The dial has a warmer tone and even patina. Most of the luminous-radium plots are intact. I find the missing lume preferable to added later tritium lume. The dagger hour markers are quite pronounced and attractive, particularly at 6 and 9 o’clock, but I personally love the dauphine hands which have developed a beautiful patina on the surfaces.

The Case

While still strong, the case is lightly polished. The 1601 is quite a great reference for most people, as it measures 36mm in diameter and 42mm lug-to-lug. Whether you’ve got a small wrist or have a wrist around 8 inches in circumference, you can wear these. As far as the lugs, the 20mm lug width allows a wide variety of straps if you’re shopping online.

The bezel on this example is a particularly cool variant referred to as the “Bamboo” bezel. Bamboo’s differ slightly from the fluted styles with grooves at each hour. The watch dates to circa 1961 with a serial number of 65X,XXX. The crown features a coronet with an underline indicating the twin-lock system.

J.B. Champion Bracelet

The watch is paired on an American-made Rolex Jubilee bracelet. On the interior the maker’s name, J.B. Champion, is featured. As far as quality, the Jacoby Bender bracelets were made extremely well, and were the preeminent bracelet specialist in the west.

Box & Papers

While box and papers are quite an unnecessary component to collecting, I’ll be the first to admit they can be very fun to marvel over. Hell, I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the past few months scanning catalogs and ads to share my enthusiasm on the site. So when I saw the Datejust featured some old papers, including the chronometer certification, I felt the urge to put together a quick article on the watch.