Modern technology has given us twists and turns for the past decade. We can reach almost everything with just one swipe, and looking at the time is no exception: just turn on your phone and voila! However, there’s something about wristwatches that people, especially men, are taking a different liking to. When you look at it, most high-quality watches cost a fortune, and some don’t even have extensive functionalities. Still, people treat these timepieces as something so precious and timeless.
Whether you’re into collecting wristwatches or not, you may have encountered the Rolex. Who wouldn’t when the brand is one of the most luxurious watch providers in the world? It also has an infamous legend (slash real-life event!) on how their most disregarded model became the most expensive wristwatch the brand ever designed.
In this article, we discuss why Rolex completes the list of the most valuable brands in the world of watches. We’ll also mention the most expensive Rolex watch that shook everyone to the core, even during the 1980s. Most importantly, find out what makes the brand irresistible among collectors!
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What’s with Rolex?
The world of timepieces would never be complete without the addition of the Rolex brand. After all, Rolex is considered the most valuable luxury watch brand sought after by collectors and users worldwide. If you have a picky taste when it comes to watch accessories, you might want to check out Rolex because of the broad choices it has in store for you. From classic tones to modern twists, the brand can provide you with the design option you prefer.
Is Rolex Worth the Price?
One of the main reasons why this brand is very popular is its whopping costs of the mechanical timepieces they produce. With $2000 as the usual starting price for these items, you can treat a Rolex watch as a symbol of success, luxury, and aspiration. But what makes it so valuable among everyone’s eyes? What’s in a Rolex watch that makes collectors and personal users go crazy, even at such a sky-high price? Here are a few factors that contribute to the overall value of a Rolex timepiece:
Advanced and Leading Innovation
Being a company based in Switzerland, Rolex caters to numerous labs located in Geneva, where its main headquarter offices are established. Rolex provides their researchers with all the necessary equipment and materials to work on new models of watches; additionally, they’re also going through significant processes to discover more efficient manufacturing systems and apply it as a whole.
High-End Materials
Did you know that Rolex has its own resource of gold, platinum, and steel in-house? Yup, all of these base materials are solely produced by the brand. They can extract steel ingredients from 904L steel materials to craft a stainless steel watch equipped with more robust elements, in addition to a longer polished look. Rolex also creates white gold, rose gold, and 18k yellow gold from their harvested raw 24k gold plates.
The whole process of manufacturing wristwatches is handled by Rolex independently. The brand has a gemological team to purchase, cut, and place precious gems and stones like diamonds and Swarovski. Rolex guarantees that they utilize the same process as most popular jewelry brands use, ensuring that each stone is hand-picked.
Top-Notch Manufacturing Process
While Rolex utilizes the latest advanced technology to manufacture their watches, the company still ensures that each timepiece is fixed and assembled manually by hand. Robots and other types of machinery are only used for assistance and additional support purposes.
Impressive Attention to Detail
Rolex takes up to a year to craft a single watch; from producing and gathering raw materials from their own resources to assembling and testing the item before marketing it, the company does this without depending on third-party firms.
For one thing, the creation of the watch’s dial takes a lot of time to do. Instead of utilizing robots, Rolex assigns humans to position markers on a dial because the brand believes that are manual hands are better and more accurate in handling the job. The watch will then proceed to the testing process, wherein different types of trials are executed to guarantee that the finished product is up to the high standards that Rolex claims.
So, what’s the Most Expensive Rolex Watch?
When you search for these words, you’ll instantly come face to face with Paul Newman’s Rolex Daytona. If you’re not very familiar with the Rolex history, you might get confused and wonder whether Paul Newman became the face of Rolex at some point in time. The answer is both yes and no.
You see, the Rolex Daytona was just one of the brand’s featured model categories, and if you might want to know, this model was overlooked as people went for other Rolex series. In the 1960s, Rolex decided to cater to the industry of race car drivers. Rolex’s goal for this series is to take race car driving as an inspiration to create an excellent timepiece specially designed for racers. It was expected to top the sales, but the market results turned out different from expectations. While other models’ price value continued to rise up, Daytona watches stayed at $200 for a solid amount of time. The Daytona reference 6239 was one of the official models of the series; it has an exotic dial that features a red seconds track along with large deco fonts. It also presents a colorful look, which seemed to be out of place for Rolex enthusiasts. Negative and declining consumer feedbacks led Rolex only to produce a limited quantity of Daytona watches with exotic dials.
However, it wasn’t until Paul Newman wore his Ref. 6239 Rolex Daytona that people started noticing the watch series. Apparently, Paul’s wife, Joanne Woodward, gave this watch as a gift to remind him to drive safely because of Newman’s recent racing hobby. People started wanting the model that Paul wears explicitly, but the thing is, Rolex didn’t manufacture a lot, making it very rare to have, especially these days. In 2017, the Paul Newman Daytona Rolex Watch was sold in an auction for a whopping $17.8 million.
The Cosmograph Daytona Features
Aside from the infamous exotic dial that Paul Newman’s watch features, the watch is also equipped with sophisticatedly-assembled, significant components to provide the best functionalities for race car drivers. The watch comes with a Calibre 4130, a self-winding chronograph with a specialized architecture that tops traditional chronographs. One of the main takeaways of this feature is its ability to save power for 72 hours of use. The chronograph also displays the driver’s elapsed time in terms of seconds, minutes, and hours. In addition, the chronograph’s function also allows users to start, stop, and reset with just one press.
This Daytona watch has a tachymetric scale, which lets racers find their speed over a distance they took based on their elapsed time. This scale allows this timepiece to measure speeds, even up to 400 units per hour, which users can determine both in kilometers and miles.
Final Thoughts
Paul Newman’s Daytona Rolex Watch remains to be one of the most iconic timepieces in the watch industry up to this day. Because of its rarity, this model continues to be Rolex’s most sought-after watch model, even at current times.
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