Three Short-Lived Rolexes We Still Miss (Plus Two Honorable Mentions)

Watches & Wonders Geneva 2023 felt like a victory lap for Rolex. They introduced a new generation of Daytona, a new model collection in the Perpetual 1908, a yellow gold GMT on Jubilee, the brand's first realistically wearable titanium watch (RLX Yacht-Master), the largest Explorer to date (40mm), and two wacky, colorful siblings: the 'Puzzle Dial' Day-Date and the 'Celebration Dial' Oyster Perpetual. It was a stacked draft class, but one watch stuck in my mind more than the rest.

It was just a new dial: the Oyster Perpetual “Celebration,” a burst of multicolored bubbles over turquoise that felt wildly out of character for Rolex. Standing there in Geneva looking at this new watch, I remember the conversation immediately went to permanence. Would something this playful and illustrative sit in the catalog long‑term, or was it a rare, possibly short, detour for the historically stoic brand?

Image Source: Hodinkee

Short runs happen at Rolex for different reasons. Sometimes a design experiment makes a brief appearance. Sometimes a reference bridges two technical eras and gets replaced as soon as the next standard is ready. And sometimes the lineup is reshuffled because a new model takes the oxygen. The three watches below capture those paths and explain why short tenures tend to stick in collectors’ heads.

Oyster Perpetual “Celebration” Dial (2023–2025)

Image Source: Wind Vintage

The Celebration OP was Rolex at its most playful. A turquoise base scattered with multicolored bubbles — and here’s the part that not everyone noticed — each bubble color corresponded to one of the lacquer dials introduced on the Oyster Perpetual in 2020. Pink, yellow, coral red, green, turquoise: the entire candy palette was reassembled into a single dial. It was Rolex referencing itself, almost a hidden easter egg, and it made the watch feel even more like an outlier.

This year, at Watches & Wonders 2025, the Celebration ended. Discontinued across 31, 36, and 41 mm, its brief run only sharpened the sense that this was always going to be temporary. The 41 mm in particular was notoriously hard to get and still commands heavy premiums on the secondary market (often north of $20,000 at the time of publishing).

The Candy-Color OPs (2020 Palette, Then a Fast Prune)

If the Celebration dial was the remix, the 2020 lacquer OPs were the originals. Rolex rolled out a wave of bright colors that instantly stood apart from the stoic black, blue, and silver dials we’re used to seeing. Turquoise blue, yellow, coral red, candy pink, green — each one simple, as an OP should be, but impossible to miss.

The significance went beyond aesthetics. The Oyster Perpetual is the entry point of Rolex’s catalog, the most realistic first purchase for many new buyers. Suddenly, the most accessible Rolex was also the most expressive. Certain sizes were tough to source and prices inflated, but in concept it made the OP line feel relevant and fresh in a way it hadn’t before.

Then the pruning began. Yellow was the first to go, discontinued in 2022. Coral red followed in 2023, vanishing across all sizes. By the time Watches & Wonders 2025 arrived, the brights had been pared back further: only green, turquoise blue, and candy pink survived, and even then only in select sizes like the OP 36 and OP 31. At that same show, Rolex introduced a softer set of pastels — lavender, pistachio, beige — along with new matte tones like medium blue and black.

The message was clear: the high-volume lacquer experiment had ended, but color wasn’t gone altogether. The loss of yellow still stings, but Rolex is continuing the spirit of the colorful OP, just in a more restrained form (this year, at least).

Submariner 168000 “Triple-Zero” (1987–1988)

Image Source: Precision Watches

Not every short-lived Rolex features a crazy color or out-there design. The Submariner 168000 — produced for just roughly nine months from late 1987 into 1988 — is remembered for what you can’t see at a glance. Outwardly, it looks almost identical to its predecessor, the 16800. It carried the same 3035 movement, same aluminum bezel insert, and same dial architecture.

The change was in the case metal. The 168000 was Rolex’s first dive watch to use 904L stainless steel, the more corrosion-resistant alloy that would later become standard across the brand. The switch happened quietly, then was just as quickly phased into the 16610 when Rolex introduced the 3135 movement in 1988. The result is a Submariner reference that exists as a snapshot — the briefest stopover between two larger eras, and a favorite for collectors who enjoy the “blink and you missed it” side of Rolex history.

What Short Runs Do to Appeal

Image Source: Hodinkee

Short production doesn’t always translate to runaway secondary pricing, but it does stand out in retrospect. The Celebration distilled the 2020 OP palette into one of the boldest Rolex dials ever, then exited after just two years. The candy-color OPs reshaped the entry-level Rolex into something bright, expressive, and desirable, before being trimmed back between 2022 and 2025. The 168000 proved that even a hidden material change could turn into lore when the production window was less than a year.

What connects them is scarcity of time, not just scarcity of supply. They remind us that Rolex can sometimes step sideways, or forward, only briefly — and those moments tend to be the ones we revisit most.

Honorable Mentions

Sea-Dweller 4000, Ref. 116600 (2014–2017)

A modern short run that lasted only three years, the 116600 reintroduced the Sea-Dweller after a five-year gap. It debuted at Baselworld 2014 with a 40 mm case, ceramic bezel, and Glidelock bracelet. Crucially, it kept the crystal clean without a cyclops lens. In 2017 it was replaced by the 43 mm 126600, making the 116600 the last of the “classic” proportion Sea-Dwellers.

Curved-End Rubber Strap For Rolex Sea-Dweller 4000

It’s worth clarifying: the older ref. 16600 (1989–2009) is also called the Sea-Dweller 4000 for its depth rating, but it belongs to a different generation with an aluminum bezel and a much longer run.

Daytona “Le Mans” (2023–2025)

The Le Mans Daytona has become a kind of rolling limited release. The first version, in white gold, launched in 2023 to celebrate the centenary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It introduced caliber 4132 with a 24-hour chronograph totalizer and a bezel marked by a red “100.” Less than a year later, at Watches & Wonders 2024, the white gold model was retired and replaced by a yellow gold variant. That one lasted only about twelve months before being quietly swapped again in early 2025 for a new Everose gold reference 126525LN.

Each version has been strictly off-catalog, never publicly listed by Rolex, and produced in very small numbers. Functionally, it’s a limited series, just released one alloy at a time. As I wrote in April, the Everose debut completes the trio of gold metals — and confirms the pattern we predicted last month.