Rolex serial numbers, decoded to a production year.
Every Rolex carries a serial number that points to when it was made. Type yours in below for an estimated production year, or scroll down for the full charts and where to find the engraving.
Approximate years drawn from commonly referenced production records. Rolex does not publish official dates, so treat every result as a range, not a birthday.
Last updated June 2026 · maintained by MODA Watches
Letters overlap and some ran at the same time near the end of the era, so a result is a starting point, not an exact date. Rolex does not publish production records.
Where to find the serial number
The serial is small and easy to miss. Where it sits depends on when the watch was made, and you will want a loupe or your phone camera zoomed in.
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Before 2005
Between the lugs
Remove or shift the bracelet at the 6 o'clock side of the case. The serial is engraved on the case edge, opposite the reference number at 12 o'clock.
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2005 to about 2008
Two locations
Rolex added the serial to the rehaut, the inner ring between the dial and the crystal. For a few years it appears both there and between the lugs, and the two must match.
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About 2008 onward
Rehaut only
The case engraving was phased out. Read the rehaut at 6 o'clock with the watch face on, and you can do it without touching the bracelet.
Letter-prefix serials, 1987 to 2010
In 1987 Rolex replaced sequential numbers with a letter followed by six digits. The first four letters, R, L, E, X, spell the brand without the O, which was skipped because it reads as a zero. The letter tells you roughly when the serial sequence started. Letters overlap and some ran concurrently near the end, so the year is a starting point, not a birthday.
| Prefix | First issued |
|---|---|
| R | 1987 |
| L | 1989 |
| E | 1990 |
| X | 1991 |
| N | 1991 |
| C | 1992 |
| S | 1993 |
| W | 1995 |
| T | 1995 |
| U | 1997 |
| Prefix | First issued |
|---|---|
| A | 1999 |
| P | 2000 |
| K | 2001 |
| Y | 2002 |
| F | 2003 |
| D | 2005 |
| Z | 2006 |
| M | 2007 |
| V | 2008 |
| G | 2009 |
Rolex never issued serials starting with B, I, J, O, or Q in this era; those went to Tudor. A pre-2010 watch wearing one of those prefixes deserves a hard second look.
Numeric serials, 1927 to 1987
Before the letters, serials were plain numbers issued in sequence. One catch: Rolex hit 999,999 in the early 1950s and restarted the count rather than adding a digit, so six-digit serials exist in two separate runs. Case-back date codes from the 1950s era help split them, and the watch itself usually makes the decade obvious.
| Serial range | Approximate years |
|---|---|
| 20,000 to 999,999 | 1927 to early 1950s (first run), mid-1950s to early 1960s (second run) |
| 1,000,000 to 1,999,999 | about 1963 to 1967 |
| 2,000,000 to 2,999,999 | about 1968 to 1971 |
| 3,000,000 to 3,999,999 | about 1972 to 1975 |
| 4,000,000 to 4,999,999 | about 1976 to 1977 |
| 5,000,000 to 5,999,999 | about 1977 to 1979 |
| 6,000,000 to 6,999,999 | about 1980 to 1981 |
| 7,000,000 to 7,999,999 | about 1982 to 1983 |
| 8,000,000 to 8,999,999 | about 1984 to 1985 |
| 9,000,000 to 9,9xx,xxx | about 1986 to 1987 |
Ranges are approximate and compiled from commonly referenced production records. For vintage pieces, condition and configuration matter far more to value than a one-year difference in dating.
Random serials, 2010 to today
Around 2009 Rolex began phasing in scrambled 8-character serials, and by mid-2010 every watch shipped with one. Something like 52335J78 or 7B4K8920 is deliberately meaningless: no chart, calculator, or forum post can turn it into a production year. Rolex did this to make life harder for counterfeiters, and it works. One tell worth knowing: genuine scrambled serials never carry three or more letters. If you see one that does, it did not come from Geneva.
For these watches, the year lives in two places. The warranty card shows the date the watch was first sold. And the brand's own database holds the warranty date plus the factory configuration: the dial, bracelet, and movement serial the watch left Geneva with.
The chart gets you close. The database gets it exact.
A MODA Serial Check runs your serial through the brand's own records and sends the factory report to your phone by SMS within 24 to 48 hours: warranty date, factory dial and bracelet, movement serial, and whether the watch has ever been reported stolen. It works on every era, including random serials. One honest limit: on watches older than about ten years, the brand no longer returns an exact warranty date, so the report covers the factory configuration and stolen status instead.
Common questions
What people ask about Rolex serial numbers, answered plainly.