Rolex Daytona: A Look Behind The Hype | A Week On The Wrist

this may be the single most talked about written about and obsessed overwatch on earth the Rolex cosmic raft Daytona since the name was first applied to a Rolex photograph in 1963 has had an incredible journey from zero to hero unpopular at first the Daytona has today established itself not only on the vintage market we're sky-high prices and broken records have become routine but also as a current production model a new steal Daytona on a bracelet is so in demand that it is generally simply unavailable at least at list price and the wait for one is measured not in days weeks or months but in years but underneath it all it's still a watch let's see if we can peel back some of the layers of hype and find out what it's like to actually wear one for a week on the wrist despite the celebrity status that it currently enjoys the Rolex cosmic raft Daytona did not start out as a superstar in fact exactly the opposite let's take a little bit of a look at the history of the Rolex Daytona and see how it went from being a relatively obscure slow seller into being one of the most desirable watches of all time although Rolex had produced other chronographs prior to this the Daytona story really begins in 1963 with the launch of the reference 62-39 you'll notice the cosmic graph signature at 12 o'clock the now iconic inverse color sub dials and the tacky meters move from the dial to the bezel a series of incremental changes were to follow the daytona signature was added at 12 o'clock in 1964 screw-down pushers in 65 and by 1967 Rolex had moved the daytona signature to its current location at 6 o'clock the watch went largely unchanged until 1988 when rolex introduced a real game-changer this was the reference one six five to zero the first Daytona with an automatic movement the new look and new movement took the Daytona from a functional somewhat subdued tool watch to an impressive statement piece in 2000 Rolex introduced the one one six five to zero featuring Rolexes first in-house automatic chronograph movement the caliber forty one thirty and that brings us to the most recent incarnation the Rolex cosmic raft Daytona reference one one six five zero zero L n least in 2016 this is too many here in the room the most iconic Rolex wristwatch in the world possibly most iconic wristwatch of the 20th century if you've been paying any attention at all to the watch world you're probably aware that Paul Newman Daytona's continued to be some of the most collectible and also the most expensive watches sold at auction originally a slow seller produced in small quantities the Paul Newman Daytona has seen a remarkable explosion of interest over the last 30 odd years this meteoric rise in prices culminated in the sale of Paul Newman's Own Paul Newman Daytona in 2017 for the then record price of 17.7 five million dollars the circumstances of that sale were unique but the increase in prices of Paul Newman Daytona's reflects the explosion of interest in the Daytona in general as a collectible and this aura has extended to the modern version of the watch alright so we've taken a look at the Rolex Daytona as a model going from 1963 up to the present day and we've seen how it's changed over the years we've also taken a little look at how it's performed on the vintage market and in auctions a modern version of the watch however has attributes of its own that really are worth looking into sort of below all the layers of hype that have built up around the watch let's do a little bit of a deeper dive into what makes up the Daytona let's start with the case it's a cliche but by no means untrue that Rolexes are built like tanks and the Daytona is no exception what we have here is moister steel 40 millimeter by 12 point 2 millimeter with screw down crown and screw down pushers and as is typical with Rolex everything looks and feels very precisely machined and assembled the big update with this model when it was introduced was the ceramic bezel which really does change the visual character of the watch from previous incarnations I remember it as being a kind of a divisive element for the company to have added to the watch it is worth remembering though that something Rolex is known for is making incremental technical improvements to their watches which actually represent a performance improvement so leaving aside the question of whether or not we would sentimentally want a little bit more of a visual connection to the good old days it's essentially age proof fade proof scratch proof and time proof and as such the ceramic bezel is actually technically superior let's talk about the dial in hands the one thing that's indisputably true about the dial of the Daytona is that over the years it has gotten a bit busier the dial now reads Rolex Oyster Perpetual superlative chronometer officially certified cosmic Graf Daytona we also have Swiss made at the bottom which I think we can give them a pass on if you combine that with a metal sub dial surrounds the raised indexes with their white gold surrounds to the faceted hands you've got a lot going on so the criticism can be raised is Rolex sacrificing legibility on what is supposed to be a sports inclined chronograph my own take is not really while all of the detail on the dial and the quality of the hands quality the bezel do tend to draw the eye much more than in earlier models I still didn't find that the watch really sacrificed much in terms of legibility in daily use let's talk about the movement the 1:1 6500 LM features the in-house caliber 40 130 which as we talked about earlier first debuted in 2000 it has a number of features which are traditionally associated with high grade chronometer grade movements including an over coil balance spring and free sprung adjustable mass balance I think it's something that generally in the watch community Rolex deserves to be admired a little bit more for sure it's easy for the hype surrounding the Daytona cut it overshadow the fact that inside is one of the best engineered automatic chronograph movements ever made but the fact remains that's what's going on and it's pretty fantastic that you can buy the watch for one reason and find yourself admiring it for another so what's it like to actually wear how does it feel on the wrist as we've alluded to earlier it's really almost impossible to wear a Rolex Daytona without feeling the weight of all of that accumulated history and without being aware of all of the hype that's around it you know when you first start wearing it you look down at your wrist and you see 17.7 five million paid for the Paul Newman Daytona at auction you see all of that history going back to 1963 you see the fact that this is a watch that so many people want and it's so hard to get you see the fact that it's something that is probably going to retain it to value at least for the foreseeable future for the first couple of days that I wore this watch for sure I was hyper hyper aware of all of those elements they were part of the experience but I found that the longer I wore the watch the more the watch became important and the less all of the hype became important I wasn't particularly thinking about the glamour side of it or the social signaling side of it I'm just wearing a watch and what kind of a watch was I wearing I was wearing one that was extremely accurate really well engineered robust reliable and a small but definite pleasure to interact with on a daily basis you know in other words I was wearing a Rolex [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Hodinkee

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Rating: 4.8381367 out of 5

Keywords: rolex, daytona, watch, review, hodinkee, a week on the wrist, style, fashion, luxury, horology, gq, a blog to watch, teddy baldassre, ben clymer, john mayer, cosmograph, chronograph, vintage, paul newman, movies, fame

Id: __KqBEg5bFc

Length: 7min 49sec (469 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 20 2020