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Enter the serial engraved between the lugs and get the production year, plus the full sequential and letter-prefix tables from 1926 to today.
Type the serial exactly as engraved — a letter plus digits (e.g. Z419862), digits alone (e.g. 3841027), or a modern 8-character string.
The serial dates the watch. It does not tell you which model you have — that is the reference number, engraved between the lugs at 12 o'clock. If you don't have it, upload a photo and the identifier returns the reference in seconds.
Rolex numbered watches in a running sequence, so a higher number means a later watch. The sequence was restarted at roughly 100,000 in 1955 after it approached one million, which is why numbers between 100,000 and 999,999 have two possible dates. The model resolves the ambiguity.
A single letter followed by five to seven digits. Each letter covers about one to two years of production, and Rolex ran some series concurrently, so the ranges overlap at the edges. This is the era where a serial gives the tightest useful date estimate.
Eight scrambled alphanumeric characters with no chronological logic, introduced specifically to frustrate counterfeiters. No table can date these. The warranty card, the original purchase paperwork, or a Rolex service centre are the only sources.
| Prefix | Approximate years | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| R | 1987 – 1988 | First letter-prefix series. |
| L | 1989 – 1990 | — |
| E | 1990 – 1991 | — |
| X | 1991 – 1992 | — |
| N | 1991 – 1992 | Overlaps the X series. |
| C | 1992 – 1993 | — |
| S | 1993 – 1995 | Long-running series. |
| W | 1995 – 1996 | — |
| T | 1996 – 1997 | — |
| U | 1997 – 1998 | — |
| A | 1999 | Short one-year series. |
| P | 2000 – 2001 | — |
| K | 2001 – 2002 | — |
| Y | 2002 – 2003 | — |
| F | 2003 – 2005 | — |
| D | 2005 – 2006 | — |
| Z | 2006 – 2007 | — |
| M | 2007 – 2008 | — |
| V | 2008 – 2009 | — |
| G | 2009 – 2010 | Last sequential series before randomisation. |
| Year | Serial range |
|---|---|
| 1955 | 100,000 – 179,999 |
| 1956 | 180,000 – 249,999 |
| 1957 | 250,000 – 319,999 |
| 1958 | 320,000 – 399,999 |
| 1959 | 400,000 – 499,999 |
| 1960 | 500,000 – 619,999 |
| 1961 | 620,000 – 729,999 |
| 1962 | 730,000 – 849,999 |
| 1963 | 850,000 – 949,999 |
| 1964 | 950,000 – 1,099,999 |
| 1965 | 1,100,000 – 1,349,999 |
| 1966 | 1,350,000 – 1,599,999 |
| 1967 | 1,600,000 – 1,849,999 |
| 1968 | 1,850,000 – 2,099,999 |
| 1969 | 2,100,000 – 2,349,999 |
| 1970 | 2,350,000 – 2,599,999 |
| 1971 | 2,600,000 – 2,849,999 |
| 1972 | 2,850,000 – 3,099,999 |
| 1973 | 3,100,000 – 3,499,999 |
| 1974 | 3,500,000 – 3,899,999 |
| 1975 | 3,900,000 – 4,299,999 |
| 1976 | 4,300,000 – 4,999,999 |
| 1977 | 5,000,000 – 5,499,999 |
| 1978 | 5,500,000 – 5,999,999 |
| 1979 | 6,000,000 – 6,399,999 |
| 1980 | 6,400,000 – 6,899,999 |
| 1981 | 6,900,000 – 7,399,999 |
| 1982 | 7,400,000 – 7,899,999 |
| 1983 | 7,900,000 – 8,399,999 |
| 1984 | 8,400,000 – 8,899,999 |
| 1985 | 8,900,000 – 9,399,999 |
| 1986 – 1987 | 9,400,000 – 9,999,999 |
Lower confidence: pre-1955 records are sparse and the ranges are wide.
| Year | Serial range |
|---|---|
| 1926 – 1939 | 20,000 – 99,999 |
| 1940 – 1947 | 100,000 – 499,999 |
| 1948 – 1949 | 500,000 – 627,999 |
| 1950 | 628,000 – 779,999 |
| 1951 | 780,000 – 843,999 |
| 1952 | 844,000 – 927,999 |
| 1953 | 928,000 – 998,999 |
| 1954 | 999,000 – 999,999 |
Rolex has never released official serial-to-year records. These ranges are compiled from watches with dated warranty papers and are accurate to within a few months, not to the day. Where two eras overlap, the reference number and caliber decide.
A serial can disprove authenticity but never establish it. If the engraving uses a prefix Rolex never issued, if it dates to an era before the reference existed, or if it is etched shallowly instead of crisply machined into the case, you have a counterfeit or a re-cased watch. None of those checks work in reverse: a plausible-looking serial is exactly what a good fake carries, because it was copied from a real watch.
Serial and reference also have to agree. A 2015 Submariner reference wearing a 1990s prefix means the case, the bezel, or the whole watch has been swapped. Our 11-point authenticity checklist walks through the physical tells that actually hold up, and the reference number guide explains how to read the model number so you can cross-check the two.
If a serial appears on a watch you are considering buying, run it against The Watch Register and Chrono24's stolen-watch database before any money moves. Both are free to search and both cover serials reported stolen.
You can date it, but you cannot verify it. Rolex does not operate a public serial database, so no site can confirm that a specific serial was genuinely issued. What the published tables do is map a serial to its approximate production year, which is what the lookup on this page does. Verification requires a Rolex service centre or an independent authenticator inspecting the watch itself.
On every modern Rolex it is engraved into the case between the lugs at the 6 o'clock side, so the bracelet has to come off to read it. References made after roughly 2005 also carry a tiny laser-etched repeat of the serial on the rehaut — the inner bezel ring — at 6 o'clock. The number between the lugs at 12 o'clock is the reference (model) number, not the serial.
It depends on the era. Serials issued from 1926 to 1987 were sequential numbers and map to a year range. From 1987 to mid-2010 Rolex used a letter prefix followed by digits, and each letter covers roughly one to two years. From mid-2010 onward serials are randomised 8-character strings that contain no date information whatsoever.
Because none of them come from Rolex. Every table in circulation, this one included, is reverse-engineered from thousands of watches with dated warranty papers. Rolex also ran series in parallel and did not restart them on 1 January, so the boundaries genuinely overlap. Treat any single-year answer as an estimate with a few months of slack.
No — the opposite is normal for a recent watch. Rolex deliberately randomised serials from mid-2010 to make them harder to clone. What is a red flag is a letter prefix Rolex never issued, a serial that is shallow or acid-etched rather than crisply machined, or a serial whose era contradicts the model, such as a 1990s prefix on a reference launched in 2015.
Genuine ones, no — a serial is unique to a single watch. Counterfeits, frequently. Fake Rolexes are produced in batches from a single cloned serial, so the same number appears on hundreds of watches. That is one reason a serial on its own can never prove authenticity, only disprove it.
The serial dates your Rolex. A photo identifies it: reference number, dial variant, caliber, specs, and current market pricing.
Where Omega, Patek, AP, TAG Heuer, Cartier, Breitling, Tudor, and Seiko hide theirs.
Decode model family, bezel, and case metal from the number at 12 o'clock.
MSRP and secondary-market ranges for every Submariner reference.
The 11-point authenticity checklist we run on every identification.