I hate those super-specific records like “most expensive yellow gold Patek chronograph sold in the Western Hemisphere on a Tuesday.” It feels kind of like advanced baseball analytics but for perfect replica watches and as much as I love debating WARs and ERA+ and ERA++, sometimes I just want to talk about how sweet Ken Griffey Jr.’s swing was.
Despite my disdain for super-specific superlatives, I’m giving the UK luxury fake Rolex 1016 a pass because I love it, I guess? Because I’m wearing one as I type this? Anyway, the Space-Dweller (ref. 1016) is one of those vintage Rolex super clone watches online with as much myth as the lost city of Atlantis. It’s a regular 1016 – usually an Explorer – just with that one familiar line of text swapped for something more mysterious. Supposedly, Swiss movement fake Rolex made a handful of Space-Dwellers in the ’60s for the Japanese market. It’s been said this was to celebrate the Mercury astronauts’ tour of Japan, but I’m not sure there’s any real evidence of this origin story.
Whatever the real story, a cheap fake Rolex Space-Dweller 1016 sold for $190,500 at Phillips, making it the most expensive 1016 ever. It passes the last Space-Dweller to appear at auction (~$136,000 in 2020) and the albino 1016 (CHF 101,600 in May 2023). Similar to those albino dials I wrote about, it’s an equally interesting and dangerous area of vintage best quality copy Rolex.
This 1:1 replica Rolex Space-Dweller reached this price simply because of that one line of text. We don’t know how many of these beautiful gilt dials exist – in fact, a few loose dials sold at auction 15 years ago – and we can’t even really tell if they were born in a specific case (though this example at Phillips had a serial matching the generally-accepted serial range for Space-Dwellers). Further, this example has high quality fake Rolex Japan service papers, but no model name noted, sadly. It’s another shred of evidence as to the potential origin of the Space-Dweller. I know the winner of the watch – an astute collector, might I add – and he promises he’ll let us know if the papers give any more clues as to the origin of the top super clone Rolex Space-Dweller. So stay tuned.
