Personal Taste Time to go exploring for an old Explorer
WHEN watch aficionados think of Rolex, it’s the brand’s steel sports models – its “tool” watches – that really excite them. No other brand has such a wide range of iconic watches so inexorably linked to achievement, adventure and celebrity.
In the 1950s, Tenzeng Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary conquered Everest with Rolex Oysters an essential part of their kit. In the 60s, when Sean Connery’s Bond was gallivanting around the world defending us from SPECTRE and bedding beautiful women, it was with a Rolex Submariner strapped to his wrist. (Bond could be confident that the Sub was up to the job since Jacques-Yves Cousteau himself had helped test it before its launch in 1954.)
Jacques Piccard even dived to the bottom of the Mariana Trench with a Rolex Sea-Dweller Deep-Sea Special on the outside of his submarine.
So far so glorious, and there are plenty of other examples. These were watches with a clear purpose, designed with quiet restraint.
Over the last few years, Rolex has been gently shifting the underlying aesthetic of these watches. One after another, we’ve seen the Submariner, Daytona, GMT-Master II, and Sea-Dweller metamorphose by tiny, but crucial, increments. The Supercase (a new, larger, more squared case size), the Maxi Dial (a bigger and fatter set of markers and hands) and bold (for Rolex) styling cues such as polished centre links on the bracelet, extra labelling on the dials and some rather interesting colour choices have come into play.
These are excellent watches with plenty of fans, but personally I was pleased that those stalwarts, The Explorer and Explorer II, had until recently avoided what some Rolex fans regard as an onslaught of bling. (We’re touchy sorts, us Rolex die-hards). But even these two brave adventurers have now been reworked. In 2010, Rolex updated the Explorer to a larger case size and last year, it did the same to the Explorer II.
There are still a few of the previous generation Explorers to be found in the dealer network. To me, they’re now truly the last great Rolex tool watches – and yet they’re cheaper than their bigger, newer replacements. So if you’re a fan of old school Rolex beauty, do like me: plot a course to your nearest authorised dealer, ask for them by name (the Explorer is the reference 114270; the Explorer II is the 16570) and snap these two heroes up while you can.
The author is editor-in-chief of TheProdigalGuide.com, an irreverent luxury lifestyle magazine.