Weekly Watch Photo – Tudor Submariner ref.7928

The last few years, vintage Tudor Submariners are becoming more popular amongst watch collectors. This Submariner ref.7928 is actually one of my favorite vintage dive watches and that’s a good reason to select this gorgeous photo as Monochrome’s Weekly Watch Photo.

Bert, a.k.a. De Horlogefotograaf, made the photo below and I’m amazed to see such a remarkable composition that somehow works perfect. A watch in a pile of coffee beans might not be a classic watch photo, although seeing how beautiful the gilt dial looks between the coffe beans might just change this.

Early examples of ref. 7928 feature a so-called ‘chapter dial’ where a inner ring is printed on the dial a few milimeters from the edge, connecting the minute markers. This particular Tudor Submariner ref. 7928 is a Mk.II with gilt track around the dial and silver writing. Tudor produced the Submariner ref.7928 from the late 1950’s to the late 1960’s and there are four different dial versions known.

Of course the dials from the different versions are different, however on all (known) four models, the lower half of the dial features more or less the same text. Starting with ‘200m = 660ft’, followed by ‘SUBMARINER’ (in capitals), than a line with ‘Rotor’ and the last line ‘Self-winding’ is printed curved.  The Mark III and IV dials lack the track around the dial.

It is difficult to determine the exact milesmation of the reference 7928 because the service history that was kept isn’t always on par with its more expensive brothers from Rolex. There are a LOT of fakes of this model to be found on Ebay and other websites, so it’s recommended to be very careful when you’re interested in buying one.