Federica Pellegrini wearing Rolex
Stainless Steel Rolex Datejust 36mm Reference 116200 Blue Sunburst Dial with Roman Numerals
The Rolex 116200 may not be the flashiest reference in the Datejust family, but the celebrities and public figures spotted wearing it tend to reflect exactly the kind of understated confidence the model projects. Italian swimming champion Federica Pellegrini is among the confirmed wearers in our database — a fitting match given that Rolex has maintained deep ties with competitive sport and its ambassadors for decades. The fact that an elite athlete of her calibre gravitates toward a 36mm steel Datejust rather than something more ostentatious says something real about how this reference sits in the market: it rewards the wearer who knows what they are looking at.
Demand for the Rolex 116200 has been complicated by one important commercial reality: Rolex has quietly discontinued several dial configurations that made this reference particularly interesting, including the blue sunburst dial with applied Roman numeral indices and smooth bezel combination. That means anyone wanting a specific dial variant today has to go through authorised dealers' pre-owned inventory or the open secondary market, where prices for desirable configurations routinely trade above the original retail price. The 116200 was already subject to the same waitlist pressures that affect most steel Rolex Datejust references at retail, so the discontinuation of certain dials has only tightened supply for collectors chasing a precise specification.
The 116200 is a 36mm stainless steel Datejust housing Rolex's in-house calibre 3135, a self-winding movement running at 28,800 vph. Rolex's long-running association with sport — and athletes like Pellegrini who wear the brand off the podium as much as on it — has kept the Datejust line consistently visible across generations of wearers.