Never fear my watch fiend friends. This is the Rolex 6694. I know that a lot of
the Rolex watches have just priced themselves into the stratosphere. And for a lot of people,
the dream of owning a Rolex or having a piece of the crown on your wrist has kind of slipped away
for a lot of people. But I really believe that as the pendulum swings back and we go towards
smaller size watches that this really might be the one that's been under the radar long enough,
that it's still really accessible to a lot of people. So we'll go over it. Coming up.
So the Rolex 6694, it's the Oyster Date Precision. And we know this because that's the only thing it
says on the dial. It is a very sparse interesting dial. And we'll talk about that in a minute,
but the main idea behind this watch is probably a great entry-level Rolex for a lot of people. But
at the same time, I feel like it is really so classic. And it's so sort of austere
and minimalist that it's one of those classic designs. Like if you think about
the Porsche 911 that came out in the 1960s, they really haven't changed it that much over the
years. You can still look at that car and see that it's still the same design from the '60s.
A lot of those designs that have stood the test of time are really the classics in their genre.
So that's really what we're looking at with the Rolex 6694.
It's a watch that is a 34-millimeter case. And for a lot of people that just sounds too small.
And they're gonna turn this off right now, but I'll tell you when you put it on the wrist,
it really looks good. Even on up to maybe a 7-and-a-half-inch wrist.
So unless you're the guy that you're wearing a 47-millimeter Panerai, and it looks good on
you really for any guy, this watch is just gonna look great. I mean, you throw this on with jeans
and it looks fantastic. You put it on with a suit and it's gonna look great. So my wrist is
about 7 and a quarter and you can see it really looks great. I think that part of the reason that
it looks a little bigger than you would think is number one, the caseback on it is pretty thin.
And so the overall thickness of the watch it's thinner than most of the
watches that Rolex makes in 34-millimeter. I'm thinking about the Explorer I, the date,
it's a little thinner and that tends to make a watch look bigger. And also, the dial is so
simple that, and pull that there's just a lot of negative space on the dial, a lot of blank space.
And that helps the watch look a little bit bigger. The only text on it that says Rolex
Oysterdate at the top and just the single word precision at the bottom. So that clues you in
a couple of things. Number one, it does not say Oyster Perpetual. It is not a perpetual movement
watch. It does not move the wind itself from the movement of your wrist. It's not automatic.
This is a hand-wound mechanical watch. So to operate it, you just simply unscrew the crown.
It is a screw-down crown. It is an oyster watch. So it, you know, was water-resistant
to a hundred meters when it was new. You wind the watch until it actually stops.
You don't wind until it feels a little tight or until you're feeling a little resistance, but it
will actually stop. And that's when you've got it fully wound to give it a full power reserve.
Then you pull the crown out to set the time. Now, this is not a quick set mechanism on the date.
So if the date is off, you're actually gonna go around and around and around on the time to get
to the right date. It's one of the charms of the watch. So don't think when you get this, watch
that it's broken because you can't change the date in a quick set. Doesn't have the quick set, but
that's why it says Oysterdate and precision that it's not automatic, it's not Oyster Perpetual.
And then at the bottom, it just says precision, because it's not a certified chronometer. So
certified chronometers they go to the COSC, which is a division of the Swiss government that
tests and certifies chronometers. They have to be accurate to within = four to + six seconds a day,
over 15 days, and three different temperatures and five different positions. This watch Rolex never
sent to COSC to have it tested. But it's still if you think about this movement, it is just a
bulletproof super reliable movement because there's not a lot of extra going on there to
break with a lot of watches, sort of the Achilles heel is the axle on the rotor, which is the part
that holds the rotor as it spins and auto-winds on your wrist because this watch doesn't have a rotor
or an axle. It makes it really a little more impact resistant than a lot of other watches.
It is a little bit of a slower speed movement. It vibrates at 21,600 beats per hour. That makes
it a little bit more reliable too than the 288 watches. And so there's just a dead reliable,
really classic fantastic watch. Now, one of the things that people
get excited about on this watch is when they take it in to an authorized dealer to have it
sized or something like that. A lot of times those dealers have never seen this watch.
It was produced for a long time from the early '60s through the late eighties,
it's a really long production run for a single model. And there are differences in the dials that
you can see over the years, the four that we've got here, each one of them has a different dial
and the iron markers are different. The finish of the dial's a little different.
