Monday, April 03, 2017

The 1953 Rolex DEEP-SEA Special Exclusive Detailed Photo from Christie's



...Rolex Studio Shot Of The Day...


1953 Rolex DEEP-SEA Special

Exclusive Photo From

Christie's Auction House

When Rolex launched the all-new Single RED SEA-DWELLER last week at BaselWorld in Switzerland, it freaked me out, in a very positive way!!! It caused me to go crazy writing the story about it, which can be seen below this story. In doing so, it ignited a fire within, and I can't seem to stop working on writing it. So I thought that I would start publishing some new images that I plan to add to the story, before I add them. The exclusive image below of the 1953 Rolex DEEP-SEA Special prototype has never been published before in high-resolution:


This magnificent image comes courtesy of Christie's Auction House, vis-à-vis my fellow Rolex and Panerai research associate, Jose from Perezcope.com. Christie's Auction House successfully auctioned this ultra-rare Rolex in 2005 for around a quarter of a million dollars.


Just to be crystal-clear, this is a photo of the very first Rolex DEEP-SEA Special, that actually set the all-time depth record in 1953 attached to the outside of the Bathyscaphe Trieste Submersible. It has never been seen with this kind of detail and resolution. And for the record, I am still working very hard on the Single RED SEA-DWELLER story, and I have much more amazing undocumented Rolex history coming up soon!!!

Update: A reader of Jakes Rolex World wrote in and said:


Hi Jake

I´m a frequent reader of your Rolex page and thank you for a wonderful page! 

However when I visited your page today I saw that you say that Bathyscaphe Trieste Submersible did it´s dive with the Deepsea special in 1953 but it was in 1960.



Best Regards 
Daniel F

This story is so huge and can be confusing. Many people know about the 1960 record set by the Bathyscaphe Trieste with a DEEP SEA Special attached to the outside, but most people don't know or are not aware that in 1953, the Bathyscaphe Trieste also set an all-time depth record with a Rolex DEEP SEA Special attached to her, and that is really the significance of this watch. Below we see a photo of Jacques Piccard in 1953 taken in front of his Bathyscaphe Trieste, with the city of Trieste, Italy in the background, and he is examining the watch in the photo above. This photo is from Part 3 of this story and it is titled, "Rolex DEEP-SEA SPECIAL 1953 Prototype."



Just to be crystal clear, there were two Bathyscaphe Trieste dives with Rolex DEEP-SEA Special watches. 

The first dive was in 1953 and used the DEEP SEA Number 3 (3,150 Meteres). Jacques & his father, August Piccard were pilots.


The second dive was in 1960 and used the DEEP SEA Number 3 (10,916 Meteres) Jacques Piccard & U.S. Navy pilot, Don Walsh were pilots.

The following timeline details these achievements. So click on the image and zoom in at the bottom of the illustration to see these events: