When images of this watch first broke, the world clearly set up and took notice. It was, after all, something of a unicorn. It was reported to be a one-of-a kind Rolex that had been converted into a perpetual calendar by none other than one of the world’s first independent watchmakers, Franck Muller.

 For decades, we had heard the story of a watch that Franck received as a graduation project at L’Ecole d’Horlogerie de Genève as one of its top pupils. We had also heard that he had single-handedly converted that timepiece into a perpetual calendar, using no more than 50 parts. Even more impressive — he had added the perpetual calendar mechanism in the existing space of the watch case. It was said that even Rolex was so impressed that they agreed to meet him to learn more about this mechanism. In the end, they decided not to pursue the complication with him. Nevertheless, it was still remarkable they wanted to meet with this young watchmaker, who was to become the legend that is Franck Muller. Let’s get something very clear — this story is 100 percent true.

What we thought was Jay-Z wearing the unique Rolex Perpetual Calendar Modified by Franck Muller at the Pre-Grammy Gala in 2018

However, the watch described is not Jay-Z’s watch.

The truth behind the one-of-a-kind Rolex Perpetual Calendar

Jay-Z’s watch is a timepiece that is a Rolex Date-Just or Day-Date that has been converted into a perpetual calendar using a Dubois Depraz module. Last year, Franck explained to me that he had made one of these for an Italian dealer a few years later, and then showed his friend and fellow watchmaker Antoine Preziuso how to do it. Preziuso then made several more of these time pieces. Franck undoubtedly selected this module because of its thinness and the fact that it could fit inside of an existing Rolex case. Now this module dates all the way back to 1978 and helped to create the world’s thinnest automatic perpetual calendar movement for Audemars Piguet. If you want to learn more about that, you can read my story on the Complete History of Audemars Piguet’s Perpetual Calendars.

Antoine Preziuso

It therefore makes sense that Franck recognized this module could fit inside of a Rolex case, and by modifying it to have pushers, he could create a perpetual calendar fairly easily. Also bear in mind that if you are undertaking to modify an existing Rolex to have a new complication, the last thing you want to do is to change the case too radically as that would eat significantly into your potential profit.

 Franck explained all of this during a fondue, which he had prepared for my birthday last November. Very fortunately, everything he said was both on the record and captured for perpetuity on video. So if you want to fact check anything, I’m saying, you can just watch the video on our YouTube channel here. We have even indexed the different subject matters so you can scroll to the pertinent spot.

Like everyone else, when the initial image of Jay-Z’s watch first surfaced online and on social media, I got excited. My magazine, along with several others, ran a story on it, asking if that could possibly be that very same watch that Franck had first converted himself, creating his own perpetual calendar mechanism.

It was only during that lunch with Franck that I learned the truth. Jay-Z’s watch was most certainly not Franck’s original Rolex-I’ll-borrow-your-timepiece that he converted himself. We now have the pleasure of showing you images of that very first watch here. These images were not easy to track down, and I would like to thank @elprimerolove on IG for their assistance in helping me acquire these for the story.

(Image: @elprimerolove)

Svend Andersen

This is something that great watchmakers like Francois-Paul Journe also believe in and is very well expressed by Journe with his flat blade spring remontoire d’egalite. The story goes that after graduating from Geneva, watch making school, Franck was working in the same atelier as Svend Anderson and collaborating with him on a retrograde perpetual calendar. It was at this point where he got the idea to make a super thin version of it and adapted his Rolex to incorporate this complication. This watch was sold to a Swiss collector, who then sold it at a Monaco auction to a Japanese collector.

Where is Franck Muller’s original Rolex today?

The crazy part about this story is that this watch continued to remain in the hands of this Japanese collector until a few years ago, when he posted it on — of all places! — Chrono 24 for the equivalent of US$100,000. I discovered this through my friend @elprimerolove, who wanted to bid on the watch. By the time he got around to it, someone else had purchased it. The new owner is also a Japanese collector and has decided that he would like to exhibit his watch in a vintage watch shop/museum named Quark Tokyo. What is really amazing is that if you make an appointment, you can actually go into the museum and view this unique timepiece.

The watch was originally dressed in a leather strap (Image: Tony Traina)

So that is where Franck Muller’s very original Rolex, modified into a retrograde perpetual calendar, exists today. The question, then, is: what about Jay-Z’s watch? As Franck said, he made one of these for an Italian dealer, but based on the images of Jay-Z’s watch, he did not acknowledge that it was this timepiece. Instead, he believes that this is one of the timepieces that was made by Antoine Preziuso. Let’s be very clear about that because there have been attempts to salvage the credibility of Jay-Z’s timepiece by saying it was the one Franck adapted. I repeat — he did not acknowledge Jay-Z’s watch as the one he modified the module. 

So is Jay-Z’s watch really a one of one? Well, not really because several of these were made, all using the same module. But, of course, watch dealers like to manipulate semantics. Conceivably, each watch made by Preziuso was made to a slightly different configuration so that they could be called pièces uniques. But to my mind that does not make them any more valuable.

The Quark Ginza 888 Store that currently houses Franck Muller’s Rolex

Finally, would I be upset if I were Jay-Z? It depends. If I was led to believe that my watch was the one-of-a-kind timepiece personally modified by Franck Muller into a perpetual calendar, then yes — I would be upset. If I was told that it was a project overseen by Franck Muller but executed by his friend Antoine Preziuso, who is incidentally a great watchmaker and cool guy, and that it uses a fairly off-the-shelf module to create a perpetual calendar on an existing Rolex platform, then no. I guess I would be cool because I would know exactly what I was buying. So it all depends on whether all this information was disclosed to him or not. 

The misinformation in watch media

But what is the objective of this story? It is to share a bit of light in the otherwise miasmic world of high-dollar vintage or rare watches, where misinformation can be repeated over and over again, until it is accepted as gospel. When I open social media today, I am so overwhelmed by all the misinformation I see and hear that, frankly, I feel enraged. There is another video of two would-be influencers talking about how Richard Mille’s pricing for his RM001 was due to a typo, and that this watch was meant to be priced at US$13,500 but someone accidentally added a zero at the end and it became US$135,000. This is one of the most idiotic things I have seen. But because there is little to no fact-checking on social media, people may accept this as truth.

It is Revolution’s and my personal mission to continue to push forward responsible and real watch journalism and be the bulwark against misinformation. On that note, if you have free time this week, I welcome you to read my Complete Guide on the Remontoir d’Egalite, which I feel exemplifies the type of journalism Revolution is about. Why write a 10,000-word article on this subject matter? Because we can.

Finally, I would like to thank Franck Muller, Nicholas Rudaz, @elprimerolove and Auro Montanari for their help with this article.