Watch Paparazzi

Royal Tunku Ismail Ibni Sultan Ibrahim spotted wearing Rolex

The Crown Prince of Johor, General Tunku Ismail Ibni Sultan Ibrahim — widely known as TMJ — was recently photographed wearing a stainless steel Rolex Cosmograph Daytona reference 116500LN with a black dial and matching black ceramic bezel. For a royal whose public appearances routinely draw scrutiny, the choice of wrist candy was pointed: not a bejewelled dress watch, but one of the most technically serious chronographs in the modern Rolex catalogue.

The Daytona 116500LN arrived at Baselworld 2016 and represented the most significant update to the Daytona line in over a decade. Rolex replaced the aluminium tachymetre bezel insert with a scratch-resistant Cerachrom ceramic unit in either black or white, giving the reference its LN suffix. Beneath the caseback sits the manufacture Calibre 4130, a column-wheel, vertical-clutch movement developed entirely in-house and widely regarded as one of the finest chronograph ebauches in series production. It oscillates at 28,800 vph and offers a 72-hour power reserve — a significant technical upgrade over the Zenith El Primero base used in the preceding 116520.

Among collectors, the 116500LN occupies near-mythical status. Waitlists at authorised dealers stretched to years even before the reference was discontinued in favour of the updated 126500LN in 2023. The black-dial version, with its monochromatic aesthetic and high-contrast sub-registers, has historically commanded a slight premium over the white-dial 'Panda' on the grey market. Availability at retail was effectively zero for most of the reference's production life.

TMJ is no stranger to serious horology. The Crown Prince of Johor has been spotted across multiple references and brands, but the 116500LN reads as a deliberate, knowledgeable choice — a watch that carries weight in collector circles precisely because it does not announce itself loudly.

The Rolex Daytona 116500LN carried a UK list price of approximately £10,500 at time of production. On the secondary market, grey-market values for the stainless steel black-dial example have ranged considerably, typically settling between $22,000 and $30,000 USD depending on condition, papers, and market timing — a premium that underscores why this reference remains a benchmark in the modern sports-watch segment.