Rolex Perpetual Padellone Watch
Italian collectors have spent seventy years calling Rolex's rare reference 8171 the "Padellone," meaning "large frying pan," a joke about how oversized its 38mm case looked for a watch made in 1949. Rolex only built the 8171 for a few years before discontinuing it in the early 1950s, producing somewhere around 1,000 pieces total, and original examples now sell at auction for anywhere from the mid-six figures past $1 million. The new Perpetual Padellone officially adopts that nickname for the first time, reviving the format at 39mm in Everose gold or platinum. A new system Rolex calls Haplos runs a genuine annual calendar, one that tells 30-day months from 31-day ones and needs correcting only once a year, at the February-to-March turn, with the day, date, and month all switching over instantly at midnight. The moonphase display at 6 o'clock uses two discs cut from actual meteorite, a full moon and a new moon, the latter finished in dark blue PVD.
