By Isabella Proia
Raised as an only child, I begged mercilessly for a sibling. In fact, I can't remember a time before I turned ten or so where I didn't badger my parents for a brother or a sister. Of course, it is nice to know that you're enough, but it would have meant something to have a companion through childhood and into adulthood—someone who shares your common threads, echoes your particular balance of nature and nurture. I often wondered what this sibling would look like in comparison to me—hopefully, a bit taller, maybe with the darker brown hair of my mother or the gray-green eyes of my father. Would they have a cute button nose or something decidedly more Roman, or something in-between? Our architecture, the foundations of our being, would be the same, so how in the future might we be different?
I never got that brother or sister I so desperately wanted, or at least, not one who is biologically related to me. Rolex, on the other hand, was prodigious in producing references in pairs, those pairs then evolving in parallel throughout the generations. Looking at this pair of watches, they are indeed siblings, merely a year apart. In many ways, they are similar, though their specific differences help to make each one exceptional. These two reference 6062s, one in yellow gold and the other in stainless steel, weave a story of siblings built with the same architecture and intention.
Like most siblings, especially those born close to one another, they have important similarities; yet it is their differences which make them truly distinctive.
Introduced at Basel in 1950, reference 6062 can be considered one of the earliest forays of the company into the luxury goods market. Until then, Rolex's production line consisted mostly of chronograph pieces or simple calendar watches. With the 6062 and its manually-wound counterpart, the reference 8171, Rolex broke out of its "comfort zone" of relatively simple pieces and attempted to create a complicated dress wristwatch.
Perhaps guilty of looking too far ahead, Rolex was not yet strongly associated with complicated watches, and the market gave the models a lukewarm reception — hence their rarity. Perhaps Rolex innovated too far and too fast, resulting in low demand and small production numbers, yet as the first triple calendar wristwatch with a moonphase indication housed in an automatic and waterproof case, it is an important milestone in the history of wristwatches.
The aforementioned waterproof Oyster case is where we must begin our comparison between the two watches at hand. In contrast to most other vintage Rolex models (with the exception of the Day-Date, famously cased in only precious metals), reference 6062 had a higher production number of yellow gold pieces, rather than stainless steel, with a minority then in pink gold. The exceptional aspect of the present yellow gold 6062 is, in fact, the condition of the case — in our humble opinion, the most well-preserved yellow gold iteration of this reference we have seen. And this sentiment is echoed for the condition of the stainless steel case — compounding its rarity as so few were produced. Noble gold and utilitarian steel are thus united in prestige and collectability.
If condition is king, as the case goes so must the dial. And in these two cases, terrible pun not intended, the dials are both in wonderfully preserved, original condition. More than that, both examples display beautiful and highly desirable traits specific to the reference 6062. Our steel example, like the other handful of steel 6062s that have surfaced in the market, displays mixed Arabic numerals and dagger indexes. Matching the gold feuille hands, the indexes are colored gold as well, adding a hint of audacity to the cool gray and blue tones that dominate the rest of the watch. Perhaps this addition was selected by Rolex to balance the perceived ignobility of stainless steel. The yellow gold 6062 comes equipped with, in my opinion, the most delightful detail Rolex has used on a dial: the tiny star indexes, consequently nicknamed "Stelline," Italian for "little stars."
These magical little stars, with luminous material applied precisely in each star's heart, are only seen in exceedingly small handful of Rolex references, with the majority of them dating from the early 1950s. Stelline and Stelline-style dials on Rolex watches have historically commanded an impressive premium because of their extreme rarity and aesthetic appeal, one recent example being the black dial Reference 6062 sold in our Geneva Watch Auction: THREE. Of course, both are characterized by perfectly centered and indelibly inked blue outer wheels indicating the date.
United not just aesthetically, but in their impeccable and admirable condition, these siblings are a horological force to be reckoned with. The Rolex Reference 6062 in stainless steel (Lot 180) and in yellow gold (Lot 128) are estimated between CHF 700,000-1,400,000 and CHF 400,000-800,000 respectively. They will both be available during the Geneva Watch Auction: Seven taking placed on May 12-13 at the Hotel La Reserve.