Our first live auctions of the fall 2023 season are here! The PHILLIPS Hong Kong Watch Auction: XVII, takes place on November 24 and 25, at our West Kowloon headquarters. The auction includes more than 200 of the world's finest watches – including a captivating contemporary Rolex Daytona with cognac-colored sapphires.
– Logan Baker
Rolex loves its abbreviations. If you’ve ever heard some watch collector spouting off about BLNRs, LNs, and SARUs, they aren’t speaking in military shorthand, they’re just talking Rolex. Case in point – the bejeweled Daytona seen here is best known by the four-letter abbreviation “SACO” that follows its official reference number.
Rolex is based in Geneva, so these confusing codes represent a set of French terms that describe something specific about the watch. The “LN” I mentioned earlier, for example, stands for Lunette Noir, or black (noir) bezel (lunette).
SACO, meanwhile, is Saphirs Cognac, referencing the cognac-colored sapphire stones that are set on any watch with the specific label.
Rolex’s first SACO Daytona can be found on the infamous spectrum of pop culture and watchmaking tie-ins.
It was the ref. 116598SACO “Leopard”, introduced in 2004, that’s famously owned by actor Nicolas Cage. However, what you might have missed on the watch thanks to the bold leopard-print pattern on the watch’s dial and strap is the cognac-tinted sapphires set on the bezel
Thankfully, in 2019, Rolex went back to the drawing board and brought out the 18k yellow gold Daytona ref. 116578SACO, with a perfect mother-of-pearl dial, and the ref. 116588SACO, with a black sunburst dial, to complement the 36 baguette-cut orange sapphires set on the bezel. These two new -SACO references were introduced as off-catalog variants of the legendary Daytona sport chronograph, intended exclusively for Rolex's best customers and clients.
In the 1980s, Rolex began to dress-up their sports watches with precious gemstones for its more adventurous clientele. Among these first early gem-set sports watches are the manual-wind Daytona references 6269 and 6270 (the former with brilliant-cut diamonds at the bezel and the latter with baguette-cut diamonds).
Sparking a new trend for gem-set timepieces, Rolex continued to bedazzle their prestigious lines of watches with various combinations of gemstones, cuts, settings and designs over the years. Examples with large baguette-cut bezels, pavé diamond dials, emeralds, rubies or colored sapphires to name a few combinations have been produced, always in very small quantities and with extreme attention to quality and execution.
Adorned with 36 orange sapphires on the bezel, the black-dial ref. 116588SACO features a suave black dial with sapphire-set indexes in a matching orange hue. Each stone is cut specifically to be fitted on the bezel, with each gemstone examined thoroughly for its cut, clarity and most importantly, colour. The ref. 116588SACO is so rare and desirable that very few examples have been seen publicly, typically on the wrists of Rolex's most influential ambassadors and testimonees, such as Roger Federer. The example included in the Hong Kong Watch Auction: XVII is the first to appear at Phillips since the watch's debut.
You can learn more, place a bid, and view the entire Hong Kong Watch Auction: XVII catalog right here.
About Phillips In Association With Bacs & Russo
The team of specialists at PHILLIPS Watches is dedicated to an uncompromised approach to quality, transparency, and client service. Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo holds the world record for the most successful watch auction, with its Geneva Watch Auction: XIV having realized $74.5 million in 2021. Over the course of 2021 and 2022, the company sold 100% of the watches offered, a first in the industry, resulting in the highest annual total in history across all the auction houses at $227 million.
About Logan Baker
Logan has spent the past decade reporting on every aspect of the watch business. He joined Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo at the start of 2023 as the department's Senior Editorial Manager. He splits his time between New York and Geneva.
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