Rolex is making plenty of watches, but good luck getting your hands on one

Rolex is making plenty of watches, but good luck getting your hands on one

Rolex makes some of the world’s most popular watches, like the Daytona, Submariner, and classic Oyster.

The Swiss company is believed to make roughly 1 million per year, each one by hand.

New Rolexes can be hard to find for a buyer without an established relationship with an authorized distributor.

Insider Life: The best of real estate, fitness, travel & style Loading Something is loading. Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Semiconductor chips, used cars, Rolex watches: One of these things is not like the other.

Yes, people are having a hard time getting their hands on them; and yes, all are more expensive now than they were last year; but unlike the first two, the scarcity of Rolex is strategic.

While there may have briefly been a supply chain disruption for watchmakers at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, Adam Golden of Menta Watches told Insider the issues in the past year are a mere blip compared with larger trends happening in the luxury watch market generally and with Rolex in particular.

“Rolex seems to have structured their business in such a way that they’re controlling distribution and who gets what, at a retail level,” he said. A decade ago most models were available on-demand from authorized dealers (ADs) of the brand, he explained.

Read more: A luxury watch designer who sells timepieces that cost $500,000 reveals how he got his start and his daily routine

On a recent trip to a shop in Florida, Golden said there was just one Rolex available to buy — a ladies' Datejust that a customer had ordered and canceled.

In Houston, real estate investor Tyron McDaniel tweeted that he was unable to find a men’s Rolex and that many stores wouldn’t get new ones for another year and a half.

But Golden says watches are still flowing to the brand’s preferred ADs, and that the backlog is more illusion than reality. Rolex is generally believed to produce as many as a million watches per year.

“Rolex would like to perpetuate the image that there’s a shortage and that there’s such high demand that they can’t produce enough to satisfy the demand, but I think in reality it’s just very controlled release in order to keep that demand super high,” he said.

Rolex did not respond to Insider’s request for comment on this story.

Another result of this artificially constrained supply of new watches is the absolute explosion of prices on the resale market where some timepieces now command far higher prices used than they do at the retail counter.

For example, a steel Daytona is advertised on the Rolex website for $13,150, but over at Chrono24 the exact same watch is listed for more than $36,000. What other asset appreciates so instantly after purchase?

Rolex is by no means alone here, but it is a leading brand in the pre-owned watch market, which is expected to reach $29 to $32 billion in sales by 2025, according to a recent report from McKinsey.

“Rolex could probably do a number of things to fix the current situation and increase the supplies of these watches and dampen the secondary market,” Golden said. “But I think at this point they’re choosing not to, because it’s good business for them.”

Over on Twitter, one commenter recommended McDaniel take a look at the exquisitely hand-crafted mechanical timepieces made by German watchmaker Nomos Glashütte, whose most expensive model comes in at $21,500.

“Nice watch,” McDaniel replied, “but it’s not a Rolex.”

Rolex’s Newest Watches Are Already Worth a Lot More Than Their Retail Prices

Newbies to the world of watch collecting are consistently advised to buy what they love, and to avoid looking at timepieces as investment vehicles. Yet this year, more than ever, buying a new Rolex model from an authorized dealer and selling it on the secondary market is virtually guaranteed to bring returns that (dramatically) outperform the stock market.

Take, for example, the new 36 mm Rolex Explorer in Oystersteel (ref. 124270). Introduced at Watches and Wonders Geneva in April for a retail price of $6,450, the model is currently valued between $10,026 and $11,246 on Chrono24, which bills itself as “the world’s largest marketplace for luxury watches.” As of Aug. 3, the reference was fetching a premium of 66.4 percent above retail.

On Watchfinder & Co., the U.K.-based pre-owned watch retailer acquired by Richemont in 2018, ref. 124270 is going for nearly double its retail value at £9,200, or $12,785. And on Watchbox, a pre-owned retailer based in Philadelphia, the market price ranges from $11,000 to $11,500.

The new 36 mm two-tone Rolex Explorer in Oystersteel and yellow gold (ref. 124273) is also earning a significant premium on the secondary market, with prices on Chrono24 going for 32.5 percent over its list price of $10,800 (with its estimated worth falling anywhere between $13,255 and $15,655). Meanwhile, the reference is selling for $15,000 on WatchBox, and £12,000, or $16,678, on Watchfinder.

