The evolution of Rolex’s idolatry.

[rkny]

As I peruse this board and other boards/sites, it’s fascinating to me to see what Rolex has become.

As a kid in the 1970s, I grew up pouring over magazines, instead of reading the web. Their pages were rife with Rolex ads, selling not just a watch, but the idea of a jetting setting, mountain climbing, scuba diving lifestyle. I paid attention!

(Side note. My first “Rolex” was a fake gold Datejust, purchased for $35 during an 11th grade school field trip to NYC. I was so dumb and naive that I briefly wondered if it was real and perhaps stolen. It turned my wrist green.)

In the ‘80s I moved to New York and got into the watch dealer/collector scene. Back then, everything was about vintage American watches. Hamilton was king. Elgin, Illinois, Waltham. If you had a Howard pocket watch, you were a true playa.

There was a brief Rolex Bubbleback bubble from around 1990-95 as I recall.

This went on into the mid ‘90s, until people started noticing that the Italians and Japanese were curiously and furiously, buying up all the vintage sport Rolex. Giorgio Armani insisted that every one of his runway models wear a steel Rolex down the catwalk.

Suddenly, vintage sport Rolex was a hot commodity. Bolstering the interest was this new internet thing, with easily sharable photos and lore, of icons like Steve McQueen, Robert Redford, Jacques Cousteau and Sean Connery, all sporting steel sport Rolexes, in front of, and behind the camera.

Between the magazine ads we’d been programmed with as kids, FOMO from Italy and Japan, and the lanes forming on the information superhighway, the fever for vintage sport Rolex in America, and online globally, was born.

There are no doubt more granular moments and key players than I’m privy to, and those with infinitely more knowledge as to the ingredients that helped cook up the post-millennium sport Rolex feeding frenzy.

But as a casual observer, in the early oughts, I started noticing a shift, not only in which watches people were buying, but who was buying them, and why.

When I first started collecting/buying/selling, a jewel encrusted gold anything watch took a major back seat to the steel staples; the Sub/SD, the 1655 Explorer, the Milgauss, and the 1016 Explorer. All the Daytonas were already overseas.

No one cared about Presidents beyond their pennyweight. A bombe Datejust? That was so 1997! An Oyster Perpetual? Aww, how adorable, your first Rolex!

And certainly no one could care less about your new sapphire crystal Rolex, purchased at list. Authorized dealers were lousy with them. Gray market dealers gladly sold them for 10% off list. Posting every detail of the purchase of your brand new 14060? Unheard of.

I distinctly remember a watch show in the World Trade Center in 2000. There was a buzz on the floor because one dealer had a new old stock 1655 Explorer II, box and papers. The other dealers were all laughing because this guy wanted $6000 for it.

Now of course, everything’s changed. A 1680 Sub that traded at $1800 in 2000 is now $18000, easily surpassing inflation. The pool of people who can afford to play the vintage game grows smaller each year. So they turn to modern Rolex. And they’re younger than their collector ancestors. And comparatively wealthier.

Now the hunt isn’t as much about that perfect single red Sea Dweller, the hunt is for that elusive friendly AD who happens to have a blingy gold Sky Dweller if you call back in the next 15 minutes.

The icons and lifestyle promises of early Rolex marketing have given birth to a metaverse, whereby the watch itself, and the buying experience, are the icons and lifestyle promises, respectively.

People have gone from buying a Rolex because a cool guy wore one in a movie, to buying one because they can.

/random thoughts