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Six Rare Rolexes That Explain the Top of the Brand’s Vintage Market

The Rolexes most viewers see on Wimbledon brand ambassadors’ wrists and the timepieces serious collectors fight over are not the same.

For a few weeks each summer, Rolex is hard to miss. At Wimbledon, its name is woven into the tournament's image of precision, tradition and control, the same language the brand carries across its broader presence in tennis. But the Rolexes most viewers notice on television and the timepieces serious collectors fight over are not really the same watch.

The public version of Rolex is a luxury object: the Submariners, GMT-Masters and Daytonas that signal you've done well for yourself. The vintage market runs on different logic. At the very top, value comes less from general recognition than from the specific reasons one example matters more than another. A famous owner, a tiny production run, an unusual dial or a case that survived untouched can push a watch beyond expensive and into the category of something collectors may never see again.

Rolex doesn't publish production numbers for its references, so the figures below come from auction records and collector scholarship, not the company itself. These six watches explain how the highest end of the vintage Rolex market works—and what a collector chasing the same feeling can still buy.

The most coveted Rolex references

Rolex Daytona Reference 6239 "Paul Newman"

Rolex Reference 4113 Split-Seconds Chronograph

Rolex Reference 6062 with black dial and diamond markers

Rolex Daytona Reference 6265 "The Unicorn"

Rolex Daytona Reference 6241 "John Player Special"

Rolex Submariner Reference 6538 "Big Crown"

Rolex Daytona Reference 6239 "Paul Newman"

Sold at Phillips, New York, October 2017. Result: $17,752,500

No watch on this list better shows how provenance can overtake the object itself. The Rolex Daytona is now one of the most recognizable watches in the world, but it was hardly an obvious future icon when it launched. Early examples sold slowly, and the unusual dial style collectors now call "Paul Newman" was, at the time, an odd and not especially popular variant.That changed because of Newman himself. His personal Daytona was a gift from his second wife, Joanne Woodward, and was engraved "DRIVE CAREFULLY ME" on the caseback. He wore it for years before it disappeared from public view, helping turn the exotic-dial Daytona from a slow-selling chronograph into one of the defining collector watches of the modern market. When it resurfaced in 2017, it was not just another Paul Newman Daytona. It was the Paul Newman Daytona.Phillips sold the watch in New York after a 12-minute bidding war that opened with a $10 million phone bid. The final price, $17,752,500, set a world record for any wristwatch and remains the highest price ever paid for a Rolex. That example is, of course, unavailable unless its current owner decides to sell. The broader category is less impossible to........

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