“The price growth trajectory for new 2021 Rolex models on Chrono24 definitely follows the same pattern Rolex has proven year over year as the most consistently sought-after brand on our marketplace,” Chrono24 co-CEO Tim Stracke wrote in an email. “Values continue to tick very much upward.”

The frenzy on the secondary market has reached a fever pitch, say dealers.

“I took a week off and everything has gone up—again,” Carol Altieri, chief operating officer of the online pre-owned Rolex dealer Bob’s Watches, wrote in an email. “Prices are up 30 percent almost across the board on not only the Rolex ‘regular’ hot sport models, but all models, from ladies’ models to Datejusts and Cellinis. It must be getting boring to hear this!”

The new Explorer II (ref. 226570), which retails for $8,550, “is the most elusive right now,” says Altieri. “We pay 20-30 percent over retail, and they sell as soon as we put them on site, at 10 percent profit. Not sure where the market is going to take this one yet. The white dial Explorers have always commanded a higher value than the black.”

The Explorer II noted above is available for nearly two times its retail value on Chrono24. The same is true on Watchfinder. There, the white dial version of ref. 226570 is selling for £11,950, or about $16,611, while the black dial version is priced slightly lower at £11,450, or about $15,916.

In short, virtually every Rolex model introduced in April—from the references noted above to the yellow gold Daytona with the meteorite dial (ref. 116508), which retails for $41,000 but lists for £66,950, or $93,050, on Watchfinder—is selling well above retail.

Consider the 2021 crop of Datejusts. The steel Datejust 36 with the palm frond dial (ref. 126200) is currently available for $16,338 on Chrono24, more than double its $7,050 retail value. And the fetching two-tone Datejust 36 in Oystersteel and yellow gold (ref. 126233-038), which retails for $11,050, has an estimated worth on Chrono24 between $14,180 and $17,002. Meanwhile, Watchfinder values the golden-dial reference from £11,150 to £12,400, or $15,499 to $17,236.

And don’t get us started on the most coveted reference from Rolex’s 2020 introductions, the new $8,100 Submariner (ref. 124060). Chrono24 calculates its current value between $12,877 and $13,841, while Watchfinder is selling the model for as much as £12,325, or $17,130, and WatchBox has it priced between $13,500 and $14,000.

Elsewhere in the Rolex pantheon, the interest in classic, and classically unobtainable, references continues to grow.

“Precious metal Daytonas have exploded — from yellow gold greens (ref. 116508-0013) to white gold blues (ref. 116509-0071), and the white gold on Oysterflex (ref. 116519ln-0027) — all of which are commanding over retail market values,” says Justin Reis, co-founder and CEO of WatchBox. “Oysterflex prices are even higher than some all-gold models! Of course, the steel ceramic Daytona (ref. 116500LN-0001) is as strong as ever, actively trading in the high $30ks.”

Chrono24’s Stracke says collector interest in discontinued models is also driving prices higher on older references.

“It’s important to point out that in our community of collectors, it’s not just the novelties that create accelerated pricing frenzies—it’s also about the models that have been consequently discontinued,” he says. “In this case, Rolex announced at Watches & Wonders earlier this year that it would be retiring its Explorer II (Ref. 216570) and it left collectors willing to pay soaring prices before it was no longer available.”

For buyers lucky enough to have a good relationship with an authorized Rolex dealer, requests must be made well in advance of any special occasions.

At Wempe, a prominent Rolex retailer in New York City, there are no such thing as “waiting lists” for Rolex models, which would suggest a chronological order to fulfilling requests. “We try to be part of people’s lives and special occasions and we have longstanding relationships with customers who expect we’d have something for them if their kid is graduating or getting married,” says Wempe US president Ruediger (“Rudy”) Albers. “But we obviously want to get new customers. So we proceed to create relationships and find the customers that love the product for all the right reasons.”

“Many customers do not know what’s going on in the secondary market and do not know what demand is like, so we need to educate them,” he says. “Once it’s properly worded, most people understand if it takes a few months or a few years to get it, that’s the story.”

The 10 Most Important Rolex Watches Ever Made

There’s watchmaking, and then there’s industrial watchmaking. The latter was pioneered in America, but with those watch factories repurposed for the war effort in the early 1940s, Switzerland took up both military and commercial watch contracts and became the powerhouse of industrial watchmaking we know today. No company innovated in the industrial approach to watchmaking more often and more successfully than Rolex, which has gone on to become not only the single most significant watch brand, but also one of the most significant brands overall along with Mercedes and, more recently, Google.

