Rofina Golden Flower

What I have here is a Rofina Golden Flower. I bought from a guy at Singapore Rolex Club couple of months ago. Apparently, this is a new old stock, unused, so everything about this watch is still in original condition.

First, let’s talk about the brand. Rofina is not a name that I’m familiar with, let alone the model name: Golden Flower. The only clue the seller told me was that Rofina is a Swiss brand and he’s pretty much confident the company itself is no longer in business.

So I went on the internet trying to find the brand’s information, clue, or whatever left of it. Couldn’t find anything useful. So I asked the seller if there’s some kind of customer service which still available. There isn’t. But he knows a guy who has work on this brand. He gave me the guy’s address and I went there the next day.

His name is Beng Ong of Beng Watch Service and Repair. He has a small watch repair shop at 29 Bendemeer Road, #01-108, Singapore 330029. Apparently, he has certificate of service and repair for Rofina. This is good news.

When I went there, he instantly recognised the make and model of this watch. I was quite shocked hearing that the watch is about 60 years old, which means this watch production is ca. 1950s – 1960s. A watch that old with everything is still original condition, this is a catch! Oh, he’s also a nice guy whom really reasonable when talking about price in servicing. He also fixes Rolexes, Omegas and Seikos.

Now let’s talk about the appearances of the watch. Like a vintage ’60s watch, it has 18 mm lug width and 35 mm in diameter, fits nicely on my 6″ wrist. It has original crown marked with Rofina logo as well as the buckle, lance hands, and baton index. It has lumes on the hands which appear to be faded out considering the age. It has date window at 3 o’clock with cyclops magnifier *inside* plastic/crystal glass. It also has hour numeric on 12 and 6. I’m not sure if it’s solid gold or gold-plated case. It has no patina on the dial. Gold with this style of dial make it a really nice and good-looking vintage dress watch.

It has what appears to be domed plastic crystal signifies the classic of the ’60s watches.

For the movement, it has “77 JEWELS SPECIAL AUTOMATIC” stamped on the dial and “SWISS MADE” below 6 o’clock. Now, usual watches have 22-27 jewels. But this watch has 77. Yup, that’s 77 jewels. And I’m also not sure about how special is the “special automatic”. What I can sure about is that this is an automatic movement which can also manually wind. There’s no quick-set date feature on this watch. One thing I need to emphasize here that this watch keeps a very good time! Error is only around +/- 5 seconds per day with power reserver about 1 and a half day. Pretty nice for a watch aged 60 years old.

Snap-on case back completes the physical appearance of this watch, with plastic cover still intact. Although it has waterproof mark on the case back, I won’t depend on that very much. The case back also marked with “ANTIMAGNETIC INCABLOC”. I can only recon few military watches circa 1960s that have antimagnetic case, and few Rolex’s Milgauss. But those watches are in the ’70s if I recon correctly. Also, there’s not many dress watches that have this antimagnetic case. There’s a marking “SYMBOL PATENT No. 163257” which I’m pretty sure that’s the model number. Perhaps I can further search more information based on the model number on the internet later on.

In conclusion, this is a good catch for me while I’m trying to start vintage watch collection. It’s not a really high profile catch like vintage Submariners or JLCs or even Pateks, but still, a decent looking all original vintage dress watch. I replaced the original strap with brown crocodile strap to accent the gold case and vintage-ish look. I love it.

Enjoy the rest of the pictures below.