Rolex watches are perhaps the finest mass-produced industrial timepiece on the planet. They may actually be the finest mass-produced anything. And by mass-produced, I mean in terms of watch brand production volumes which for watches at the Rolex price point is most always less than one million watches per year.

Eventually, I came to approve of and even greatly desire one, then two, and later, more Rolex watch models. What really changed my perception of Rolex was being able to survey the competition. My status as a watch writer and expert affords me the opportunity to handle over 1,000 watches per year. I’ve reviewed a lot of watches and can say for sure that Rolex does a lot of things the very best. You also can’t deny the communicative power a Rolex watch has when saying something about your status, wealth, and taste. None of it may be true, but years of work have given Rolex wearers a pretty good personality edge. Even people who think buying a Rolex is too easy a way of showing actual or apparent wealth can usually only fault the wearer and not the watch. I’ve come to find that a Rolex watch is infrequently a bad choice.