I’ve been collecting watches for a few years now, since just before the whole steel sports watch thing blew up and long before the Rolex Oyster Perpetual 114200 existed. I wish I could say that when I started out I bought a handful of Subs and left them boxed and stickered and have now sold them to fund the seemingly endless school fees, but alas, all my funds were squandered (invested I mean of course my dearest love if you are reading this) on broken Seiko’s and more and more watch tools with which to rectify their sad conditions.

I do however have a couple of Rolex’s. The first, an old pocket watch movement in a Dennison case that certainly isn’t its first home, and I don’ think the dial is original either. It’s a curiosity if nothing else and holds sentimental value rather than being a disposable asset like most people seem to think of Rolex’s as these days, present company excepted of course! The second is a rather more modern affair, a Rolex Oyster Perpetual 114200 with a muted green dial that I got new from an AD in the UK near the end of 2016. It’s kind of a smallish watch at 34mm but to me it wears bigger than that. Maybe it’s the way the dial goes so close to the edge of the case with a modest rehaut and a smooth bezel curving down to the crown at 3. Maybe it’s the 42mm lug tip to lug tip depth, with those 19mm lugs filled with a quality bracelet giving it some more real estate than a simple round watch on the wrist. The dial is helped by having no day or date function. Useful though they can be there’s no denying that some dials are just much better off without the windows cutting into them and this is one such dial. This is one Rolex model that doesn’t have volumes of text on it which is a complaint I have heard many times. Five lines of small text in total, two above and two below the centre, plus the obligatory “Swiss Made” at six. It has a simple minute marked track with lume filled hour markers being edged with an orange square of paint which gives some minor contrast that adds quite a bit aesthetically. It’s also a reasonably diminutive piece, sitting around 11.5mm from caseback to crystal top.

The stainless-steel case and bracelet go well together on the Rolex Oyster Perpetual 114200. The solid end-links fit so well into the lugs that it can be a bit fiddly to get the bracelet refitted after cleaning or inspection. As for the bracelet itself, compared to my Seiko bracelets it is very well engineered and feels hefty, solid, and cool to the touch. I like to wear my watches reasonably loose and to facilitate this Rolex has provided three micro-adjustment holes giving just enough range for fine tuning but given my somewhat industrial wrists I had to pay (£65 each but may have gone up) for an extra two links from the AD, albeit I maybe could have gotten away with just one. The links are solid and don’t scratch very easily (although I have managed) with the connecting pins made and fitted well giving no shake or rattle

All in, this feels like a reasonable step up in quality from my Seiko collection. I will caveat that by admitting that I’ve not had the caseback off of this one yet, so I’ve not played with the movement. As it’s now five years old it probably won’t be all that long until I service it, although saying that it still keeps excellent time and gives a nice flat trace with no beat error on the timegrapher, no doubt helped by the fact I don’t wear it all that often so it’s normally in the watch box and probably running for a couple of days a month on average. I believe this particular model has been discontinued and replaced now with something a bit larger. Whether you have to perform sexual favours for your AD to get one or not is a question I will leave to others to find out.
In short, this Rolex Oyster Perpetual 114200 is a beginners Rolex that many would find too petite and too boring to bother with, but it’s got a firm place in my collection and for now it’s not going anywhere.