An unexpected arrival. 116710BLNR.

[jsausley]

This Friday my wife and I stopped by my local Rolex AD (where I bought my Explorer 214270 a few months ago) and had a chat with the salesman I usually work with. He knew I had been looking for a BLNR for a while, but I didn't expect to see one for months, honestly. He mentioned that he might be able to source one in a few days, but that if so I'd need to be ready to buy it pretty quickly to secure it. I said that's fine, if he called me I'd be in the same day.

We shook hands and then my wife and I went to dinner nearby.

About an hour later, on the way home, my phone rings. It's the salesman from the AD, and he tells me that he has a BLNR up for grabs as long as I could come in the next 24 hours or so. At this point the AD is scheduled to close in about thirty minutes. I only had to look over at my wife for her to say, "Turn around now."

We went back to the store and picked it up.

The watch was still in the shipping coffin on receipt. Turns out it had just arrived that day or possibly the day before and hadn't even been entered into the corporate inventory system.

I know there's a lot of stories about what is going on with Rolex right now and the stainless steel shortage, and especially what ADs are telling people, but what he told me I found very interesting. Apparently, according to my AD, when dealing with a franchised AD chain, Rolex ships these watches directly to the franchises for them to be sold, not to any corporate warehouse. Because of that it's possible to find one as soon as it comes in. This probably exacerbates the waitlist problem. I've only been waiting for this watch for a few months. Presumably there are people that I skipped ahead of, but when a franchise has a customer ready to buy at that moment, it's better to secure the sale than hope someone on the waitlist is still interested.

Once the watch is entered into the inventory system as in stock, at least at this AD, a franchise only has a few days to find a buyer otherwise the watch gets sent to the corporate office where it will be distributed to someone on the list.

So basically, I walked in and got lucky that he had one in stock. The reason he didn't tell me when I first walked in, and rather called me back an hour or so later, is because he had to make sure that this watch wasn't already promised to a VVIP or someone on the waitlist. It probably helped my case that I told him I'd come back the same day ready to pull the trigger.

I'm super excited to pick this one up. I did not expect to see a BLNR for at least a few more months, maybe even a year. I'm not going to lie that I didn't expect to (and I probably shouldn't have, financially) buy two Rolexes with three months, but when you have the opportunity to buy a grail watch that's as in demand as this one, and you can afford it without going on the Ramen Noodle Plan, you've got to do it.

It's even more beautiful in person than in pictures, and its everything I had hoped it would be.

Thanks to my wife for being supportive and not giving me the evil eye for such an expensive impulse buy. She's awesome.

Oh, and just to annoy the purists. BATMAN!!!!