Historical Perspectives: What Exactly Is A Sigma Dial? (And Why Does It Matter?)
With vintage watches, small details matter a lot. In fact, they’re basically everything. When it comes to assessing the originality of a dial, this goes double, since any re-dial or service dial will dramatically impact the overall value of a watch. This explains the multiple questions surrounding the weird, round little marks sometimes found surrounding the “Swiss” or “Swiss Made” on watch dials from the 1970s. Those little marks are actually the lower case Greek letter sigma, and the dials are aptly called “sigma dials.” The issue, you see, is that most of the plentiful information you find out there about sigma dials is wrong, plain and simple. So I decided to dig deeper and figure out when those sigma dials truly appeared and why. The story turned out to be even more interesting than I had expected.
The 89th Acadamy Awards will go down in history as one of the more infamous Oscars, largely due to the La La Land/Moonlight mix-up, but also because of the strong political undertones (ACLU ribbons were the accessory of choice). For watch people, though, the 2017 awards will be remembered as the year the Academy was first sponsored by Rolex. The Swiss giant chose to mark the occasion by airing a 60-second celebration of cinema, seamlessly showcasing some of Hollywood’s biggest names wearing their iconic watches. Of course, that showreel wasn’t the only Rolex-gazing opportunity. Here are five of our favourites, spotted roaming free at the star-studded event. Jason Bateman’s 1979 Rolex Daytona One of our top spots of the night was Jason Bateman sporting a vintage Rolex Daytona on stage. We did a bit of digging to identify the model, and found an extract from a GQ interview where he confirmed the year, that it’s not a Newman, and that he traded in a Sea-Dweller and a Franck Muller to get it, as well as throwing in some cash. He also laments that he can’t afford a collection of vintage Rolex, which isn’t doing the Hollywood elite stereotype any favours. Still, he sounds like our kind of…