consigned by the original purchaser, signature also on the original guarantee est. GBP 12,000–18,000
2021-04-29 Sotheby's Fine Watches (Hong Kong) 9233 LB c.2000, blue sunburst dial, case K972831, on two-tone Oyster with folding clasp est. HKD 65,000–95,000
2021-06-15 Sotheby's June Watches (n10845, New York) 9 LB c.1990, champagne Sultan factory gem-set dial, diamond and sapphire-set indexes, case E524471, original Rolex presentation box and hang tags est. USD 10,000–15,000
2022-11 Sotheby's Important Watches Online 531 LN c. mid-production 16613LN, black gloss dial, two-tone Oyster lot closed; result not published
2024-06-11 Sotheby's Fine Watches 315 LB c.2008, late 16613T blue dial, case Z798795, movement 31654377, full set with December 2008 guarantee est. USD 8,000–16,000
2009-12-17 Bonhams Fine Watches and Wristwatches (San Francisco) 85 LB case K972690, sold new in 2002, blue sunburst dial, 93253 Oyster bracelet with Flip-Lock diver's extension sold US$5,185 inc. premium (est. US$5,000–6,000)
2018-06-20 Bonhams Fine Watches and Wristwatches (New Bond Street, London) 13 LB circa 1991, movement no. 605****, sunburst blue dial, applied luminous filled gold dot hour markers sold GBP 5,250 inc. premium (est. GBP 4,000–5,000)
2020-02-18 Bonhams Watches and Wristwatches (Knightsbridge, London) 227 LB 16613T, circa 2007, movement no. 3198****, sunburst blue dial with gilt Mercedes hands sold GBP 8,812.50 inc. premium (est. GBP 4,000–6,000)
  •  
    Serti dial example
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    Serti detail
  •  
    Serti dial
  •  
    Standard LB dial
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    LN example
  •  
    LN dial detail
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    Case and bracelet
  •  
    Caseback and bracelet
  •  
    Serti dial close view

Related references

See also the Submariner family index, movement reference, bracelet & clasp guide, and serial numbers by year.

Sources

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