Tudor Snowflake Submariner 90910

[Boopie]

Hello, everyone. Thanks to the super helpful people here on the vintage board, I went ahead and took the plunge with buying a Tudor snowflake Submariner 9091/0, blue dial. The serial # suggests it’s from 1978. I bought it from a private party on Chrono 24. He had recently bought it from a watch auction from his wife, and it was too vintage for her taste. Let’s just say it hasn’t led a pampered life, but the creamy lume is all intact. I showed it to the watchmaker at the local RSC (he serviced my Yachtmaster) and he liked it.

Given that Rolex never made a smaller Submariner, let alone a blue dial SS Sub, it’s very cool. It has a Rolex foldover bracelet, Rolex case, Rolex crown, and acrylic crystal. Of course it’s powered by an ETA (2671, I think).

This is the ladies’ style of the snowflake, but of course the hands are too tiny for the snowflake look. The square indices are very visible, which was the whole point of the Tudor snowflake Submariner (more visible underwater).

My question relates to the model name on the dial. This is too early to be a Mini Sub (which actually says that on the dial, a 94400).

The dial of my watch says “Princess Date.” Others with the same model number are called the “Prince Oysterdate.” These come in black or blue. These don’t come up for sale very often (I think all of the current Chrono 24 listings were there when I looked last year) and most I’ve seen are in Europe or Asia.

One of the listings below (for an Prince Oysterdate) says it’s a 1979 watch that was made just that year.

I looked at the model number on the case myself, and it does have the slash mark before the last digit.

Why are some of the 9091/0 named Princess Date and others Prince Oysterdate? Maybe it started as the Princess (which made it perhaps too limiting), so the later years are Prince? Or, maybe Princess was for some geographic markets and not others? Its depth rating is “meters first,” which might be a clue.

There is of course a ton of information available on the full size Tudor Submariner, but I just can’t find a lot of information about the smaller snowflake Sub. Ads seem to place the manufacture years around 1976-1979. I have no idea how many were made, where they were sold, or even what they cost.

It’s cool, though, wearing a watch that I didn’t even know existed until last year, and haven’t seen another one in the wild. I’m not sure there were any other ladies’ sized dive-style watches in the 1970s. It’s rated to 100m = 330 ft.




https://www.chrono24.com/tudor/ref-90910.htm#gref



https://www.carsandwatches.com/watch...bmariner-90910

Now-sold Princess Date dial:

https://www.chrono-shop.net/en/a-r-c...-tritium-.html


Called in the ad a Mini Sub:

https://bulangandsons.com/products/c...mini-sub-90910

94400 in snowflake style; doesn’t say Mini Sub and is rated to 200m:

https://www.kronos360.com/en/tudor-s...783265000.html