The King and Queen Midas would eventually be absorbed into the Cellini family, but the watches actually debuted on their own in 1964.
The Midas is inarguably the funkiest mass-produced Rolex ever. The watch was designed by none other than Gerald Genta, the legendary watch designer who happened to throw this heater in warmups before going out in the ’70s and creating both the Royal Oak and Nautilus. What a star.
(Rolex was really in its bag with naming during this era. The King Midas was named for the mythological Greek figure who turned everything to gold with his touch. The Cellini, meanwhile, was named after the Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini.)
The King Midas’s asymmetrical square case, carved from a solid block of gold, became an instant icon in its time. Elvis Presley and John Wayne, two of the era’s most famous men, were both fans of the Midas. In 2024, the watch is now adored on Watch Instagram among forward-thinking collectors who’ve scooped up the design and its urn-shaped case in bunches or in variations with mesmerizing stone dials.
Experts like Lamdin also suggest that the Midas represents a turning point for Rolex—the moment when the brand started to truly champion the fun side of luxury watchmaking. “Rolex was willing to try something and embrace artistic design outside of their core offerings, and that carried on from there,” he says. “Rolex started gem-setting stuff and making wacky dials and wacky textures. The pave rainbow Daytonas wouldn’t exist if Rolex didn’t have it in their DNA to do something artistic and fun [like the Midas].”
11. Yacht-Master and Yacht-Master II
Many Rolex models perfectly capture the era they were produced: the GMT emerged in the ’50s, just as people began regularly flying around the world; the Yacht-Master, meanwhile, captures the so-bad-it’s-good taste of the ’90s. “How do you take a sports watch and appeal to a Monaco yacht club scene?” Lamdin says, summing up the model’s appeal. All the experts I spoke to had the Yacht-Master ranked higher than I’d expected.
The Yacht-Master, which debuted in 1992, has been around for an unexpectedly long time. The watch gave the Crown an excuse to outfit a diver-inspired watch with luxury touches, like gold cases and mother-of-pearl dials. Obviously, collectors with a penchant for this type of flair have become a core Rolex audience.
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