Editorial Rolex Centregraph Ref. 3346, An Ultra-Rare piece from 1937

His Highness Sheikh Ammar bin Humaid Al Nuaimi, Crown Prince of the Emirate of Ajman, was seen yesterday presiding over a meeting of the Ajman University Board of Trustees wearing a Rolex Centregraph reference 3346 from 1937. The watch, of which only four known to exist, is the first Rolex in-house movement with a chronograph complication and the first Rolex with a rotating bezel.

It is worth noting that the last watch of this model was sold this past April at a Monaco Legend Group auction house for 266,500 euros, equivalent to 1.1 million UAE dirhams Many watch enthusiasts say that this beautiful Rolex Oyster Centregraph appears in many ways to be a precursor to the Rolex Submariner. This watch is extremely rare, with fewer than 10 known in existence. 

In 1937 Rolex introduced the ref 3346 ‘Centregraph’ because they wanted to prove that they could make a chronograph with an in-house movement up to then all chronographs had an outsourced movement.

The first Oyster-cased chronograph that Rolex ever made was also the first Rolex to feature a rotating bezel with red and black markers and Arabic numerals. It is made of stainless steel, measures 32 mm in diameter, and has a screwed-in case.

The dial of this watch is white with a matte silver finish and features applied Arabic numerals. The outer seconds track, minutes division, and tachymeter scale are printed in black. The seconds hand is golden, while the minute and hour hands are blued steel.

As mentioned, this is Rolex’s first in-house chronograph movement. The manual wind movement includes a handful of extra components to create a primitive ‘fly-back’ function. With this function, the sweeping second hand moves continuously until you push the pusher at 2 o'clock. Then it stops, and returns directly to 12 o'clock, and starts moving again. A significant disadvantage is that you cannot stop the second hand to measure elapsed time because, if you push the button, the hand returns back to its place again.

The ref 3346 ‘Centregraph’ is possibly the rarest of all Rolex watches. As we have mentioned, only ten were ever made and only four are now accounted for.

The importance of the ref 3346 for Rolex history must not be underestimated. It had its influence on Bubbleback Oysters of the early 20th century and later models like the Thunderbird, Turn-o-graph, Submariner and the Daytona.

All pictures in this article are credited to the Monaco Legend Group website.