Watch Paparazzi

Royal Tunku Ismail Ibni Sultan Ibrahim spotted wearing Rolex

Tunku Ismail Ibni Sultan Ibrahim, Crown Prince of Johor, was recently spotted wearing the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona 116595RBOW in 18KT Everose gold — a watch that has become the defining grail piece of the current collector era. The sighting adds another high-profile wrist to a reference already associated with royalty, athletes, and serious collectors worldwide.

The 116595RBOW is built around a 40mm Everose gold case — Rolex's proprietary rose gold alloy formulated with a small percentage of platinum to resist fading — paired with a matching Everose Oysterflex bracelet. The dial and bezel are where the watchmaking becomes genuinely extraordinary. Rolex's gemological team selects and sequences 36 baguette-cut sapphires for the bezel and 11 further baguette-cut sapphires as hour markers, each stone precisely graded so the colour transitions smoothly from violet through blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. No two examples are identical. Powering the watch is the in-house Calibre 4130, a column-wheel chronograph movement with a vertical clutch, COSC-certified to -2/+2 seconds per day, and offering a 72-hour power reserve.

First introduced in 2012 in yellow gold before the Everose variant followed, the Rainbow Daytona redefined what the market would bear for a Rolex sports reference. The 116595RBOW consistently commands premiums that dwarf almost any other reference in the manufacturer's catalogue, not because of movement complexity alone, but because of the labour-intensive gem-setting that makes each example a minor exercise in high jewellery. Waiting lists at authorised dealers are essentially theoretical — allocation is vanishingly rare.

Tunku Ismail, known colloquially as TMJ, has cultivated a public image that blends military bearing, sporting passion, and an unambiguous appreciation for fine objects. His watch choices are closely followed across Southeast Asia, and a sighting of the Rainbow Daytona on his wrist reinforces the reference's status as a statement of both taste and access.

At an official retail price of approximately $126,750 USD, the 116595RBOW is already expensive by any measure. On the grey market, however, examples trade consistently in the $700,000–$800,000 range — a premium of roughly six times retail — reflecting genuine scarcity rather than speculation alone. For collectors, this remains one of the most liquid and recognised references to hold.