About this watch

Reference 126506 is the Daytona in 950 platinum, and the ice blue dial is the giveaway — Rolex gives that colour to platinum and to nothing else, so the metal identifies itself across a room without a word of engraving. The chestnut brown counters are what stop it being cold. The back is the part worth knowing about. This generation was the first series-production Daytona Rolex fitted with a transparent case back, anti-reflective coated, which for a company that spent seventy years insisting the Oyster should be sealed and opaque is a genuine change of position. What you see through it is calibre 4131, and the point of showing it is that Rolex finally thought the finishing was worth showing. Platinum does two things to a watch this size. It weighs roughly a third more than steel, which the bracelet transmits immediately, and it takes a softer, greyer polish that never flashes the way white gold does. Against that, a brown ceramic bezel and brown sub-dial rings read as warmth rather than decoration. Calibre 4131, self-winding chronograph, approximately 72 hours of power reserve, waterproof to 100 metres. A 40 mm platinum case under a chestnut brown monobloc Cerachrom bezel with a mo…