Rolex “Zenith” Daytona: Celestial Being

Rolex released the second generation of its now iconic Daytona chronograph in 1988 Many Daytona models sell for three to ten times their retail price on the secondary market When Rolex introduced the first-generation Daytona in 1963, it was a manually wound sport watch that required frequent adjustments to keep time.

So in the mid-'80s, Rolex started buying an automatic chronograph movement made by watchmaker Zenith and modified it heavily to create the new self-winding, second-generation Daytona, which replaced the manual version Once the second-generation Daytona caught on, the emerging watch-collector class started snapping up vintage models The current Daytona craze, the insanely inflated resale prices, the outrageous auction records: It's all rooted in the Zenith, which was replaced by the third-generation Daytona in 2000.

A vintage gold Zenith and a new gold Daytona cost approximately the same-for now. . Source