Got back from Vegas, felt almost a visceral disgust at how many Rolexes I saw

[the dark knight]

This is TRF, I've been on this forum a while, I've owned basically every Rolex sports model at one point or another, my first "grail" was a Sub, I still own a Sub. Rolex has been my favorite brand since I seriously got into watches.

But I just had to vent that this past weekend was probably the first time I got seriously turned off by the brand.

Took a weekend trip to Vegas, first time in over 5 years I've gone during the summer. Everyone is wearing short sleeves, tons of watches. And my goodness. I am not exaggerating these numbers. At least 20 Rolex for any other brand of watch (including Apple Watches). I even played a game where I sat down and watched people pass by me and counted how many consecutive people were wearing a Rolex (it was 6).

I think I saw literally every single model.

I'm not one of those ironic non-conformist people. I still love Rolex. But man, I came away with just a newfound appreciation for non-Rolex watches if for no other reason than how rare they are. The only multiples I saw of the same non-Rolex luxury watch that I recall were from 3 brands. AP (RO), Patek (Nautilus), and Omega (Seamaster and Speedmaster). And overall I still saw very few of these compared to Rolex.

I personally wore my new Tudor BB58 GMT. And I'll be honest, in the past when I've taken trips like this and wasn't wearing a Rolex and saw some in the wild, I'd kind of miss my own and wish I wore it. Completely opposite experience this time. And ironically I got more compliments on the Tudor than I ever have in Vegas or elsewhere wearing a Rolex, so go figure.

In terms of the Rolex world, the only model I don't think I saw a single time was the Explorer I. And while I did see a small number of 16570s, I did not see a single 6-digit Exp II. So in terms of a modern Rolex that has all the goods but would be quite rare to see out in the wild, I've started really yearning for a white dial 226570.

But overall, I think I'm really going to start focusing my attention on non-Rolex going forward.