Rolex watches are oftentimes described in dramatic phrases.
Flawless. Rare. Ruinously luxurious.
Just every so often a Rolex appears to be like that could even be described – with a straight face – as mythical.
This May, at Sotheby’s Important Watches Sale in Geneva, a one-off Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, customized-made for a consumer, and on no account presented at public sale, is heading to the block.
The watch in query is a platinum ref. 16516 from 1999, set with a mother-of-pearl dial and ten diamonds.
It has an estimate of seven hundred,000 to 1.4 million Swiss Francs – more or less £640,000 to £1.three million.
That could already have made it a showstopper.
For years, its very life turned into the stuff of hearsay and hypothesis.
Because the following's the kicker: platinum wasn’t even a aspect for Daytonas inside the late Nineteen Nineties. For over a decade, you're able to have one in metal, two-tone, yellow or white gold – however platinum?
Nope.
Rolex didn’t initiate generating platinum Daytonas in series unless 2013, to have fun the variation’s 50th birthday.
Which makes this 1999 commission no longer handiest historic – but fairly rebellious.
The watch became considered one of four Daytonas made for the related own family, all of that have the same reference variety – the last digit of which, “6”, refers to the usage of platinum.
Each one was powered by way of the Zenith El Primero automatic circulate, and had a dial that become a accomplished one-off.
"This watch is designated," says Pedro Reiser, senior expert at Sotheby's Watches Department in Geneva. "And the party of the sale is particular. These platinum Daytonas had been part of a commission made immediately to Rolex. They acquired four exciting pieces out of it, each one with a alternative dial configuration."
The different 3 have previously made it to auction at Sotheby’s, smashing their estimates.
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The first, with a mother of pearl dial, sold in 2018, after confirming the life of the watches. The 2d, with a lapis lazuli dial, fetched an eye-watering HK$25.37 or £2.forty six million in 2020 — more than tripling its customary estimate – and on the time setting a new international report for a up to date automated Daytonas. The 3rd, with a turquoise dial, sold for $871,000 (£657.000).
(These watches vary from the "off-catalogue" high-jewellery items Rolex produces in tiny numbers for sale both year, which are kept on the semi down-low, in that they have been privately commissioned.)
Watch-international folklore ties the construction of the 4 platinum Daytonas to Patrick Heiniger, CEO of Rolex from 1992 to 2008.
Heiniger turned into a famously deepest, sharply tailor-made figure who grew to become Rolex from a respected Swiss maker into the worldwide luxury juggernaut we understand this day.
But with that low profile and titanic vigor got here whispers, and a great deal of them.
For years, creditors spoke in hushed tones approximately Heiniger dressed in his Men watches online possess platinum Daytona – lengthy ahead of Rolex ever made one publicly.
People swore they’d viewed it on his wrist, but it used to be disregarded as watch-nerd legend.
"Those are rumours, I actually do not know for definite," Reiser says. "It's accepted that he beloved platinum. Because he wore a platinum Day-Date [a model that was made in the precious metal]."
But then Sotheby’s begun unearthing these platinum 16516s in 2018.
Suddenly, the parable had enamel — and creditors realised Rolex's mysterious CEO may have commissioned the common secret set himself.
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When Heiniger took the reins from his father André in 1992, Rolex become already a respected identify. A gentleman’s logo. Swiss, reliable, and quietly iconic.
But the recent boss, who had a background in regulation and foreign diplomacy, had greater plans.
Under his leadership, Rolex went from revered to untouchable — an empire of metal and gold, woven into the fabric of activity, paintings, cinema and aspiration itself.
Heiniger delivered production absolutely in-house, tightened deliver, and hardened the emblem’s mystique like a diamond bezel.
Rolex no longer made simply watches — it made totems of success.
"Heiniger was best the 1/3 CEO Rolex each and every had," says Reiser.
"Every CEO has truly a long term at Rolex. His predominant achievement became the vertical integration in the organisation, bringing the bracelet corporation, the dial company, also the motion enterprise, beneath one roof. The pursuits were made off-web page through a legally self sustaining corporation referred to as Rolex Bien. They had been solely bought by way of Rolex SA in 2004. which is truely now not any such long time ago.
"Without Patrick Heiniger, Rolex could not be what that's nowadays."
After leaving Rolex, Heiniger greater or less vanished from public view. He reportedly split his time among Europe and the Bahamas, residing very a good deal off-radar. No interviews. No trade memoir. The guy behind The Crown had stepped lower back into the shadows. (He died in 2013, aged 62.)
sotheby's
Sotheby's.
This remaining ref. 16516 – the last of the four commissioned pieces to surface, consigned by means of the related relatives – comes with all the suitable paperwork, plus the rarest dial of them all: shimmering mom-of-pearl, punctuated with ten vivid-lower diamonds.
Come May, the ultimate piece of the puzzle will fall into vicinity.