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I recently purchased a random box of old Rolex parts (mostly sealed NOS tubes, crown, movement parts, etc.) and one of the pieces in the lot was a supposedly gen 1016 case back. Upon first glance it certainly appears genuine to my eye: shape and dimensions look good, the wear on it looks appropriate for its supposed age, etc. It has all the correct stampings on the inside back, but this is where I'm hung up and was hoping some of the resident 1016 experts might be able to chime in with some wisdom. The case markings appear to have been stamped on the case back twice, one directly on top of the other, albeit slightly offset. In my estimation (and I most definitely could be wrong here), the markings appear to be pressure stamped and not engraved, as they are supposed to be. And the fonts and letter spacing/positioning seems to be correct. But I can't seem to find any sort of reference material or evidence pointing to Rolex ever double stamping a case. I theorized that this was a "repurposed" case back and that it was not originally destined for a 1016 and originally had no reference number stamp on it and perhaps simply stamping a "1016" by itself on the case wasn't possible and accordingly the entire stamping had to be re-done. Pure assumption however. Needless to say, this one has me scratching my head, and moving forward I'm going to continue operating under the assumption that it is not genuine (of course, I would love to be shown information to the contrary). The other thing that gives me pause is the date coding. It is my understanding that the date coding is a small roman numeral followed by a two-digit year code, the roman numeral representing which quarter of the year the watch was produced in. Is the roman numeral actually indicative of the month rather than the quarter? Because a date code of "VI.66" would put it at the "sixth quarter" of 1966, which makes absolutely no sense. Now, "VI" representing month 6 (i.e., June) makes a little more sense, but I can only ever remember seeing date codes ranging from I-IV (or quarter "one" through quarter "four"). Also, this particular marking looks to be engraved, not pressure stamped like the rest of the markings but I could be wrong there too. And lastly, there appears to be watchmaker service marks on the inside of the back, from when the watch was most likely whole and being serviced? And if someone "made" this case back then why would they go through the trouble of scratching in watchmaker marks if the glaringly obvious error of the double stamp was already present? That in turn, got me thinking that maybe this was in fact a gen case back, just not one for an Explorer. And that maybe originally it had no ref number stamped on it, was worked on by a watchmaker, and then WAY later got an entire new stamping. This time with the desirable 1016 ref number stamped on it. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through for a rep case back (especially one I paid a mere $50 for) and sometimes the simplest answer is also the best, so maybe it is just a weirdo Rolex stamping. Who knows? Hopefully some of you pro 1016 guys can shed some light... Maybe I'm just thinking WAY too much about this and overanalyzing it. Has anyone ever seen or heard of this type of double stamping before? If so, I would certainly love an education on the matter...