Hans Wilsdorf started Rolex in the 1920s, and the number of prescient mechanical innovations the man dreamt up until his passing in 1960 is astounding. But he was just as brilliant at marketing his innovative watches. Wilsdorf showed us adventurers climbing Mt. Everest, swimming the English Channel, flying unthinkable routes through horrible weather, performing atomic experiments, and so on, all while wearing a Rolex. If you were going to make headlines by carrying out some crazy adventure, chances were Rolex would pay you to wear one of their watches and then appear in what were the first “Advertorials” ever published.

Ad Patina

The branding worked like a charm, turning individual Rolex watches into symbols for specific areas of adventure and innovation like SCUBA diving, aviation, mountaineering, spelunking, science, engineering, and even serving as a world leader. By the end of the 20th Century, wearing a Rolex had also become a ubiquitously understood exhibition of social standing and good taste. This symbolism has held true for Rolex in myriad subcultures around the world for decades.

But the Rolex brand can overshadow the sheer brilliance of Rolex’s approach to industrial watchmaking, which has always been deliberately conservative, iterative, and at times cloyingly slow. However, our impatience reveals our passion for what Rolex actually makes and sells: the world’s most innovative and fashionable watches to ever come pouring out of a factory in the hundreds of thousands (or more) annually, which quench a global market whose thirst for said watches has never ebbed — not even a little.

Despite being the enduring pinnacle of industrialized fashion, the notion that form follows function has always influenced, if not dominated, Rolex’s design approach. Part of that function-forward ethos derived from the need to produce thousands of relatively uncomplicated watches every day, but that ethos was also a reigning industrial philosophy in the 20th century, especially among industrial designers who believed their designs could, and should, support democratic principles. But Hans Wilsdorf, Rolex’s founder, didn’t espouse much of anything: Indeed, it’s not hyperbolic to suggest that Wilsdorf may have said all he had to say through the watches themselves, that he left his mark in the things he made. And in that regard, we might think of Wilsdorf as an artist.

Below are what we consider to be the 10 most important Rolex models. They appear in chronological order, revealing that the 1950s were something of a golden era for Rolex. Yet, all but one of these classic models has been in regular production ever since it was introduced (and that one exception, the Milgauss, returned in 2007). To have that many watch models achieve such iconic status and perennial success is nothing short of what The Beatles did with pop songs.

Here are Rolex’s Top 10 Hits.

1926: The Oyster

Analog / Shift

Despite earlier attempts to house a finished wristwatch inside a second waterproof case, it wasn’t until 1926, when Rolex released the Oyster, that such a watch became a reality for consumers. (To get technical, let’s say “highly water resistant.") First displayed inside a fish tank in London’s famous Selfridges department store, the Oyster drew crowds of shocked people by keeping perfect time underwater. When Mercedes Gleitz swam The English Channel (or part of it) with an Oyster on her wrist, the entirely dry watch made headlines as part of what is arguably the first “advertorial,” giving birth to the star adventurer as watch ambassador.

The Oyster had three innovative features that assured its waterproofness: a screwed-on case back, a crystal screwed into place with the threaded bezel, and a screw-down crown. Though Rolex has since replaced the screwed-in bezel, the fluting of that early bezel remains an important aesthetic feature of modern Rolexes, especially the Datejust and Day-Date. The basic scheme for waterproofing the case remains essential to modern dive watches from all brands, and the name “Oyster” remains essential in the Rolex lexicon as indicative of a water-resistant case.

SHOP PRE-OWNED

1945: The Datejust

Phillips

The date mechanism had been included on watches in the early 20th century, but those mechanisms saw the date wheel take many hours to change over. Rolex’s Datejust, legend has it, either changed “just before midnight” or was always “just,” as in “accurate.” Either way, the Datejust changes its date display nearly instantaneously right around midnight, an innovation that has remained appealing to consumers ever since.

The Datejust has seen many permutations over the decades, but has remained essentially the same instantly recognizable watch. Many would argue that the Datejust’s fluted bezel and pronounced date window magnifier (often called a “cyclops”) are the most iconic features of any watch ever — and it would be hard to argue with that assertion. (Editor’s Note: not all Datejusts feature a fluted bezel, but this is arguably the feature most associated with the model.)

