The Rolex You Can’t Buy at Retail Is About to Test Australia’s Auction Records

Australia is not usually a place where The World’s Largest Watch Auction Has Stories. Geneva receives them. Hong Kong gets them. New York almost always gets them.

This time, it could be Sydney.

A rare Rolex Rainbow Daytona Set to be included in First State Auctions’ upcoming luxury watch sale, experts predict it could become the most expensive watch ever sold at an Australian auction.

The estimate is more than $500,000, which would easily clear the existing local record for a wristwatch. This is more than most collectors spend on buying watches in a lifetime.

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Everyone wants a Rolex but almost no one gets it.

Known as the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona Ref. 126598 RBOW, the Rainbow Daytona has become one of the brand’s most difficult watches to buy.

When Rolex introduced the Rainbow Daytona more than a decade ago, many traditional collectors thought it was too loud, too colorful and too far from the motorsport roots that made the Daytona famous.

Time changed him.

Rolex’s painstaking process of matching dozens of naturally colored sapphires, combined with extremely limited production and increasing demand from collectors, turned it into one of the brand’s most desirable modern watches.

Today, it is almost impossible to find at retail.. Its signature rainbow bezel utilizes 36 perfectly matched baguette-cut sapphires, arranged in a seamless color gradient, while another 11 sapphires sit on the dial as hour markers. It is so difficult to find gems that meet Rolex’s standards that production remains exceptionally limited.

A new example sells for $324,700, but actually buying one is a different story altogether. Allocations are generally reserved for Rolex’s largest VIP clients, with demand far exceeding supply.

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Why is this auction different for Australia?

The sale includes 28 watches that have a combined estimate of more than $2 million, but experts expect about one-quarter of the total amount to come from this single piece, which gives a fair sense of how the Rainbow Daytona sits relative to everything else in the room.

Its owner base hasn’t hurt the watch’s profile either. Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Hart, John Mayer, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Kane have all been spotted wearing it, a list that draws buyers who might not otherwise follow auction catalogues.

What makes the Australian result really interesting is that pieces of this caliber rarely surface here, instead being shipped straight to Geneva or Hong Kong.

Collector infrastructure exists, but it is difficult to estimate the depth of competition for such a single lot. Whether it will break the record or not will depend on one thing. How many collectors decide they can’t let someone else take it home Bidding will open on July 12.

Such opportunities rarely come in Australia. Not even a Rainbow Daytona.

Register now to bid.