MK Personal Collection Unique Rolex "Floating" Small Daytona Oyster Chronograph Wristwatch Ref 6239 FAP Fuerza Zerea del Peru C.1968

MK Personal Collection The present lot is part of a larger privately held collection and is intended for exhibition purposes only. Unique Rolex "Floating" Small Daytona Oyster Chronograph Wristwatch Ref 6239 FAP Fuerza Zerea del Peru C.1968. This very fine men's steel Rolex Cosmograph "Daytona" with a three-body construction case and a screw-down dedicated case. The back is engraved "Fuerza Aerea del Peru" Peruvian Air Force (Military Ref 378) Serial # 1,463,378. The watch has an original bi-colored silver and black dial with applied steel bâton indexes, luminous dots outer minute/seconds divisions, subsidiary dials for the seconds, 12-hour and 30-minute registers, luminous steel "bâton" hands Cal. 72B Rolex Chronograph movement with a rhodium-plated, 17 jewels, straight-line lever escapement, monometallic balance, shock absorber, self-compensating free-sprung Breguet balance spring. The watch is in overall good condition. It just needs a good polish. The present wristwatch is a fascinating and very well-preserved early Daytona example. Its black grené dial features a rarely seen, small white “Floating Daytona” designation under the signature at 12 o’clock. Manufactured in 1964, such early “Floating Daytona” dials are considered by many to be Rolex’s very first dials to include the iconic ‘Daytona’ designation While the most obvious characteristic of FAP timepieces is the engraving to the case back, there are two other traits that define these watches. One is that the serial number - all or part of it - has to be present on the inside of the case back, thus linking together case body and case back. The other is a much subtler detail, and often lost due to the reasons mentioned above; on the opposite side of the back from where the FAP engraving is, these watches present an extremely lightly engraved military issue number. So light is this engraving that even a gentle polishing would irremediably erase it. Only a meager percentage of FAP watches still retain this number today, and this piece is indeed one of them, the number 454 still totally readable on the back.