Today, there was a watchfair in Houten/Netherlands. There is currently nothing on my ’shortlist’, but it is only a half an hour drive from the city where I live in, and it’s always nice to meet up with some other watch fanatics. It seemed that the whole Dutch Rolex Forum crew was there. I also shook hands with a few of my forum sponsors, including JK of JK Watchstore.

He showed me this new Rolex Sea-Dweller Deepsea, a.k.a Rolex Dipsy (ref.116660). Although Rolex is catching up with the orders of this watch, it isn’t a watch that you’ll see often for the coming months. The watch is BIG. At first sight, a lot bigger than my regular Sea-Dweller (ref.16600) and my fairly big IWC Ingenieur (3227-01). However, after trying it on, it actually suited my wrist quite perfectly. This also could be a sign for me to keep a bit more control of my weight ofcourse.

Anyway, the watch looks big and is big. But if you can, try one on to be sure if it suits you or not. On the Basel 2008 pictures and photos (see below) I had seen till now I reckoned that the lettering ‘Original Gas Escape Valve’ and ‘Ring Lock System’ on the innerbezel would annoy me. It didn’t. I actually didn’t even notice it at first, only when I studied the dial/face a bit better. Too bad the photos on the official Rolex site are focussing a bit too much on this lettering. Well, perhaps some people DO like it.

The thickness of the watch suits the large diameter of 43mm. The bracelet is the same as the ‘old’ Sea-Dweller bracelet, until you flip it and see the clasp. The new clasp system is a 100% improvement over the old clasp (that probably wasn’t too hard to achieve). The micro adjustment can be done with minimum effort but pulling the middle part of the GlideLock(r) clasp and re-adjust it. Very nice. The only con I can think of, is the size of the bracelet. In my humble opinion, the bracelet should be a straight bracelet (everywhere the same size) instead of a tapered model. Perhaps a nice rubber diving strap will do the trick I don’t know if the Panerai OEM rubber strap will fit, but that will probably look very cool.

Here are some pictures from JK’s website:

The price of this watch is 7060 Euro (BNIB, 2008) at JK’s watch store.

Additionally, JK sent me some more pictures of the GlideLock clasp.

Rolex doesn’t seem to make too much noise about their 100 year anniversary, but Guido and Franca Mondani do! Yet another great book from the famous publisher Mondani is this “100 Years of Rolex“-book, written by himself and his wife.

This book covers the Rolex-story (about founder Hans Wilsdorf and the Heiniger-family who are running the Rolex organization since 1963) from 1908 till now, including the introduction of the Rolex Deep Sea-Dweller during the Basel fair of 2008. The book covers all important Rolex watches of the last century by publishing great detailed photographs of these watches, where Mondani also favors Rolex collectors by putting much effort in capturing details of bezels, bracelets, boxes and papers. All texts in this book are in Italian as well as in English.

As the pictures above and below indicate, the book has a nice and almost complete overview of watches that were introduced in a certain year. Besides that, the book comes with a smaller booklet with estimates of modern and vintage Rolex wristwatches. Additionally, Rolex dealers (authorized and unauthorized) placed ads in this booklet which might be usefull when you are planning to buy or sell your Rolex timepiece. Our own blog sponsor SubGMT is also listed in this section.

This book is limited to 4000 pieces, which makes it even a nicer ‘wannahave‘. Gone is gone I guess and I am more than happy to have my copy. It is a nice addition to Mondani’s ‘Collecting GMT-Master watches’ and ‘Collecting modern and vintage Rolex watches’ books, but certainly interesting when you don’t have either of these books. 100 Years of Rolex covers all watch series produced by Rolex, either vintage or modern and is very up-to-date.

SubGMT sells 100 Years of Rolex (over 340 pages and an extra booklet with collectors price guide) for the special price of 299 Euro (normally 350 Euro)!

Click this link if you are outside The Netherlands. SubGMT is a trusted party for all your (modern and vintage) Rolex purchases.

Last week we (my gf and I) returned from my vacation in the United States. Going from GMT-7 to GMT+2 (daylight saving time included) resulted in that I still am a bit off-beat. During my holiday, the Rolex GMT-Master proved itself to be very useful when making phonecalls to The Netherlands.

Rolex is also the brand that I spotted the most in the US, both in shops and in the wild Especially in the watch shops in Las Vegas, they had large collections of them. One of the stores that impressed me the most was the Tourneau store in Ceasars Palace. Besides having enourmeous displays full of Rolex, they also had Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, IWC, Jaeger LeCoultre, Jaquet Droz, Cartier, Omega, Tag Heuer and a lot of other brands for sale. The sales lady told me that this was their largest store in the US (I don’t know if Tourneau is also located outside the US). The one thing I didn’t like about Tourneau, is their ‘Certified Pre-Owned’ collection. Their prices are way too high (2995 USD for a used Breitling Aerospace for example) and these watches do not come in their original box and papers. But, according to one of the sales people, it does come with a nice Tourneau certificate. Ahum, as if that tells me anything.

In San Francisco, the city that I liked best during our trip, I bought a copy of Revolution Magazine. I bought a copy in Singapore earlier this year, and I like it a lot. Too bad it isn’t available in Europe (you can get a subscription for a ridicilous price, 200 USD for 4 copies a year) but that has been solved thanks to Ariel Adams. Thanks mate!

Revolution Magazine has great photos (and not the press kit photos you see in most magazines) and on top of that, really interesting in-depth articles I only know from the German watch magazines. I noticed that photoshoots (of ladies in bikini wearing watches that are just exotic as they are) and articles (diving watches) in my US issue of September have been copy/pasted from the issue I had bought in April in Singapore. Anyway, the other articles and the extra magazine that came with it made it all good again.

Oh well, back to work and back to writing watch related articles again. Thanks for the comments and e-mails I received during my holiday. I also noticed that during my stay in the US, the number of members of the ‘a Passion for Watches’ LinkedIn Group went over 560 and the discussion feature is being used quite well. If you are not connected yet, make sure you’ll do

Just before I went on vacation, I bought this great Omega Speedmaster Professional from 1969. I will enlighten you with some pictures soon

I remember being very enthusiastic about the re-invented Rolex Milgauss watches in 2007. I am a regular visitor of several Rolex forums, and most active on the Dutch Rolex forum, as writing/reading posts in your mother language still works best. It occured to me that only few forum visitors/members have a Rolex Milgauss in their collection (or as their only watch). When I just visited the sales corner of ‘das R-L-X’ forum, I noticed quite a few for sale, including those with the green saphire crystal called Rolex Milgauss GV.

Although the odds were different one year ago, the Milgauss doesn’t seem to be an immediate hit as I expected it would be. The period where prices were over the list price is long gone already, except for the green sapphire model I guess. The regular models (white and black dial) start below 4000 euro. Although I don’t care much about block buster watches, I was clearly wrong about the future of the Rolex Milgauss. If you look at watches as an investment, it might be a good bet anyway. Rolex watches that do no sell very well at this moment, are probably the most sought-after watches in the (far) future. Think former Milgauss, 1960s and 1970s Daytona and (more or less) the Rolex Oyster-Quartz models. That is at least what I hope for with respect to my precious Yacht-Master Oh, anyway… for those who have a modern Rolex Milgauss, enjoy your watches!

Rolex Milgauss 116400, a LNIB for sale at Bernard Watch Co for less than list..

Interesting book on this subject: