SDC Weekly 99; 🚨 Exclusive Kollokium Projekt 01 Variant “F” reveal; Urban Jürgensen Relaunch; Subscription Revolution
Pragnell Expansion, Passive Dominance in Investing, Rolex Roulette, and more.
🚨 Welcome back to SDC Weekly!
Estimated reading time: ~30 mins
Admin note: The Unofficial Editor is unable to review this week’s edition due to an unfortunate alpaca-related misunderstanding during a corporate mindfulness retreat. While they reassess life, grammar, and spitting etiquette, click this link to read the post online as it may have improved in their absence.
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🃏 Rolex Roulette
Jose Pereztroika just dropped a bombshell about Rolex’s Atelier de Restauration, and it’s scary AF! His story is centred on this Paul Newman Daytona (ref 6240) that sold at Sotheby’s in Geneva for CHF 241,300 on 11 May 2025. Jose explains why the watch is a Frankenwatch that somehow made it through Rolex’s own restoration service.
According to his research, this is a 1966 case fitted with a dial from a completely different reference (6263 from the early 1970s), and includes faked ‘Daytona’ print that didn’t even exist at the time the watch was made. Rolex’s own documentation states the watch was manufactured in 1968 - two years off from the actual 1966 production date:
Jose goes on to explain that Rolex has been accepting watches with obvious fake engravings for restoration estimates (at CHF 17,000 for basic service, mind you), and their Certified Pre-Owned programme has been caught selling watches with completely fake dials. He’s got images of an incorrect Double Red Sea-Dweller being sold via CPO - which was then removed by the Zurich dealer when they found out.
Jose then explains that he offered his expertise to help Rolex sort this mess, but was completely ignored. For a brand that is generally obsessed with controlling its image, this level of negligence seems almost deliberately obtuse. The vintage market is already treacherous enough, and if the manufacturer themselves are now muddying the waters, it is quite alarming! I mean, if you can’t trust Rolex to authenticate their own watches properly, who in their right mind will buy a vintage Rolex in the coming years?
The most insane thing about this story is how badly it undermines newcomers trying to enter vintage collecting through “safe” channels like CPO. People expect to pay a premium for peace of mind that is supposed to come from buying a CPO - after reading this story, the “C” in CPO appears to be meaningless! What’s worse, if they don’t even respond to Jose, then what chance do you have of recourse if Jose later identifies your watch as fake or altered? They may simply tell you “it’s fine because we said so” and this simply isn’t good enough.
What a time to be alive; this feels like factory authentication no longer equals legitimacy, and that, my friends, is fvcking bonkers.
💹 Pragnell Expansion
Charlie Pragnell was recently interviewed by WatchPro because Pragnell has launched The Embassy - a second retail brand in Stratford-Upon-Avon specifically designed to develop customers “from their first watch into the wider watch world.” Meanwhile, the main Pragnell showrooms are doubling down on independents like Ferdinand Berthoud, Greubel Forsey, Ludovic Ballouard and Laurent Ferrier.
The spiciest bit for me, was how Pragnell couldn’t reach a “mutually beneficial arrangement” with Swatch Group (goodbye Omega)! Charlie’s being diplomatic about it, but reading between the lines, it seems like Omega’s terms weren’t particularly... flexible.
Charlie also makes some interesting observations about gold; he’s calling a 10-15 year trend shift from white metals to yellow - something he frames as a cyclical pattern spanning 200 years that “almost always coincides with the high price of gold.” Smart money says he’s positioning for brands with strong jewellery heritage (Cartier, Bulgari, Van Cleef etc) to dominate in the next decade.
His take on the post-W&W vibe was also pretty smug, and after 27 years of attending watch fairs, Charlie reckons 2025 felt like 2008-2015 - a period of “liberation and expansion” when industry controls loosened up. Translation: brands are finally realising they need good retail partners, as opposed to just order-takers.
The subtext here is delicious, really. After years of pushing for vertical integration, boutique-first strategies have left brands scrambling to rebuild relationships with independent retailers who understand customers. As Charlie puts it: “Those companies like ours that have been doing this for a very long time have the experience to adjust for different economic conditions.”
Shots fired, and in classic British style, politely delivered 😂