Off-Catalog Rolex Watches - List of Special edition Rolex watches

Off-Catalog Rolex Watches – List of Special edition Rolex watches

If you look at the Rolex website and in Rolex’s product catalog, you’ll be able to see a large selection of different models and references. But did you know that these are not all Rolex models that the company makes?

Something that a lot of people don’t know is that Rolex makes a selection of “off-catalog” models that are not part of the standard product catalog. As a result, few people know that many of them exist.

These off-catalog Rolex watches can be considered “special edition” timepieces that are extremely rare and have very low production. Almost all of these special edition watches are gem-set with diamonds, rubies, or other gemstones. Many of them have extraordinary designs and are meant to stand out from the crowd with their often many gemstones. And as such, with their hefty price tags.

So why does Rolex make off-catalog watches, you may be thinking? Why doesn’t Rolex actively advertise these watches on their website and in the product catalog so people can actually discover and buy them?

The reason is rather simple.

Rolex makes these special and rare watches for their very best clientele and customers. And since they often come at substantial price tags due to the gemstones and the complicated gem-setting process that they involve. Customers who spend these sums of money are looking for something unique, rare, and special. And the fact that they are not part of the standard catalog helps Rolex keep their mystique and maintain a rare and precious status of them which makes them more attractive for these VIP clients to buy.

When only select customers know about them and a store proposes special watches like these to their best VIP clients, it emphasizes that they are something different. And because they are not part of the standard collection, the person who buys them can be rather confident in the fact that they’ll likely never meet anyone with the same watch. It’s not uncommon to see celebrities wearing these special watches, like Marc Wahlberg, Roger Federer, or Elton John, which reflects the type of clientele that Rolex is really striving for with these watches.

For the vast majority of off-catalog Rolex watches, official retailers do not get standard deliveries of these watches, unlike the regular models that they then put in the window in the hopes that someone will want to buy them. Instead, the vast majority of off-catalog Rolex watches are only sent by Rolex on request from the retailer. The process is usually the following:

A special VIP customer looks at watches to buy. The retailer brings up their master catalog containing all of these special pieces and proposes them to the client. The client says they want a specific watch and the retailer then informs Rolex that they have a client for one of these watches and asks Rolex to send it to them. For the off-catalog watches that Rolex wants to keep highly exclusive and rare, the retailer may have to provide information about the customer such as their previous purchase history, which then has to be approved by Rolex. In other words, for some of these special watches, the retailer basically has to submit an application to buy them.

Furthermore, some official retailers in prominent locations may have an easier time ordering these special watches and get better allocation than others. Because Rolex, for the most part, doesn’t send out these watches without the request of the retailer, Rolex keeps an extremely low production of the off-catalog watches and is able to maintain their exclusive and rare status. Moreover, the fact that most people are never aware of these models, and don’t even know they can be ordered further drives the scarcity of these pieces.

And if you do get a chance to order one, chances are, you’ll have to wait for quite some time before it is ready. Sometimes for several years.

Also, most of these watches cost more than 100.000 USD, it’s only a limited clientele that is able to buy them, compared to the other, standard production Rolex watches.

Rolex does occasionally ship these off-catalog watches to certain retailers, but in this case, it is primarily to retailers in prominent locations. This is because Rolex knows that most likely, retailers in less prominent locations may struggle to sell them as they do not have the type of clientele that these rare and special watches target. With that said if you are a good VIP customer of a retailer in a prominent location, you may be offered one at random. Because if the store has indeed received one, chances are, it won’t stand in the storefront window.

The bottom line is that when it comes to these off catalog Rolex watches, most people don’t know they exist because of their rare nature and the fact that Rolex almost never promotes them, just like how they want it to be. These are so rare that they are sought-after by any serious Rolex collector. They’re the epitome of any Rolex collection.

It’s also important to point out that these gem-set Rolex watches require a high level of skill and time to manufacture. Rolex simply isn’t capable of producing large numbers of these watches, even if they wanted to. The watches are built in-house by Rolex’s in-house gemologists and gem-setters, and in order to make them, Rolex only satisfies with the most perfect gemstones, which certainly don’t grow on trees.

To maintain the exclusivity of these timepieces, the production is, as you can imagine, extremely low.

Rolex has done a ton of different out-of-catalog watches throughout the decades. In particular on the ladies’ side with plenty of gemstone Pearlmasters and Datejusts. Rolex has also made a lot of different models for specific markets and with different dials. In this article, we are primarily focusing on modern out-of-catalog watches starting from around the year 2000 or so. Also, some models are so rare that the general public doesn’t even know they exist. For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, Rolex made a ton of different gemstone-set Day-Date models in all kinds of different, often crazy configurations.

Some references are presented in Rolex’s standard collection, but certain dial-variations may still be off-catalog watches. For example, several Lady Datejust watches or the Arabic dial Daytona.