Return of the Rolex Exhibition Caseback
After 93 years, Rolex FINALLY brought back, or introduced, a model with an exhibition caseback—kind of! There are a bunch of cool surprises from Rolex this year at Watches And Wonders in Geneva, Switzerland, and over the course of the next week I will be commenting on ALL them
I will share my single most favorite, which is the fact Rolex FINALLY introduced a model with an exhibition caseback!!! Hopefully this will become a standard feature or option available for every Rolex model in the future...The 60th anniversary Platinum Daytona (so far) is the only model to feature this exhibition caseback.
It's interesting to note that Rolex in the past refrained from putting clear sapphire exhibition casebooks on their watches as they thought Rolex movements were workhorses that were not that pretty. Many people, including myself disagreed with this notion and think Rolex movements are absolute works of high-art!!!
1931 Rolex Exhibition Caseback
Below is photo of the first and ONLY exhibition caseback Rolex ever made in the past and it was placed on the first Rolex Oyster Perpetual, and this one was made in 1931, but was NOT available to the public for sale. I might be wrong, but I don't recall seeing a watch with an exhibition caseback before Rolex?
The Rolex Oyster Perpetual pictured above and below was made in 1931 and Rolex put an exhibition case back on it to easily show potential customers how it worked. As you can see in the photo above there is a rotor that says "Rolex Auto Rotor" which automatically spins clockwise or counter-clockwise just from the movement of your wrist, thus "Automatically" winding the mainspring.
In other words, even the slightest movement of your wrist (using gravity) will wind the watch, thus keeping the mainspring at optimum tension. Rolex, of course, was the first watch brand to successfully launch an automatic movement that worked well and transcended obsolescence.