What people love about the Datejust today is what they’ve always loved about it: it’s versatile enough for business, socializing, and play, and it’s rugged enough to wear 24/7. In many ways, the Datejust represents the essence of Rolex in that it combines technical innovations, ruggedness, and timeless style in proportions that feel inevitable and, thus, “just right.”

LEARN MORE

SHOP PRE-OWNED

1950: The Oyster Perpetual

Analog / Shift

Though patents for an automatic winding rotor for a watch movement existed in the 1800s, Rolex patented an improved version in 1931. Interestingly, it wasn’t until 1950 that the company released what has become the famous Oyster Perpetual — “Oyster” for waterproof, and “Perpetual” for automatic winding. These watches required that the case back be quite deep, hence the nickname given to these early OPs: “bubbleback.”

An important technical feature of Rolex’s perpetual rotor is that it swings 360 degrees around, rather than about 200 degrees in a back-and-forth motion like rotors in “bumper watches,” which hit a spring-loaded stopper in either direction. Though it initially only wound in one direction, Rolex’s mechanism stored more power on average than bumper-driven movements, and their beefy mainspring provided around 35 hours of reserve power, a respectable specification even today for mechanical auto-winding movements.

By the mid 1950s, Rolex was selling Oyster Perpetuals with either “Air-King” or “Explorer” on the dial to enthusiasts of aviation and mountaineering respectively. The watches, however, were essentially the same as the original OP, and that remains more or less the case. Today, you can buy a brand new Rolex Oyster Perpetual in an array of sizes and styles, and it remains one of the most essential and classic sports watches ever created.

LEARN MORE

SHOP PRE-OWNED

1953: The Submariner

Phillips

Blancpain was the first to release a SCUBA-specific watch with a rotating bezel. However, the Rolex Sub has been in continuous production ever since 1953, has only been incrementally improved (and essentially unchanged), and remains an icon of tool watch history. Whether vintage or brand new, mint or beat to hell, the Sub is arguably the most recognizable and desirable watch of all time.

The Rolex Oyster Perpetual was the basis for the Submariner, offering waterproofness and automatic winding. But it was the rotating timing bezel and improved gasket system that set the Sub apart and made it useful for SCUBA.

By the 1980s, Rolex was making two-tone and solid gold Subs for an emerging class of folks who wore their tool watches with preppy garb at the yacht club. By the 2000s, no serious diver used a mechanical watch, and the rest, as they say, is industrial fashion history, as the Sub continues to grow in popularity today.

LEARN MORE

SHOP PRE-OWNED

1954: The GMT Master

Phillips

When Pan-American Airlines held a brief monopoly on trans-Atlantic flights after WWII, the airline requested a pilot’s watch from Rolex that could manage multiple time zones. The GMT Master was Rolex’s answer. With a 24-hour hand added to the center arbor and a fixed 24-hour timing bezel, pilots could now monitor local as well as, say, GMT time. This was all housed in an Oyster case and included the “cyclops” date magnifier made popular on the Datejust.

Pilots had become heroes, sex symbols, and role models during WWII, and many commercial pilots in the 1950s had served in the war. The GMT Master swiftly became popular with world travelers who admired these pilots, but the watch wasn’t as readily available to the commercial market until the 1960s when tool watches were becoming increasingly popular for daily wear.

In 1989, Rolex released the GMT Master II with a new movement and slimmer case, and in 2007 the third generation GMT Masters were released with ceramic bezels and an even more advanced movement that hosted a suite of modern updates. Never as famous as the Sub or the Daytona, the GMT Master remains a fan favorite nonetheless and is, accordingly, pretty hard to get — especially in all steel.

LEARN MORE

SHOP PRE-OWNED

1956: The Milgauss

Phillips

It’s a shame that we don’t readily celebrate scientists and engineers as heroes when we look back on the 20th Century, but we probably should. And if we did, we’d likely celebrate the Rolex Milgauss more fervently. Alas, this watch is mostly overlooked in the Rolex catalog, perhaps only because the daredevils who needed a truly a-magnetic timepiece were holed up in labs often off limits to the public (think Bell Labs and CERN), quietly received their funding through government contracts and research grants, and rarely became public figures.

However, the Milgauss — which stands for 1,000 gauss, the original a-magnetic rating — was a technical marvel worthy of all the hoopla it never received. It’s one of the few Rolex models to go out of production (in 1988), and it came back larger and more fun in 2007 with an updated case and a lightning bolt seconds hand. Though not entirely common to find at retail, the all-steel Milgauss is not impossible to get your hands on. That alone makes buying this professional steel model a stealthy move for savvy Rolex owners.

