Rolex watch 1949 Oyster Perpetual sells for 1.2M

UPDATED: Rolex watch 1949 Oyster Perpetual sold for 1.2M at Christie’s auction house in Geneva making it the most expensive Rolex wristwatch to ever be sold, report said.

Sold to an anonymous buyer, the Rolex watch 1949 Oyster Perpetual was designed by artist Marguerite Koch and features a ship sailing on rough seas on the dial. At a price of $1.2 million.

The rare Rolex watch 1949 Oyster Perpetual model with a cloisonné enamel dial, was expected to sell for between $570,000 and $1.13 million. But strong bidding on Monday pushed the final sale price to $1,220,632.

The watch is also made of 18-karat gold and is automatic, with sweep center seconds, automatic jeweled lever movement and star numerals. / Rolex watch 1949 Oyster Perpetual Image via Denis Balibouse/Reuters

The Rolex Oysterquartz was a quartz watch made by Rolex. At the end of the 1970s, when the Swiss watch industry was in the middle of crisis. Japanese watchmakers invaded the world market with the quartz watch.

The Genevan brand Rolex decided to put forward a new line of watches to combat this event; thus, the Datejust Oysterquartz was born.

Although not designed to turn the company’s tradition of producing mechanical watches upside down, it faced the international, namely Asian, markets seeking to keep alive interest in Swiss luxury watchmaking; an industry that seemed at that moment to have been completely absorbed by the Japanese quartz watch.

Rolex SA offers products under the Rolex and Tudor brands, make of Rolex watch 1949 Oyster Perpetual. Montres Tudor SA has designed, manufactured and marketed Tudor watches since 6 March 1946.

Rolex founder Hans Wildorf conceived of the Tudor Watch Company to create a product for authorized Rolex dealers to sell that offered the reliability and dependability of a Rolex, but at a lower price.

Tudor watches are manufactured by Montres Tudor SA using movements supplied by ETA SA. They are marketed and sold in most countries around the world including the United States, Australia, Canada, India, Mexico, South Africa, many countries in Europe, South Asia, the Middle East and countries in South America, particularly Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela.

Montres Tudor SA discontinued sales of Tudor-branded watches in the United States in 2004, but Tudor returned to the United States market in the summer of 2013 and to the UK in 2014.