The Rolex DateJust

Is it just me or is the Rolex DateJust an old man's watch? Nearly thirty years ago I purchased a fake Rolex off the street in Kuta, Bali and I reckon even now I wouldn't be paying full price for a DateJust. Naturally, the DateJust is the quintessential Rolex, released in 1945, this timepiece is pretty much the workhorse of the Rolex range. The innovative DateJust was named after the date just jumped at midnight to the new numeral instead of the slow sweep over a number of hours as had been the case. The jubilee bracelet, cyclops over the date and oyster case pretty much guaranteed the DateJust would become a modern day classic.

Possibly what skewed my view of the DateJust was the fact that I thought this just couldn't be a real model because it looked so ghastly. I actually thought it was a run of the mill fake watch with just a Rolex crown logo attached to it; you could imagine my surprise when I found out this an actual model. I just wanted a fake Rolex to bring home for a bit of a laugh for friends and family; naturally they saw straight through my guise and my joke watch didn't get as many laughs as expected. Needless to say, I had no idea of the Rolex line although I was well aware of the branding but I had never seen one in the flesh.

I don't actually think I would have had the same reaction if the first fake Rolex I came across was a Submariner, a GMT Master, an Explorer or a Cosograph Daytona. What I really hated was the serrated, or what Rolex describes as fluted bezel, the gold and silver jubilee five-link bracelet let a lot to be desired and I didn't much care for the cyclops over the date. Rolex uses 904L and 18 ct gold for both the case and bracelet, the describe the metal combination as Rolesor, The monobloc 41 mm middle case has a screw-in crown, a screw-in case-back and is rated to a depth of 100 metres.

The COSC chronograph certified 3235 Rolex in-house movement falls within a -2/+2 second a day precision. The winding is a bidirectional self-winding perpetual rotor with a paramagnetic blue paracrom hairspring and a power reserve of 70 hours. Needless  to say, the DateJust doesn't come cheap due to the engineering that went into the in-house movement and manufacture of case and bracelet. But unfortunately, the DateJust will forever be in my mind, maybe unfairly, an old man's watch easily replicated throughout South East Asia.