Everything You Need To Know About Million-Dollar Rolexes

Originally published by Stephen Pulvirent on Hodinkee.

Earlier this week, I found myself sitting in the front row at the Phillips Game Changers auction, speculating with collectors and watch dealers about what crazy prices we thought would be achieved by Jack Nicklaus's Rolex Day-Date and Marlon Brando's Rolex GMT-Master from Apocalypse Now. People were throwing out numbers in the millions (plural) and not flinching for a moment. After the watches sold for $1.22 million and $1.95 million, respectively, there was a certain sense of disappointment circulating. No world records were set, nobody pulled any crazy auction antics, and watches that had been hyped up for months were no longer objects of speculation.

But wait a minute. Disappointment? At what? Two Rolex watches just sold, minutes apart, for seven-figure prices, and the lack of a tenth digit or some sort of record had people feeling a tad deflated. As I walked out of Phillips, I couldn't help but feel that this was crazy. It was less than a decade ago that we saw the very first Rolex break the million-dollar mark, and somehow in just eight short years, we've started to take it for granted that million-dollar Rolexes grow on trees and are auction block regulars.