My Franken 1665 DRSD Complete (for now)

[Watchmeister]

D-

Great build. Wear that one well.

[tanya]

Thanks Warren

[tanya]

[panerai153]

Beautiful Build

A set of vintage hands and a tritium pearl would be the icing on the cake.

As far as the crown, I would bet that 90% of the 1680's and 1665's have had the crown replaced at service. Considering the reds are closing in on 40 years old, most have been to a RSC or a Rolex certified watchmaker several times for service, so having a later 703 wouldn't be a deal breaker for me.

I keep telling this over and over, but when the 1680's and 1665's came out, they were fairly expensive, but not like today. they were less than 250.00 USD especially in military PX's and commissaries.

Even to the general public, the prices were less than 500.00 USD. I know, i bought a 1680 and later a 1665 and neither was over 500.00 USD. Lots of them were sold and they weren't safe queens! They were worn, beat to hell and subjected to every abuse a watch could endure. I wore my 1680 every day for around 5 yeard and finally sent it back to Rolex because the crystal was so scratched and scuffed, you couldn't see the hands! My local AD looked at the watch and told me," that's the most beat up sub I've seen"! Guess what? 6 weeks later, it came back looking like a brand new watch. New crystal, insert, crown/tube, springbars, polished case and bracelet. No one was trying to preserve history back then, when a watch was sent off, folks expected it to look as close to new as possible when it came back. And like me folks were thrilled to death to see their old beat up watch come back looking like new.Unfortunately, there is no telling how many red subs and DRSD's were returned with white service dials. Back then, it probably didn't matter because you were getting essentially a new watch, and no one had the faintest idea that Red dial subs and DRSD's would skyrocket in value over time. Hell, if I had a crystal ball, I would have a safe full of vintage Rolex watches, plus tons of stock like microsoft, IBM and maybe a few shares of Berkshire Hathaway!!