Rolex serial number checker, date your watch, honestly

On older watches, engraved between the lugs at the 6 o'clock side, under the bracelet, so the bracelet has to be moved to read it. From around 2005 it also appears on the rehaut, the inner flange between the dial and the crystal, and from about 2008 the rehaut is the only place it appears.

Because Rolex restarted its numbering from about 23,000 in 1954. A six-digit serial can therefore belong to the 1926 to 1953 run or the 1954 to 1987 one. The number alone genuinely cannot separate them, so this checker returns both rather than picking.

It is from 1987 to 2010. The letters were issued in sequence and the published charts anchor each one to a starting serial, so most cover a single year and the rest cover two. Where a prefix spans two years you get the window, not a guess inside it.

Rolex randomised its serials completely, and the charts show the last dated prefix, G, running to 2010 and every year from 2011 as random. There is no date encoded in them, and any tool that returns a year for a modern Rolex serial is guessing.

Approximate, and deliberately presented that way. Rolex has never published a serial-to-year chart. Every chart in circulation, including the ones behind this page, is reconstructed from observed watches, so treat the answer as accurate to about a year.

Possibly neither, exactly. The published charts even contradict themselves in places, most visibly around 1977 and 1978, which is why this checker returns a window across that span instead of choosing.

No. Serials are engraved on counterfeits too, and a correct-looking number on the wrong movement is a common combination. The movement, the dial printing and the case finishing decide it.

The reference identifies the model rather than the year, so it narrows a watch to a production window at best. Serial, reference, movement and case have to agree, which is what an expert check looks at.