After years of consideration, Bhanu Chopra took the plunge and bought both a Rolex Oyster Perpetual 39 mm and a Submariner Reference 114060. And less than 24 hours after finally taking ownership of them, Rolex discontinued both watches! Here he shares the story of how it all went down. Spoiler alert: he couldn’t be happier!
Colin Alexander Smith never set out to collect watches; in fact, he suspects that deep down he aspires to being a one-watch guy. He has only bought himself a new watch on two occasions in his life. Nevertheless, through a combination of new and used purchases, gifts, hand-me-downs, and inherited pieces, Colin has managed to accumulate a selection of watches that rather neatly spans eight consecutive decades of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Find out what is behind each of these watches remaining in Colin’s collection right here.
Are there special vintage watch dial variations named after notable women in a vein similar to that of the Paul Newman Rolex Daytona? Nick Gould was wondering just that and researched. Finding a photo of Vanessa Redgrave wearing a Rolex Submariner Reference 5513 with “Explorer” dial in 1966, he ruefully opines that this rare model would sound so much cooler as the Rolex “Vanessa Redgrave” Submariner rather than what collectors call it now: Rolex Reference 5513 Submariner with Explorer dial.
Increasing demand for timepieces, especially Rolexes, with the Omani emblem is understandable given the high quality, good condition, demonstrable provenance, and rarity of most of these watches, combined with the fact that they had often been presented to their first owners in the 1970s by Sultan Qaboos in person as a token of gratitude for services rendered. Colin Alexander Smith takes a very close look at the meaning behind these rare timepieces and in this updated version of the article debunks one theory behind the dial symbol.
Which Rolex models will be most sought after by collectors in the future? That’s not a trick question. And Watchbox’s director of media Tim Mosso and global head of trading Mike Manjos are here to answer it for you in the second episode of Watchbox’s new video series “Around the Crown,” which is dedicated to future classics from the Rolex catalog.
Tool watches continue their evolution among the watch industry’s most luxurious and coveted brands. Here Chris Malburg explores where their evolution has gone and might still go.
The rise of the internet, and the consequent evolution of the watch-watching community, has inevitably amplified the phenomenon whereby certain objects have come to exert an extraordinary hold over the collective imagination. Here, Colin Alexander Smith debunks three watch myths circulating widely and freely online and in print concerning former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s Rolex and Patek Philippe, the Khanjar Rolex Sea-Dwellers, and what in fact Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were wearing on their wrists as they summited Mount Everest.
Why is it that watch brands celebrate watch anniversaries so enthusiastically? The answer isn’t as complicated as you might think . . . here we illustrate the answer with some major brands like Rolex, Patek Philippe, Cartier, Chanel, and Omega, who celebrated major watch anniversaries back in 2017.
There aren’t that many rules that GaryG applies to watch collecting, but one rule that he has found critically important is that it’s crucial to handle a watch before buying it. This story however is about how Gary completely violated that rule and nonetheless came away happy with a watch that few people would have guessed he would buy: the 2020-launched Oyster Perpetual 41 from Rolex with a bright turquoise blue dial.
For watch lovers, the name “Paul Newman” is associated first and foremost with Rolex, and in particular with a subset of that brand’s Daytona watches with specific dial characteristics, including a recessed outer seconds track and subdials that feature block-shaped hashmarks and Art Deco-style Arabic numerals. But what does this nickname mean for these references on the vintage market? And what does GaryG think about it?