Want more insider watch coverage? Get Box + Papers, GQ's newsletter devoted to the watch world, sent to your inbox every Friday. Sign up here.
Few watch models stir diehard collectors quite like the Rolex Daytona with an exotic “Paul Newman” dial. The late actor made this variation of the watch so famous—with its Art Deco numerals and contrasting track around the edge of the dial—that his personal specimen sold for a then record-setting $17.8 million in 2017. Meanwhile, no design flourish gives a watch more prestige than a Tiffany stamp on the dial, which signifies that the piece was originally sold by the legendary New York-based jeweler. And for collectors who really don’t have to worry about the price tag, landing a watch from your birth year is an irresistible cherry on top. Jay-Z’s latest watch is a Rolex Daytona 6263 that combines all these elements in an unparalleled holy grail.
Until this past weekend, when Jay-Z wore it to Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour stop at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, this watch spent years hiding out in a safe. The dealer Adam Golden, founder of Menta Watches, has known about this exact piece for years. The Daytona came from a private collection that the collector has slowly been selling off. Golden sold the mythical “Lemon” Daytona 6265, an 18-carat yellow-gold version of the watch with a citrus-yellow dial, from the same collector for $3.6 million.
“I’ve known about this watch for three or four years now and [was] always promised it [by the seller],” Golden explained via DM. “The time finally came. I was going to offer it to a good client and it randomly popped in my head to text Alex [Todd, Jay’s go-to jeweler], as Jay is a [Tiffany] ambassador.”
When a watch this special comes along, there is little time to hesitate—and Todd jumped at the opportunity. “When it comes to vintage Rolex I trust very few people honestly,” Todd told me. “Whenever somebody sends me a vintage Rolex, I send a picture to Adam for his advice. Recently, I sent him an expensive Daytona to get his advice, so he might have had an idea that I had my eyes on one for an important client. He sent me this rare gem, and it being a ‘69 Tiffany Newman, it only made sense who it would end up going to.” Golden’s text bounced from Todd over to that “important client” of his: “Sent it over to Hov and that’s all she wrote.”
Within a few days of presenting the watch to Todd, Golden was on a red eye from San Diego to New York City to show Hov the watch in person. The watch had been sitting for so long that the mainspring—the piece that delivers power to the watch’s movement—was broken. Golden had to get it fixed the morning of his meeting, just a week and a half ago.
After patiently waiting years for the watch, everything happened for Golden at rapid speed. The meeting with Jayt took mere minutes. “Meeting with Jay was cool but quick,” Golden said. “Really down-to-earth nice guy with no pretense. Explained a little about [the watch]. Sized it for him. The whole meeting was over in five minutes.”
When you have a bank account as big as Jay’s, this isn’t a watch that requires much deliberation—especially given that Golden describes it as being in “great condition” with all the original parts. It’s hard to put a market value on a watch that hardly ever comes to market. A similar Tiffany-stamped Paul Newman Daytona sold at Phillip’s for 874,000 Swiss Francs in 2016, which was long before the watch market went kaboom. When someone asked Todd about the price on Instagram, the jeweler responded, “As much as he wants. There is no others around…”
The watch is the latest crown jewel in Jay-Z’s museum-worthy collection. He showed off an incredibly rare Audemars Piguet Royal Oak perpetual calendar with a mother of pearl dial just a couple of weeks ago. Almost immediately after wearing that watch, Todd promised me there were a “few more bangers coming soon.” He wasn’t lying.