LEARN MORE

SHOP PRE-OWNED

1963: The Daytona

Phillips

It may sound funny to say that the most significant thing about the Daytona is that it had the word “Daytona” on the dial, but that’s about it, folks: Rolex had been putting 3rd-party chronograph movements into Oyster cases since the 1940s, and their larger, more modern chronograph with stick hands (the “pre-Daytona” ref. 6238) had been around since the early 1960s. But when Rolex began sponsoring motor races at the beachside track in Daytona, Florida in 1962, they put that famous word on their Cosmograph chronograph a year later and gave birth to a legend.

Daytonas weren’t outrageously expensive watches at around $400 at the time, but Paul Newman’s Daytona auctioned for $17.2-million in 2017, setting a hard-to-beat record for the most expensive wristwatch ever sold. Since then, these watches have become impossible to get in just about any metal, but a steel Daytona is especially hard to come by these days. As for an original “Newman” model — which features a cream dial and some very cool Bauhaus-inspired numerals — forget about it: Estimates say that there are only a few hundred in the world, and the prices are astronomical. But Rolex will always make more Daytonas to scratch that moto itch.

LEARN MORE

SHOP PRE-OWNED

1965: The Day-Date (or “President”)

Phillips

The 1965 Day-Date was the first waterproof, automatically wound, chronometer-grade watch with an instantaneous day and date display. Cleverly laid out to spell the entire day of the week at the top of the dial, it may not seem like a big deal today, but at the time the Day-Date was one of the more complicated watches coming out of the industrial watchmaking factories of Switzerland. It went on to adorn the wrists of more US Presidents than any other single timepiece, hence its nickname: The President.

The President bracelet is also distinctive, with its crowned links in five rows reflecting light from every conceivable angle. Whether it was JFK, Ronald Regan or Tony Soprano wearing the Day-Date, people of great stature and power were generally the ones with Day-Dates glistening on their wrists.

LEARN MORE

SHOP PRE-OWNED

1967: The Sea-Dweller

Phillips

The Submariner was a great SCUBA watch, but the Sea-Dweller was ready for the increasingly deep and long-term dives carried out by commercial divers, researchers, and explorers alike. Able to sustain pressure at a depth of 4,000 feet (1,220 meters), this was nothing to scoff at in 1967. In 2007 the Sea-Dweller got an updated water resistance rating of 12,800 feet (3,900 meters), making it, however briefly, the deepest-going watch in the world.

On wrist, the Sea-Dweller looks more or less like a beefed up Submariner, which it essentially is. For some, this larger, thicker watch carries a presence and confidence that’s highly appealing, while the unthinkable depths it can withstand speaks to the legacy of human ingenuity contained in these small marvels.

Perhaps most importantly, the Sea-Dweller reflects Rolex’s commitment to ocean research, which the brand funds robustly through its various scientific initiatives. Waterproofness in nano-scale wrist watches has turned out to provide useful tech that can be ported over to small submarines, cameras, and other scientific tools that are plumbing the depths of our largely unexplored oceans.

LEARN MORE

SHOP PRE-OWNED

2012: The Sky Dweller

Rolex

People love to hate the Sky-Dweller. It’s arguably “a bit too much” aesthetically, with its 42mm case, bright and wavy fluted gold bezel, and truly bizarre dial arrangement. No other Rolex announces itself so boldly and confidently. However, the reason we feel the Sky-Dweller is an important watch is that it represents one of the best values for a significantly complicated watch on the market today — and that is quintessentially Rolex.

Inside this Oyster case (which is water-resistant to 330 feet) is the calibre 9002, which contains one of the most thoughtful complications in modern horology: This automatically wound movement drives a clever annual calendar that uses the 12 markers around the dial to indicate the month and a traditional date aperture (with “cyclops” magnifier) to indicate the date. An eccentric 24-hour timing ring provides a GMT reference time, and also serves as an AM/PM indicator. But it’s the clever way one sets those various displays that is truly special: one rotates the bezel to different positions to select the function to be set, and then one uses the crown to adjust that function. It’s just like setting a digital watch, in fact, only here rendered in full mechanical cleverness. Brilliant!

LEARN MORE

SHOP PRE-OWNED