Reference:116519: Difference between revisions

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The 116519 is the 18k white gold, leather-strap Daytona of the in-house cal 4130 generation, the strap counterpart to the bracelet-mounted [[Reference:116509|116509]] and the successor to the Zenith-era [[Reference:16519|16519]]. Christie's dates the launch to Baselworld 2000, where the reference arrived with the rest of the cal 4130 family. Rolex's own catalogue carried it into early 2016, and the ceramic-bezel [[Reference:116519LN|116519LN]] took its place at Baselworld in March 2017.

==Core facts==

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==Where it sits in the line==

The predecessor is the [[Reference:16519|16519]], the Zenith-based cal 4030 white gold Daytona on leather. The 2000 changeover brought the in-house movement, the 72-hour reserve and a redrawn dial-printing programme; the case profile, the engraved white gold bezel and the strap-and-deployant configuration carried over. The successor is the 116519LN, which arrived in March 2017 with a black monobloc Cerachrom bezel and an Oysterflex strap. That leaves the 116519 as the last engraved-white-gold-bezel Daytona Rolex delivered on leather.

==Production outline==

Case serials follow the chronology shared across the cal 4130 family. Pre-2010 production uses the Rolex letter-prefix system; from mid-2010 onward case serials switch to the random eight-character alphanumeric format that has no public year mapping. See [[Reference:Serial-numbers]] for the full key.

Cal 4130 is Rolex's first wholly in-house chronograph movement, and the 116519 is the white gold leather-strap entry into that transition. Thirty-seven years of bought-in chronograph bases ended with it: the Valjoux 72 family from 1963, the Zenith El Primero base from 1988.

==Dial map==

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==Strap, clasp, and packaging==

Packaging is where the Beach watches separate themselves. Documented lots carry a colour-matched lizard presentation box, a matching wallet or card holder, and in some cases a spare strap in the same colour, all keyed to the dial. One oversized electric-blue "Daytona Beach" presentation box has come up at auction on its own, without a watch. For the wider Daytona bracelet and clasp chronology, see [[Reference:Bracelets]].

===The Beach dials===

Four colours make up the Beach series: yellow, pink, turquoise and green. Sotheby's presents Rolex's own names for them as Champagne Nacre and Candy Rose for the two mother-of-pearl dials, Kallait for the turquoise hardstone, and chalcedony for the green, better known to collectors as chrysoprase. Each shipped with a lizard strap and matching packaging in the dial colour, and all four carry Roman numerals.

The launch date is genuinely disputed. Bonhams dates the series to 2000; Christie's has written that the four-colour offering came in 2002, and catalogues its own four-watch group as "circa 2000 to 2002". The end of the run is disputed in the other direction: Time+Tide gives 2001 to 2005, while Antiquorum has sold turquoise and chrysoprase examples with December 2005 sale dates and a chrysoprase made in 2006, and Christie's has catalogued a turquoise example circa 2006 with a 2006-dated guarantee.

===Hardstone and mineral dials===

Sodalite is a separate branch and gets conflated with the Beach series constantly. It is a deep blue speckled stone, usually paired with Arabic numerals, and it sits on the standard 116519 with a plain alligator strap and none of the colour-matched lizard kit. Bonhams treats it as a distinct dial; Antiquorum has titled sodalite lots "Blue Daytona Beach", which is where the confusion starts.

===Commissioned and personalised dials===

==Auction record==

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The reference also carries the strongest single piece of provenance in the cal 4130 generation. Sotheby's sold Paul Newman's own 116519 in June 2023, a black-dial example with a Z-serial case, from the property of Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman. Woodward gave it to him with the caseback engraved "DRIVE VERY SLOWLY JOANNE", the third in a run of caseback messages she put on his Daytonas: "Drive carefully me" on the [[Reference:6239|6239]] around 1968, "DRIVE SLOWLY JOANNE" on the Big Red [[Reference:6263|6263]] in 1983, and this one on a watch made nearly forty years after the first.

==Related references==

* [[Reference:116520|Daytona 116520]] — Steel, cal 4130, 2000–2016

See also the [[Reference:daytona|Daytona family index]], [[Reference:daytona-glossary|Daytona glossary]], [[Reference:Movements|movement reference]], [[Reference:Bracelets|bracelet and clasp guide]], and [[Reference:Serial-numbers|serial numbers by year]].