Notes: Each timepiece in Rolex's professional series of watches offers a different professional application. The Milgauss boasts incredible anti-magnetic properties, making it a highly sought-after watch among men and women who work in highly magnetic environments, such as scientists and power plant workers. Boasting a time-only function and a smooth bezel, as opposed to the rotatable bezels that often accompany many Rolex sports watches, the Milgauss tiptoes the line between a dress and sports reference. The newer preowned reference 116400 that we have offered here today brings a modern style the table in the form of a black dial set with luminous baton hour markers topped with orange accents, silver hour and minute hands filled with lume plots, and a distinct orange lightning bold seconds hand.

Mechanism: Calibre 3131 is a self-winding mechanical movement entirely developed and manufactured by Rolex. Like all Rolex Perpetual movements, the 3131 is a certified Swiss chronometer, a designation reserved for high-precision watches that have successfully passed the Swiss Official Chronometer Testing Institute (COSC) tests. Its architecture, in common with all Oyster watch movements, makes it singularly reliable.

Family Notes: To meet the demands of scientists and engineers working in magnetic environments, in 1954, Rolex launched the Milgauss, reference 6541. Rolex designed a case with a secondary, soft iron cage within that surrounded the caliber 1066M to shield it from magnetic forces of up to 1000 Gauss. The cases were therefore larger and thicker, making them perfectly sized for today’s modern tastes. Due to their highly specialized nature, few were produced, making them exceptionally rare. The most prominent feature of the reference 6541 Milgauss is its unusual and delightful seconds hand in the shape of a lightning bolt. Other distinguishing features include a rotating bezel with a red-colored triangle and a honeycomb-patterned dial with non-luminous, circular hour markers and faceted, triangular hour markers at 3, 6, and 9 o’clock. The present example, manufactured in 1958, features a dial that has aged to a beautiful and uniform, so-called ‘tropical’ brown color, and includes all of its original parts and extremely well preserved case with sharp lines and beveled edges. A superb example of this highly coveted reference.