That's why I went ahead and brought all four of them out. These range from the late 1960s through
the late '70s in their production dates. But you can find them all the way from the early '60s
to the late '80s. But think about it, let's just imagine that everyone in the world was crazy about
Ford cars. And let's imagine that the cheapest one you can buy is a 65 Mustang and that the dealers
only sell the new ones and have only ever seen the new ones. So if you bought that
65 Mustang and took it over to the dealer to have something done to it, if they had never seen one,
they would immediately compare it side-by-side with the modern Mustang and think that it's fake.
And so that's what we hear a lot. When people take these watches into Rolex dealers, if they're
not familiar with the vintage watch world, they might think right away that if you compare this
side-by-side with a modern Datejust, it doesn't look and feel like a Rolex, the original bracelets
that were on these watches they make this kind of rat sound that modern Rolexes don't make.
It's one of the charm items of these watches. One of the things that make them look like it's
a watch that your grandfather might have passed down to you, but the links sort of fold together.
They don't go together with screws like the modern extension links. And so most people,
there's about three-quarters of an inch of adjustment in the clasp that you can do.
And that's gonna work for most people. If you need to go smaller, these links can be taken out. They
have to be unfolded by a jeweler and then removed and then connected back together. Similarly,
you can add links to it. Here at SwissWatchExpo, we typically don't have access to these links,
but they're readily available all over the normal internet sites where you would buy watch parts.
There are complete bracelets for sale. There are extension links for sale.
They're easy to find, and you can certainly have a jeweler, add them back in. If they're a
jeweler that is worth their salt and knows what they're doing. Now, one of the things that's
great about this watch also is that the crystal is acrylic it's plexiglass. And for any Rolex
of this time period that was made in the early sixties, they all had this same kind of crystal,
whether it was a Submariner or a Daytona, they all had the acrylic crystals until they came
out with the sapphire on the President in the late '70s, and then on the Datejust in
the late '80s. But before that, all watches had this crystal and it was never a problem.
They do scratch a little more easily than a sapphire crystal, but I found some stuff called
poly watch on Amazon that about once a year, I put a couple of drops on the crystal of my watch and
I rub it with a microfiber cloth for about three or four minutes, and the scratches are just gone.
So they're super easy to maintain and I wouldn't let the crystal stop you from
buying one of these watches. I also wouldn't let the manual-wind feature of the watch stop you
because you know, for a lot of people, they wanna buy a watch
and put it in a watch winder and have it ready to pick up and use at any moment.
For me, I buy my watches partly because I enjoy them. I like playing with my watches. So for me,
taking 30 seconds to unscrew the crown and wind, the watch in the morning just gives me a little
bit of an intimate moment with, my cool watch. And then it helps me sort of appreciate it and enjoy
wearing it all day. I look down and I enjoy seeing the whichever watch I've picked for that day,
but especially the vintage ones, the ones where not necessarily everybody knows what it is.
To me, that's even cooler than wearing the latest offering from the crown.
The movements that are in these watches, it could be 1210, or 1225, depending on the year, but they
both work the same. They're the manual wind, 21,600 beat movement with a non-quick-set date.
They generally have the drilled lugs, which makes it super easy to change back and forth from the
bracelet to a strap or change strap colors. And so that's a big plus for the watch too. Another
feature of the watch is that with women wearing much larger watches than they used to,
this has become kind of a great unisex watch because the size is not so overwhelmingly big,
that it doesn't feel at home on a woman's wrist as well. But I think that for any guy that has
a wrist less than about, you know, 7-and-a-half eight inches it's really gonna work well for you.
Give us a call here at SwissWatchExpo,. We love talking about these watches.
If you order one, we'll probably call you and make sure that you intended to buy a
34-millimeter manual-wind watch with a plastic crystal, just because a lot of people they'll
order it because it's the least expensive watch on there's a Rolex on our website,
but they had in mind like a 40-millimeter Rolex with a sapphire crystal and an automatic movement,
those do of course cost more. So for now, these are kind of the under-the-radar bargain
in the Rolex world. As times change, and people swing back towards smaller watches, these might
become much more expensive. But for now, they're really a great way to get yourself into a Rolex.
It is to me, not really a starter watch. It's a watch that you could wear for a lifetime
and pass down. It's every bit as great a watch as anything else you'll see from Rolex
just a slightly different style. So give us a call and see what we've got in stock.
We'll be happy to walk you through the ins and outs of this great 6694.