Explorer 1016 - 1966 VI 66 - Help & Advice needed

[davethebb]

I am interested in buying a 1016 and have been looking for a long while now. I have seen the watch below and have some concerns about the dial and hands - I am aware the watch has recently been serviced and I fear the dial may have been replaced. Could I kindly ask for your help in critasing the dial and hands as I would like to know if these are original or not. Kind Regards, Dave.

[pozer]

Dave, I'm a rookie vintage collector but have done a lot of research on 1016s - bought one last month. You should certainly wait for more experienced folks to speak up (and did you post in Vintage Rolex Forum?) but..based on this one pretty bad picture, the lume of the hands and the 12 o'clock marker look creamy whilst the rest of the dial does not.

If this mis-match is true then you'll have to decide if it's worth the $ or not and if you could live with the disparity, looking down at it all day long...

[roh123]

What serial is it? Depending on that we can say if the dial is correct or not. Frog foot dials like this one came just after gilt dials and the switch was approx around 1966.

Quick look shows the hands are replaced. Explorers originally have the longer minute hand. This is shorter hands similar to those used on subs and they are very commonly used as service parts on 1016’s.

[davethebb]

Guys, It is a 150xxxx serial number so late '66 model. Do you when (year) the length of the hands changed and is the dial correct as it only has lumine at 12o/c. If the hands are incorrect are the correct ones difficult to source?

[Nicholas Bedworth]

I'm looking at my 1972 1016 right now, and its minute hand is definitely longer, as OP pointed out, and covers about 40% of the tick on the outer ring of the dial. So at least in early 1972, the minute hand was definitely longer than the "stubby" one shown in the PDF. I'm the original owner and know that the hands on my watch are as shipped.

One observation is that with using a jeweler's loupe, the length of the white ticks around the circumference of the dial seems to vary a bit. They appear to be slightly longer in about 20% of the dial. For most of the circumference, the tip of the second hand goes exactly to the inner end of the tick. On other parts, the tip of the second hand extends perhaps 500 microns (half a millimeter) into the tick. This is judged by having the tick exactly in the middle of the field of view of the loupe.

But keep in mind that the crystal is steeply curved over the white ticks, and could be distorting the relative position of the hand and tick a little bit.