Don't miss the next drop
Hans Wilsdorf already controlled the most valuable name in watchmaking when he decided he needed a second one. The Rolex Oyster case was proven, the crown was famous, and both priced accordingly. What Wilsdorf wanted was a watch that offered the same case, the same crown, and the same waterproof integrity, with a dependable Swiss movement inside instead of a Rolex one, at a price his dealers could actually move. He registered The Tudor in 1926 and founded Montres TUDOR S.A. in 1946 to build exactly that.
This Tudor Prince Oysterdate is that promise with the receipts attached. The screw-down back is engraved ORIGINAL OYSTER CASE BY ROLEX GENEVA around a Rolex coronet, the crown carries the coronet as well, and the reference 7990/3 is cut into the case between the lugs. On the dial sits the Tudor rose, the emblem the brand wore before the shield took over at the end of the sixties, and the serial between the opposite lugs points to the mid-1960s.
The /3 in the reference is the steel-and-gold designation, and the watch wears it well: a 14k fluted bezel and gold crown lifting an otherwise all-business stainless Oyster case. The dial is the reason to look twice, a matte chocolate brown that reads nearly black in low light and warm bronze in the sun. Whether it left Geneva this color or spent sixty years arriving at it is a question we can enjoy without needing to settle; either way it is even, unmarked, and entirely this watch’s own. Inside runs the engine Wilsdorf’s plan depended on, an ETA-based automatic that Tudor dressed as its own: caliber 2484, twenty-five jewels, its rotor signed as the Auto-Prince. Proven parts, Rolex packaging. That is the entire Tudor argument in one sentence.
The case measures 34.5 millimeters across and 41 lug to lug, the classic Oysterdate footprint, under an acrylic crystal with a cyclops over the date at three. Gilt baton markers and gilt hands match the bezel, and the wear is the readable kind: the fluting has mellowed unevenly, the handset shows its speckling, and the steel carries the light scratches of a watch that was worn as intended. Nothing here has been erased.
Serviced in-house at OTTUHR and backed by our 2-year mechanical warranty, on a chocolate brown ostrich strap that takes the dial’s side of the argument. The dial says Tudor. The case says Rolex, in engraved capitals. Wilsdorf would call that working as designed.
