Demand for the prestigious Swiss timepieces - with the crown imprimatur - always exceeded the supply.
Rolex cachet is such that during World War II, a German mountaineer pursued by British soldiers in India partially financed his escape by selling his watch to a remote Himalayan villager. That story is told in the Sony Pictures movie "Seven Years in Tibet," starring Brad Pitt.
Geneva-based Rolex Watch Co. Ltd., a secretive organization owned by the private Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, keeps a tight lid - and high sheen - on the Rolex collector's market by limiting annual production to an estimated 750,000 new watches. That is a fraction of the worldwide production, but beguilingly less than the market demands.
The waiting list for certain models, such as the stainless steel Rolex Daytona, runs up to five years.
"In most cases we're not even taking orders at this point," says Anthony D'Ambrosio, executive vice president of New York-based Tourneau Inc., the country's largest Rolex dealer.
Demonstrating its ability to dictate market terms, the Swiss watchmaker on Sept. 1 imposed a 5 percent price increase on new watches sold in the United States, continuing a tradition of above-inflation adjustments.
This follows steps Rolex took in December 1993 to dismiss about 800 of its 2,000 U.S. dealers for alleged discounting and gray-market issues.
There is practically no upper limit to how much one can pay for a fine Swiss watch. A platinum-and-diamond watch from Rolex competitor Breguet recently listed at $1.2 million.
But Rolex remains the most popular - and prestigious - top-line watchmaker, attracting nouveau riche and horn-rimmed engineer alike. Its jeweled mechanical movements and analog face have proved to be almost timeless in this digital age.
New Rolex watches start at $2,200 for a waterproof Oyster and rise to $100,000 for a diamond-encrusted platinum President.
The gaudiest Rolexes affix a universal "social signature," says English author James Dowling, author of a forthcoming unauthorized history of Rolex.
"To borrow an American expression," Dowling says, "it's an in-your-face watch. The message people who wear that watch are sending is: I am very rich. I have a lot of money. I have more money than sense and taste."
Orange County gemologist Toni Pickford says: "The same guy who wears a Rolex (President), if he were a woman, would wear a 10-karat diamond ring."
More sage devotees are said to appreciate the Rolex as a marvel of mechanical engineering.
Just such a fascination motivated Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf. Born in Germany in 1881, he trained as a watchmaker at La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland, which is to watches what Napa Valley is to California wines.
Soon thereafter, Wilsdorf settled in London and began work that is said to have contributed three major developments to the history of horology.
- The world's first accurate wristwatch in 1914.
- The first waterproof watch, the Oyster, in 1926.
- The first self-winding watch, the Perpetual, in 1931.
A fourth breakthrough could be added: Wilsdorf made the wristwatch popular with men, who initially were reluctant to part with their traditional vest watches, then all the rage.
Dorothy Mastricloa, a docent at The Time Museum in Rockford, Il., explains, "The whole idea of wristwatches didn't get going until after World War I. … Men thought they were feminine. They didn't want to wear them."
Wilsdorf overcame this reluctance by making the Rolex synonymous with masculinity. Over the years, his company gave watches to actors, athletes and politicians, outfitting Sir Edmund Hillary's expedition up Mount Everest, Jacques Picard's deep-sea descent in the Pacific Ocean, Chuck Yeager's assault on the sound barrier, and Apollo 13 astronauts' catapult into space.
Rolex's popularity today stems from exquisite details that are its standard features.
Each watch is equipped with a sapphire crystal, coin-milled case carved from a solid ingot of stainless steel, platinum or gold, a luminous tritium dial and screw-down crown that - like a submarine hatch - is impermeable to moisture and dust.
Early models were outfitted with radium dials that, because of their radioactive content, glowed in the dark and are thought to have killed factory workers in droves at the supplier, Ontario, N.Y.-based Radium Watch Dial Co. The radium was replaced with phosphorus and subsequently by tritium.
Passing years presented the old-fashioned Swiss ownership with many stiff challenges: the rise of cheap quartz watches, introduced in 1970, which are more accurate than the best jeweled timepieces, and new competitors, some of which offer comparable workmanship and superior technology.
But the family trust survived and even the recent defection of fictional secret agent James Bond, whom author Iam Fleming in 1956 equipped with the official watch of the Royal Navy frogman, the Rolex Oyster Submariner. In his latest movie, "Golden-eye," Bond wore the competitor's Omega Seamaster Professional.
Dowling, author of "The Best of Time: Rolex Wristwatches," explains the watchmaker's enduring appeal this way.
"I feel that I can open a (Rolex) watch and know how it works. It has a beating heart: a balance wheel that has to rotate 28,800 times an hour. …
"A quartz watch will do anything you ever want. It will wake you up, it will tell you what time it is in Addis Ababa," he says. But a quartz-powered signal is essentially soulless, he says, whereas a mechanical watch is "almost human."
By Elliott Blair Smith, Reprinted from The Orange County Register, September 15, 1996.
