The Rolex Daytona is a tricky watch to discuss these days. It’s difficult to separate the watch itself from its status as a barometer to the health of the entire second-hand market — a position that the replica watches UK themself surely never asked to be put into. Everyone has an opinion on the Daytona, and these days, those opinions seem to lean more negative due mostly to what it has come to represent.
As such, it rarely gets a fair crack at an honest judgment. In fact, it’s a watch I generally shy away from discussing publicly. But I’ve always liked the Daytona, and I take pleasure in wearing mine in non-watch-enthusiast environments. That’s because, behind all the speculation and hype culture, there’s a genuinely good sports AAA+ clone Rolex watches that are almost never seen as such. After a year of owning the reference 126500 Rolex Daytona Panda dial introduced in 2023, and amidst a cooling second-hand market, I think it’s time to change that.
Let’s start off by confronting the reality of this watch. The MSRP of the steel Daytona Reference 126500 in either black or white dial (dark or light, in Rolex parlance) is $16,000. The same cheap fake Rolex watches trade for between $27,000 and $32,000 in the open market. This is a serious discrepancy, but it does seem to have stabilized from a high point in 2021. In fact, it seems to be slowly coming down, but not nearly to a price that the watch merits, if you ask me.
At its MSRP, the Daytona is a legitimately great watch, but only just. At ~$30,000, this is a very different proposition, and one I’d caution interested parties to wait on. With that acknowledgement, let’s tackle what these perfect fake Rolex watches are like in day-to-day life.
The Daytona Reference 116500 was hugely popular for bringing a black Cerachrom bezel into the mix, recalling four-digit references that once offered steel and black acrylic bezels side by side. That said, under the hood things were largely the same as the Reference 116520 that first introduced the Caliber 4130 back in 2000. As popular as the move to a ceramic bezel was, there were still a few issues I had with the reference that the new 126500 generation managed to fix. Unfortunately, the new generation lost some important charm in the process. Alas, it would seem there is no such thing as a perfect modern Daytona (with the possible exception of the “Le Mans” Ref. 126529LN).
Ultimately, this is still the tool copy Rolex watches for sale, and I wish Rolex would treat it like one. I also wish the market would view it as one. There’s no magic to this watch that is worth double the asking price, and if it weren’t for a perfect mix of auction results and hype culture, I think it would be a far more reasonable proposition in the secondary market.
I hope to see that cycle pass, and for the Daytona to once again feel comfortable in its own shoes, viewed and appreciated for what it is. If you can get past all the hullabaloo, there’s a great, practical rolex replica here that should not be relegated to sitting in a safe for the next bull run in the watch market.
