1920s 9ct gold striped vintage Rolex Prince ‘Brancard’ watch

Date:           1929

Case:           9ct gold, 23 x 43mm

Movement: Rolex Extra Prima

Dial:            Silvered with Arabic numerals

Lugs:           20mm

An extremely rare vintage Striped Rolex Prince Brancard watch, complete with original box!

A 1929, vintage 9ct gold striped Rolex Prince Brancard watch. The Brancard case measures 23 x 43 mm, with 20mm lug size. The case is signed Rolex, 25 World’s Records, Geneva-Suisse RWCLtd. (Rolex Watch Company Ltd), hallmarked Glasgow 1929 and numbered, with reference 971A, to the back. The Rolex Extra Prima manual wind movement is Observatory quality with 15 Rubies, Timed to 6 positions, with Rolex Hairspring and numbered. The silvered dial has black Arabic numerals with a large subsidiary seconds dial and fine blued steel hands. The dial is signed Rolex Prince above the centre.

The Rolex Prince

The Rolex Prince with the two dials is often referred to as a ‘doctors watch’ or ‘duo-dial’. The large seconds dial enabling the wearer to time heart beats, etc more accurately.

The Rolex Prince was first produced in 1929 and it has a special movement, initially made by Aegler and Wilsdorf , when in 1927 a patent was filed for a “shaped watch movement with a seconds dial”. In this new watch the winding barrel and the balance wheel were at opposite ends of the movement allowing for a larger balance wheel and thus more accuracy. A larger winding barrel also meant that the watch could run for longer on a single wind. This allowed most Princes to be chronometer rated and most were indeed sold with a chronometer certificate.

The variation of the Prince models available, even though most movements were similar ( besides the rare Jump Hour model) the cases came in a few different shapes and metals. The Brancard case in silver, gold, platinum and stainless steel, also two colour and ‘tiger-stripe’, the Railway case with stepped sides and also a straight sided case design.

Rolex say there was a limited number of Prince watches ‘as such fine watches cannot be produced quickly or in large quantities’.