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The Beckertime Guide to the Best Rolex Watches to Buy if Money Was No Object!
Listen; we can dream, right?!
We’ve all done it (yes you have!) We’ve all day-dreamt our lotto list—that great long compendium of stuff we’d buy when we’ve struck it big, picked the winning numbers, inherited a fortune off that rich uncle we didn’t know existed or, you know, worked hard for it (urgh).
After a house or five, the fleet of sports cars, maybe a private plane to avoid those bothersome airport lines, it’s time to get down to the serious work; filling up your plethora of new watch boxes with a collection of timepieces even John Mayer would throw a jealous tantrum over.
Obviously, it is possible to spend truly staggering amounts of money on luxury watches, with top end models from the likes of Patek Philippe or Richard Mille running into the millions of dollars.
But what if you’re a dyed in the wool Rolex fanatic? Which glorious creations from the crown would you plump for if you never had to ask the price?
It’s always fun to speculate, even for those of us for whom money is most definitely an object, so read on below for our personal recommendations.
If You Want the Rarest of the Rare Daytona
The Rolex Daytona ‘John Player Special’ ref. 6241
Let’s face it, with truckloads of cash on hand for you to splurge on any watch you may so desire, a vintage Paul Newman Daytona is, or at least should be on your radar somewhere.
You could, of course, emulate the great movie star himself and go for a beautiful steel ref. 6239, with that exotic dial clearly signaling to those in the know that you are someone whose excellent taste is backed by an enormous net worth. A good one of those will relieve you of a half million bucks or so in no time at all.
But we’re in money no object territory, so let’s see if we can’t throw a bit more cheddar at the salad and see what sticks.
The stunning, and stunningly rare, solid yellow gold ref. 6241, with its own take on the Paul Newman dial, fits the bill very nicely.
The ref. 6241 was actually the twin of Newman’s ref. 6239, debuting two years later than its sibling in 1965, and both discontinued by 1969. The main difference between them was the former using a black Bakelite bezel insert while the latter had its tachymeter scale engraved directly into the surround itself.
It is estimated that only around 3,000 ref. 6241s ever saw the light of day and of those, barely 300 were cast in yellow gold. And of those, a mere fraction got Singer’s unorthodox Art Deco-esque dials. Nobody knows for sure but it is thought that where the steel versions were concerned, only one in twenty left the line with an exotic dial, so that should give you some impression of just how scarce the gold ones are today.
But why is it called the John Player Special? It’ll come as no surprise that the nickname was coined by collectors rather than by Rolex themselves and was the result of the striking color scheme. The black background and encircling black bezel are contrasted by three yellow gold totalizers, handset and minute track. It leaves the whole thing reminiscent of the John Player Special cigarette packs and the livery employed by the Lotus Formula 1 team in the ‘70s and ‘80s when they were sponsored by the tobacco company. It remains one of the most recognizable branding successes of all time.
And how much of our infinite wealth will we need to spend on one of these beauties? Well, the last time one came up for auction was in 2023 and the piece became the fifth most valuable manually-winding (think, first generation) Daytonas ever sold when the hammer dropped at $2,491,655.
So, I wouldn’t buy more than two or three.
If You Fancy a Bit of Strange
The Rolex Padellone ref. 8171 Triple Date Moon Phase
You could very easily blow your entire fortune on Daytonas. Diamond-encrusted platinum models with ice blue Arabic dials, rose gold Rainbows, the recently retired Le Mans or just ultra rare vintage variants such as the ‘Oyster Sotto’ will still set you back healthy six-figure sums each. But it’s nice to have something different in the box for those special occasions and the ref. 8171 is very different indeed.
It is a watch that has no equivalent in modern day Rolex, one of only two triple calendar moon phase models the brand made in the 20th century. Strangely it is a non-Oyster, even though it debuted in 1949—four years after the unveiling of the Datejust and more than two decades after Rolex altered the course of watchmaking entirely with the invention of their waterproof housing. Even more weirdly, Rolex released the similarly complicated ref. 6062 the following year which did indeed have an Oyster case, but both references were gone by 1953.
Of the speculated 1,200 or so examples produced, roughly 600 are thought to have been made in steel, with yellow gold the next most popular option and the slackest of handfuls (some say about 350) cast in pink gold.
The ref. 8171 was also enormous for the time period, measuring 38mm in diameter and earning it the nickname the Padellone, Italian for ‘big frying pan’. Large, flat and circular with a thin bezel, each one featured a black or creamy white dial with month and day of the week windows below the 12 o’clock, days of the month arranged around the perimeter and indicated by a third hand, and an engraved moonphase display encased in the sub seconds dial above the six o’clock.
By now, as you can imagine, these are spectacularly rare and enormously valuable. So, while you can still find steel versions for (just) under $100,000, decent rose gold pieces command prices at least three times that.
Are they worth that kind of outlay? Oh, yes. Vintage Rolex doesn’t really get much better than the ref. 8171, and neither do horology investments. If there is one reference practically guaranteed to increase in value, this is it.
If Understatement Isn’t Really Your Thing
The Rolex Submariner ref. 116659SABR
Much the same as the Daytona, there are enough eye-wateringly expensive variations on the Submariner to make very rich people very poor very quickly if they’re not careful.
Grail pieces such as early ‘four liner’ ref. 6538s, for example, always change hands for incredible amounts, with one sold for $567,000 in 2018. Another, with the Explorer dial and its 3/6/9 indexes, went the same year for over a million.
But those humble, almost unassuming steel precursors of the icon that was to come live at one end of the expensive Sub scale. At the other, Rolex have routinely outfitted the world’s most famous dive watch with a number of guises so utterly outrageous and flamboyant they would make Liberace blush.
One such was the ref. 116659SABR.
This off-catalog model was also released, coincidentally enough, in 2018 (t’was a good year to be a Rolex dealer, it seems) and leaves all semblance of modesty, restraint and humility not so much at the door as buried deep in the yard.
Under it all somewhere is a white gold-cased Submariner. However, with the lugs and crown guards emblazoned with 92 brilliant-cut diamonds, a bezel swamped in 36 sapphires and 12 further diamonds, plus a full diamond pavé dial with eight additional sapphires substituting for hour markers, you will have a hard job finding it.
This being Rolex, they didn’t just choose any old stones either. Those bezel sapphires have subtly different colors, with the first nine slightly lighter than all the others to mimic the standard watch’s hash mark quadrant.
Fortunately, the brand was clever enough to retain the Glidelock extension system on the Oyster bracelet (which also came with the option to have the inner links drenched in diamonds too) for those wishing to take the watch diving, presumably to fit over a diamante wetsuit.
The ref. 116659SABR is obviously universes away from where the Submariner started out and is the sort of bizarre entity reserved for the extravagant hyper rich, and other assorted show boaters. At the time of its release, the fully blinged version retailed for around $200,000. Today, you can actually get one for far less than that, with prices starting at around $150,000. Make sure you subscribe for more money saving tips!
Featured Photo: Mixed art by Oriol Mendivil for BeckerTime’s Archive.
