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Originally Posted by Whorologist
As a newbie to this forum, I think that I may have an additional variant to add, the Tudor Oyster, ladies 23mm which I believe dates to 1942.
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Cool! That's a neat pickup. Ref. 3640 is usually under the Oyster brand as you noted, but Wilsdorf was toying with different brands and this appears to be one of the earlier attempts at trying out the "Tudor" brand (there are a few Tudors from the 1930's but the brand didn't really get rolling until the mid-late 1940's).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Whorologist
I cannot find another example of a Tudor of this period with the same type face or without the rose/shield emblem. I would be grateful if anyone knows of another.
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This font is not uncommon on "Canadian" Rolex/Oyster watches from around 1940, although most won't say Tudor. In Canada in the 1940's, Rolex released a bunch of watches under the Rolex and Oyster brands (and a few under Tudor and even some random
brands like Neptune, Buick, and Victory) using Fontainemelon movements (because their
agreement with Gruen still didn't allow Rolex to use their preferred Aegler movements in North America). Most later "Canadian" Tudors had the rose-in-shield logo. I put "Canadian" in quotes because while they are mostly known for being sold in Canada, they also appeared in Singapore and other UK Commonwealth countries, and obviously they're still Swiss-made.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Whorologist
It seems that Rolex/Wilsdorf used the war as a kind of scattergun approach to brands and branding, putting so many different varieties of what is ostensibly the same watch into the market, presumably to see what worked and what didn’t.
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Oh yes, yes he did.
Ref. 3478 was a "Canadian" Rolex model released under no less than ten different brandings for example. Rolex was a strong brand by the 1940's, but Wilsdorf always wanted another lower-priced brand and he kept swinging and missing with those until Tudor finally stuck and the other experimental brands faded away.