I'm a little on the fence about this one. I got my Sub last week after waiting two years.

Over the last few years, I've held a firm belief that it's 100% an AD problem. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a flood of BNIB Rolex sports models available from all the gray dealers. They get these watches from dealers "out the back door". It can't all be from owners who immediately flip the watch they waited a long time for. Also, Rolex (and Omega and others) being customers of my employer, I can see the invoices between Rolex SA and some of their ADs. In certain shipments, ONE AD got 220+ watches in ONE shipment. Value over 2 million CHF in total. Some shipments had 10 (!) White Ceramic Daytona 116500s in them. In ONE shipment to ONE AD....That was during the height of the "shortage" in 2021 and 2022. So Rolex have shipped an insane amount of watches to their dealers around the world. But that same dealer's website didn't have anything to sell, obviously. Holding the stock back for the "whales" or to sell out the back, more likely. So I never blamed Rolex.

Now after getting the watch and talking more with my SA, she was telling me that just her two stores she works in has a total of 1100 people waiting for a Rolex watch. 1100!!! So no matter how many shipments they get in, there is someone "waiting for that model", you can imagine. They can't give a watch to everyone, much as they'd love to.

So I think it's a bit of both. ADs are controlling the distribution, possibly with some guidance from the mothership itself, but if there are literally hundreds and hundreds of people waiting for a watch at "every store", then no wonder they're so hard to get, even if the AD would like to give one to all of the interested buyers.

It was worth it for sure. The watch is simply amazing in every way. Time to take a step back and enjoy it before going for anything else 🙂

Chris Ward no question. Quality, diversity. I have four watches still from them and the newer watches are extremely high quality for the price bracket, even much higher. Their C60 divers are 80-85% of an Omega for 20% of the price. I have a few Omegas and a brand new Submariner as well and CW should be proud they’re able to produce something almost as good for that price. Big win for us watch fans.

Wise words 👍

Keep it and slowly build around it over time. I sold 12 watches to buy my new Sub and I don’t miss any of them.

Welcome!!

Yeah it’s beautiful and just perfect