Rolex watches are normally defined in dramatic terms.
Flawless. Rare. Ruinously pricey.
Just now and again a Rolex appears to be like which may even be described – with a directly face – as mythical.
This May, at Sotheby’s Important Watches Sale in Geneva, a one-off Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, custom-made for a consumer, and certainly not sold at public sale, is heading to the block.
The watch in question is a platinum ref. 16516 from 1999, set with a mother-of-pearl dial and ten diamonds.
It has an estimate of 700,000 to one.four million Swiss Francs – more or less £640,000 to £1.3 million.
That could have already got made it a showstopper.
For years, its very existence became the stuff of hearsay and speculation.
Because right here's the kicker: platinum wasn’t even a factor for Daytonas inside the late Nineteen Nineties. For over a decade, you'll have one in metal, two-tone, yellow or white gold – however platinum?
Nope.
Rolex didn’t start out generating platinum Daytonas in series until eventually 2013, to have fun the fashion’s fiftieth birthday.
Which makes this 1999 commission no longer simplest historic – yet fairly rebellious.
The watch changed into considered one of 4 Daytonas made for the related kinfolk, all of which have the related reference variety – the ultimate digit of which, “6”, refers to the usage of platinum.
Each one was powered by using the Zenith El Primero automatic motion, and had a dial that turned into a complete one-off.
"This watch is particular," says Pedro Reiser, senior expert at Sotheby's Watches Department in Geneva. "And the celebration of the sale is entertaining. These platinum Daytonas had been portion of a fee made instantly to Rolex. They were given four authentic items out of it, each and every one with a assorted dial configuration."
The different 3 have up to now made it to auction at Sotheby’s, smashing their estimates.
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The first, with a mother of pearl dial, offered in 2018, after confirming the life of the watches. The moment, with a lapis lazuli dial, fetched an eye-watering HK$25.37 or £2.46 million in 2020 — more than tripling its authentic estimate – and on the time setting a brand new international list for a latest automatic Daytonas. The 3rd, with a turquoise dial, sold for $871,000 (£657.000).
(These watches fluctuate from the "off-catalogue" high-jewellery pieces Rolex produces in tiny numbers on the market both 12 months, which are kept at the semi down-low, in that they were privately commissioned.)
Watch-international folklore ties the construction of the 4 platinum Daytonas to Patrick Heiniger, CEO of Rolex from 1992 to 2008.
Heiniger was once a famously private, sharply adapted discern who turned Rolex from a revered Swiss maker into the global luxury juggernaut we understand this day.
But with that low profile and big vitality got here whispers, and masses of them.
For years, creditors spoke in hushed luxury watch brands tones approximately Heiniger carrying his own platinum Daytona – lengthy until now Rolex ever made one publicly.
People swore they’d considered it on his wrist, yet it used to be disregarded as watch-nerd legend.
"Those are rumours, I actual don't know for bound," Reiser says. "It's regular that he beloved platinum. Because he wore a platinum Day-Date [a model that was made in the precious metal]."
But then Sotheby’s began unearthing these platinum 16516s in 2018.
Suddenly, the parable had the teeth — and creditors realised Rolex's mysterious CEO may also have commissioned the fashioned secret set himself.
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When Heiniger took the reins from his father André in 1992, Rolex used to be already a revered call. A gentleman’s logo. Swiss, forged, and quietly iconic.
But the recent boss, who had a background in law and foreign international relations, had better plans.
Under his leadership, Rolex went from reputable to untouchable — an empire of metallic and gold, woven into the cloth of sport, art, cinema and aspiration itself.
Heiniger added production fully in-space, tightened delivery, and hardened the brand’s mystique like a diamond bezel.
Rolex now not made just watches — it made totems of success.
"Heiniger became most effective the 1/3 CEO Rolex each had," says Reiser.
"Every CEO has especially a long time at Rolex. His essential fulfillment used to be the vertical integration within the friends, bringing the bracelet brand, the dial enterprise, additionally the motion producer, lower than one roof. The events have been made off-website online by means of a legally self sufficient guests also known as Rolex Bien. They have been merely obtained via Rolex SA in 2004. that's the truth is now not the sort of long term ago.
"Without Patrick Heiniger, Rolex would not be what that is this day."
After leaving Rolex, Heiniger more or much less vanished from public view. He reportedly cut up his time among Europe and the Bahamas, residing very an awful lot off-radar. No interviews. No industrial memoir. The man behind The Crown had stepped again into the shadows. (He died in 2013, elderly 62.)
sotheby's
Sotheby's.
This closing ref. 16516 – the ultimate of the four commissioned pieces to floor, consigned by means of the equal relatives – comes with each of the top paperwork, plus the rarest dial of all of them: shimmering mom-of-pearl, punctuated with ten fabulous-cut diamonds.
Come May, the closing piece of the puzzle will fall into situation.