Discover every Rolex reference discontinued at Watches & Wonders 2025—including rare Oyster Perpetuals, floral Datejusts, and stone dial Yacht-Masters. A collector’s guide to the exits that matter.
Rolex’s new releases tend to dominate the conversation—flashy novelties and dial tweaks that set collectors scrambling for allocations. But for every addition to the crown’s catalog, something quietly slips out the back door. Watches & Wonders 2025 was especially active on this front, with a number of key references across core collections getting the axe.
These aren’t just minor housekeeping cuts. The departures tell us a lot about how Rolex sees the next chapter—dialing back maximalism, streamlining SKUs, and making subtle but significant shifts in taste. Below, we dive into the most notable discontinuations—and why they matter.
Rolex has significantly thinned the herd when it comes to the Oyster Perpetual—especially in 36mm and 41mm formats. Gone are the sunburst black, blue, pink, and silver dials. The green lacquer OP 41? Discontinued. But perhaps most notably, the brand has retired the Celebration Dial—that confetti-colored standout introduced just two years ago across Refs. 124300-0008, 126000-0009, and 277200-0010.
This feels like the natural end of a short, vibrant arc. The Celebration was essentially a victory lap for the candy-colored OPs of 2020, which themselves have slowly been phased out—yellow and red being early casualties. What we’re left with now is a more subdued OP palette: pistachio, lavender, beige.
Collectors might miss the loudness, but the shift makes sense. Rolex is streamlining here, aligning the OP’s identity with an era that prefers quiet luxury over playful flexing. And for those who doubted the long-term viability of the Celebration Dial—its short run might've just made it a future cult classic.
All “floral-motif” Datejust 31 models are officially gone. These were some of the most artistically ambitious dials Rolex has ever put into serial production—integrating intricate flower patterns with polished and matte finishes, and subtle diamond pistils that played beautifully with the light.
More than just decorative, these dials blended craftsmanship and subtle gem-setting in a way usually reserved for Day-Date or off-catalog, high jewelry models. The fact that they appeared in the relatively approachable Datejust 31 format made them something of a hidden gem.
Their removal leaves a creative vacuum. While Rolex has never been afraid to reintroduce motif dials (see: the palm and fluted patterns of recent years), it begs the question: what’s next? A sunray mosaic? Art deco revival? For now, this marks a clear pause in one of Rolex’s most artistic side quests.
A quieter but telling shift occurred within the Day-Date 36 lineup. Rolex has discontinued numerous references—across yellow, white, and Everose gold—that paired factory diamond-set President bracelets with fluted bezels.
Going forward, if you want a diamond bracelet from Rolex, you’ll need to opt for a matching diamond bezel as well. This might sound like a minor catalog clean-up, but it’s more strategic than that. By removing these “half-maximalist” configurations, Rolex is tightening the Day-Date’s visual logic—either go full pavé or keep it classic.
To fans of opulent-but-understated builds, this is a blow. There was something decadent about a diamond bracelet offset by a simple fluted bezel. But from a production and SKU standpoint, the move reads as classic Rolex: simplify, standardize, scale.
The original Deepsea Challenge Ref. 126067-0001, launched in 2022 as Rolex’s most extreme dive watch, is now discontinued. In its place? The Ref. 126067-0002—a virtually identical model, save for the repositioning of the “DEEPSEA CHALLENGE” dial text.
It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it update. But if you know Rolex history—particularly its vintage Submariner and Sea-Dweller lineages—this is familiar territory. Typography changes have long been collector catnip, from red line Subs to meters-first dials.
Expect the early Deepsea Challenge to take on a similar aura. While not rare in absolute terms, it now occupies a closed chapter—the “first edition” of Rolex’s titanium dive experiment.
Also exiting the catalog is the Yacht-Master 42 “Falcon’s Eye”, Ref. 226659-0004—a blue-grey stone dial variant introduced just three years ago. Its departure may not seem seismic at first glance, but this was a rare application of Falcon’s Eye, a stone known for its chatoyant surface and moody visual texture.
Given how tight-lipped Rolex is about stone dial production, it’s likely that this reference was always intended to be limited. Add to that the recent debut of tiger iron dials in the GMT-Master II—another opaque, natural material with limited yield—and you start to see a pattern. Stone dials aren’t going away; they’re just moving into new territory.
Collectors take note: if Falcon’s Eye becomes a one-and-done for the Yacht-Master, it could age into one of the sleeper hits of the line.
None of this feels random. Rolex is doing what Rolex does: slowly pruning its garden, replacing flashy blooms with more cultivated growth. There’s an aesthetic rebalancing underway — less color, fewer diamonds in odd combinations, and a clear move toward modular, scalable references.
But as always, the devil’s in the details. The Celebration Dial was lightning in a bottle. The floral-motif Datejusts pushed design further than most noticed. The Deepsea Challenge edit is a reminder that even the smallest tweaks can split a reference into two collectible camps.
So pay attention. Some of these just-discontinued references may have seemed like passing novelties—but they’ve just become history.
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