Rolex watches are primarily defined in dramatic phrases.
Flawless. Rare. Ruinously costly.
Just once in a while a Rolex looks that can also be defined – with a immediately face – as legendary.
This May, at Sotheby’s Important Watches Sale in Geneva, a one-off Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, custom-made for a patron, and never bought at public sale, is heading to the block.
The watch in question is a platinum ref. 16516 from 1999, set with a mom-of-pearl dial and ten diamonds.
It has Luxury watches online an estimate of seven-hundred,000 to 1.4 million Swiss Francs – roughly £640,000 to £1.3 million.
That would already have made it a showstopper.
For years, its very lifestyles used to be the stuff of hearsay and speculation.
Because right here's the kicker: platinum wasn’t even a component for Daytonas inside the past due Nineties. For over a decade, you need to have one in steel, two-tone, yellow or white gold – however platinum?
Nope.
Rolex didn’t initiate producing platinum Daytonas in sequence except 2013, to have a good time the mannequin’s fiftieth birthday.
Which makes this 1999 commission no longer in simple terms historic – but rather rebellious.
The watch turned into considered one of four Daytonas made for the same family members, all of that have the related reference number – the final digit of which, “6”, refers to the usage of platinum.
Each one used to be powered via the Zenith El Primero computerized stream, and had a dial that turned into a accomplished one-off.
"This watch is pleasing," says Pedro Reiser, senior specialist at Sotheby's Watches Department in Geneva. "And the instance of the sale is pleasing. These platinum Daytonas were component to a fee made without delay to Rolex. They got four certain items out of it, every one one with a exclusive dial configuration."
The different 3 have before made it to auction at Sotheby’s, smashing their estimates.
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The first, with a mother of pearl dial, bought in 2018, after confirming the existence of the watches. The 2nd, with a lapis lazuli dial, fetched a watch-watering HK$25.37 or £2.forty six million in 2020 — more than tripling its normal estimate – and at the time atmosphere a brand new world file for a leading-edge automatic Daytonas. The 0.33, with a turquoise dial, sold for $871,000 (£657.000).
(These watches differ from the "off-catalogue" top-jewellery portions Rolex produces in tiny numbers on the market both 12 months, which can be kept at the semi down-low, in that they were privately commissioned.)
Watch-world folklore ties the production of the four platinum Daytonas to Patrick Heiniger, CEO of Rolex from 1992 to 2008.
Heiniger changed into a famously individual, sharply tailor-made discern who turned Rolex from a reputable Swiss maker into the global luxury juggernaut we be aware of this day.
But with that low profile and mammoth drive got here whispers, and a whole lot of them.
For years, collectors spoke in hushed tones approximately Heiniger donning his possess platinum Daytona – long ahead of Rolex ever made one publicly.
People swore they’d noticeable it on his wrist, but it turned into brushed off as watch-nerd legend.
"Those are rumours, I particularly have no idea for sure," Reiser says. "It's regularly occurring that he preferred platinum. Because he wore a platinum Day-Date [a model that was made in the precious metal]."
But then Sotheby’s all started unearthing the ones platinum 16516s in 2018.
Suddenly, the parable had enamel — and creditors realised Rolex's mysterious CEO may just have commissioned the unique mystery set himself.
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When Heiniger took the reins from his father André in 1992, Rolex turned into already a revered call. A gentleman’s logo. Swiss, strong, and quietly iconic.
But the hot boss, who had a history in rules and worldwide international relations, had better plans.
Under his management, Rolex went from revered to untouchable — an empire of metal and gold, woven into the material of activity, paintings, cinema and aspiration itself.
Heiniger added creation wholly in-residence, tightened deliver, and hardened the manufacturer’s mystique like a diamond bezel.
Rolex no longer made just watches — it made totems of good fortune.
"Heiniger turned into basically the 3rd CEO Rolex each and every had," says Reiser.
"Every CEO has really a very long time at Rolex. His predominant fulfillment used to be the vertical integration in the organization, bringing the bracelet corporation, the dial organization, also the circulation company, underneath one roof. The activities were made off-site by a legally self sufficient friends also known as Rolex Bien. They had been merely bought by means of Rolex SA in 2004. which is truly now not this type of long term ago.
"Without Patrick Heiniger, Rolex would not be what that's at this time."
After leaving Rolex, Heiniger greater or less vanished from public view. He reportedly split his time between Europe and the Bahamas, dwelling very plenty off-radar. No interviews. No industrial memoir. The guy at the back of The Crown had stepped again into the shadows. (He died in 2013, aged sixty two.)
sotheby's
Sotheby's.
This remaining ref. 16516 – the final of the four commissioned items to floor, consigned by way of the related own family – comes with all of the proper bureaucracy, plus the rarest dial of them all: shimmering mother-of-pearl, punctuated with ten vivid-lower diamonds.
Come May, the closing piece of the puzzle will fall into region.