During the 1980s, Rolex began to adorn their sports watches with precious gemstones for its most exclusive and demanding clientele. Among these first, early gem-set sports watches are the manually-wound Daytona references 6269 and 6270 (the former with brilliant-cut diamonds at the bezel and the latter with baguette-cut diamonds), and the GMT-Master reference 16758 "SARU" set with rubies, diamonds, and sapphires. In the late 1990s through the 2000s, Rolex specifically used the ultimate luxury tool watch, the Cosmograph Daytona, as a vehicle for gemological experimentation, always in very small quantities and with extreme attention to quality and execution.

Set with 36 rainbow-hued sapphires, 56 diamonds adorning the lugs and crown guards, and diamonds indicating the hours, to call the Rainbow Daytona luxurious and lavish is an exercise in understatement. Each sapphire – every single gemstone used is internally flawless - is perfectly cut to fit without prongs into the bezel, and selected with the right color for transitioning to the stones on adjacent sides, so that rather than seeming like 36 individual stones, they blend into one another. The subsidiary dials are made of gold crystal, and the hour markers accentuated with bezel set, internally flawless diamonds. Due to the difficulty in sourcing these stones, subjecting them to Rolex’s high standards, and then fitting them into the watch, production numbers remain extremely low and only few examples have surfaced at auction.

The sheer audacity of such a watch cannot be overstated, and neither can the effect the Rainbow Daytona has had on popular culture. When first introduced, they did not gain the traction they rightly deserved, but over the past decade, collectors’ tastes have evolved and matured in order to fully appreciate the precedent of boldness and eclectic style set forth by Rolex’s introduction of the reference 116598RBOW. This particular example is offered in stunning, hardly-worn condition with many of its original case and bracelet stickers still attached, complete with its complete suite of original accessories.

All iterations of Rolex's Cosmograph Daytona "Rainbow" are recently discontinued as of this writing, making this triptych of Rainbows an exciting opportunity to acquire this unobtainable model.