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Thin case DRSD w/ Brown dial


alligoat

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I saw that too. Hard to tell details from the small pics, but I do know that early Seadwellers were just Subs with the new dial & He valve tacked on in an effort to remedy the exploding crystals problem experienced by deep sea divers when going through decompression. The larger cases and superdomes came later as sort of a second generation, which continued.

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Looking at Delgado's site- doubleredseadweller.com, I'd have to figure this MKII dial predates Nanuq's by a good bit. Nanuq is c.1974, I believe he said, and I'd figure this one for late 60's or around 1970. The case back says Rolex Patent, but obviously they hadn't beefed up the case at that point. Maybe you PM the guy on TZ and ask for an approximate date- I wouldn't think that that's rude, but who knows. I pretty much just lurk in the shadows at TZ.

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Lovely... Those brown dials are simply lovely. Crazy thing is that in the 80s dealers could not sell those browned dialed Rollies. They sat and sat until the dealers swapped out those UV-damaged dials. Too bad that I don't have a time machine.

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I got a bit of a correction on the date for mine, it's circa 1971 ... I was wrong originally.
Ah, so the serial checked out in the end? Make sense I guess as the Mk II was used '69-early '71 I'm told. Didn't the '74 cue come from the bracelet stamp in the first place? Likely a replacement after a couple of years.

Still that TZ thin case bothers/confuses me. I though all thin case 1665's were used very sparingly in '66 as a limited pre-Seadweller prototype run. And those used the SRSD 1650ft dial not the Mk II DRSD. And were issued to pro dive contractors. Of course, the rarity of these pre-SDs suggest they were all 'upgraded' to DRSD 1665s, but then why swapout the dial 4 or 5 years later but not upgrade the case???

:g:

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Rolex cobbled some thin cased SD's a few years later upon stumbling upon a small cache of these thin cases.

2 diff. dial iterations were used.

Rare and fascinating stuff.

PS. Confusion is part of the vintage Rolex game. Nothing seems to be certain (like the reality that we live in :D)

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