08/09/2026
A guide tells you the price. Never the regret.
Esquire published a full Rolex guide this week, collection by collection. We read it, and it's genuinely good. References, prices, history, all there.
What it can't show you is what happens after the watch leaves the counter. That part takes years to see, and we've had twenty of them.
A few things we'd add from our side of the glass.
1. The Datejust gets proper attention in the guide, deservedly. People who choose one as a first Rolex rarely come back with regret about it. We've noticed that across very different buyers.
2. The Daytona is the one people ask us about most. Waiting lists run years, so the secondary market fills the gap, but only when the servicing history and papers have been checked before it reaches a cabinet.
3. The guide skims past the scarcity problem. Rolex makes over a million watches a year and demand still outpaces it, and that imbalance rushes people. Decisions that deserve weeks get squeezed into days because someone fears the piece will vanish.
In our experience the watches worth owning are still there once you've done your thinking. And if a specific reference isn't, it can usually be sourced with the right history attached.
We once sold a Datejust for a fortieth birthday. It came back decades later on the daughter's wrist, in for a service before her wedding. Actually, that's the bit no guide can cover, and probably the only bit that matters.
