The fake Rolex Deepsea D Blue Dial watch has a gradient showing the decent of James Cameron’s submersible. This behemoth of a watch, the biggest in the Rolex fleet, is a totally impressive piece of engineering and the D-Blue edition is set for future classic status.
One of the trickiest Rolexes to quantify ever since its releasing, the Milgauss is technically a sports watch, seeing as it’s housed in an Oyster case, but a sports watch aimed at scientists.
Its releasing in 2007 with that watch, after the name was discontinued in 1988, retained the Milgauss’s USP—its resistance to magnetic fields by encasing the movement in a soft iron Faraday cage.
The watch’s name originates from the French phrase mille gauss, meaning 1000 gauss. Gauss is the measure of magnetic flux density, which is the thing that powered the Delorean in Back to The Future. But whatever they are, the Milgauss is impervious to 1000 of them.
Although the new generation was originally only available with a black or white dial, they remain among the most colorful of the brand’s sports offerings. The minute track and hour markers are accented in a vivid orange, as is the name under the 12 o’clock position and the second hand, fashioned into the shape of a lightning bolt in a fit of uncharacteristic replica Rolex whimsy.
For the 50th anniversary edition, the brand launched a new version, representing ‘glace verte’, to stand for the green tint on the watch’s sapphire crystal, using a process so complicated that even Rolex haven’t bothered patenting it.
They upped the color stakes even more by releasing the Z Blue in 2004, an identical watch to the anniversary model but with an electric blue Rolex dial (what else?).
What had been the dark horse of the Rolex range and a struggler regarding to sales found a strong audience beyond the laboratory. Still very much the odd one out in the sports range, it’s that exact quality, coupled with its bold scheme of contrasting colors, that has won it its laurels. Where Submariners and GMT-Masters are obvious choices for those seeking out the ultimate tool watch, the quirks of the Milgauss make it a much more special piece.