Rolex 114300 Oyster Perpetual 39

Oyster Perpetual -> 114300

The 114300 is the Oyster Perpetual 39: a 39mm steel Oyster with no date, no Cyclops, and nothing to talk about at the strap end of a dinner party except that it is a Rolex and it works. It launched in summer 2015, three dial colors at a time (dark rhodium, red grape, blue), and it ran only five years before Rolex retired it in 2020 for the 41mm 124300 — the reference that would go on to carry the loud lacquered "Stella" colors that made the Oyster Perpetual line famous. The 114300 predates all of that. It is the last Oyster Perpetual that was actually boring, in the way its designers intended.

Robert-Jan Broer at Fratello, reviewing it within weeks of release, called the size "a perfect in-between": bigger than the 36mm Oyster Perpetual, smaller and simpler than the 39mm Explorer it shares a case with, and free of the lightning-shaped hour hand and stubby minute hand some buyers found polarizing on that Explorer. Brice Goulard at Monochrome put it more bluntly — a Rolex "you will never get tired of," built with no complications to break and nothing on the dial to date-stamp it to a decade.

Rolex Oyster Perpetual 39 114300, dark rhodium dial on Oyster bracelet

Rolex Oyster Perpetual 39, ref. 114300, dark rhodium dial

Core facts

detail	value
reference	114300
family	Oyster Perpetual
common name	"Oyster Perpetual 39," "OP39"
production	2015–2020
case	39mm steel Oyster, monobloc middle case, 904L Oystersteel, domed bezel, integrated lugs
crystal	scratch-resistant sapphire
crown	Twinlock screw-down, double waterproofness system
water resistance	100m / 330 feet
movement	caliber 3132, self-winding, blue Parachrom hairspring, Paraflex shock absorbers, ~48h reserve, COSC certified
dial (launch, 2015)	dark rhodium (light blue accents), red grape (bright red accents), blue (lime green accents)
dial (2018 addition)	black and white — the line's first monochromatic, no-accent-color dials
bracelet	Oyster, flat three-piece links, brushed finish, Oysterclasp
price at launch	CHF 5,400 (2015)
predecessor	none at this size — first 39mm Oyster Perpetual
successor	124300, Oyster Perpetual 41 (2020)

Where it sits in the line

The 114300 exists because Rolex had a gap. By 2014 the steel time-only catalogue ran 36mm (Oyster Perpetual, 116000) up to 41mm (Milgauss), with the 39mm Explorer (214270) sitting in between but carrying a Mercedes hour hand, a stubby minute hand, and 3-6-9 numerals that not every buyer wanted. Broer at Fratello named the 41mm Milgauss and the 39mm Explorer directly as the two existing alternatives for someone who wanted a bigger no-date Rolex and disliked both — "the Milgauss has the odd looking second hand and the Explorer in 39mm isn't as 'pure' as the previous 36mm version according to some." The 114300 answers that gap directly: same 39mm case, bracelet and caliber 3132 as the Explorer 214270, wearing a plain dial instead.

That shared-case relationship makes the 114300 the Explorer 214270 with the numerals, the Mercedes hand and the "EXPLORER" text all removed — a fact Fratello's own 2018 white-dial review makes explicit, describing it as a stand-in for "the non-existent white-dial Explorer 1." Monochrome frames the reference differently: not as an Explorer without a name, but as a category of its own, "neither dress nor sports watch," closer in spirit to "a Levi's 501" than to anything with a bezel.

The reference sat outside the hype the Oyster Perpetual line would later attract. Fratello ran the 114300 against a Grand Seiko in a 2020 reader poll for "best beater," a comparison nobody would have proposed for the reference's colorful successor a few months later. Lex Stolk's own accounting of the moment: the 39mm OP "was axed in 2020 and replaced by the larger 41mm Oyster Perpetual," right as Rolex "decided it was time to brighten up the Oyster Perpetual collection" with dials nicknamed for the 1970s Stella palette. The 114300 missed that transformation by months.

Production outline

Rolex introduced the 114300 in summer 2015 as the first 39mm Oyster Perpetual, with three sunray dials — dark rhodium, red grape and blue, each carrying a contrasting accent color on the hour markers (light blue, bright red and lime green respectively) rather than the plain luminous fill used elsewhere in the catalogue. Broer's Fratello review, published within a month of release, priced it at CHF 5,400 and photographed the dark-rhodium example.

Baselworld 2018 brought the reference's only documented running change: Rolex added black and white dials, its first monochromatic options for the 114300 and, per Monochrome's contemporary review, the line's first true "no accent color" dials — a matte, slightly textured white in place of the sunray finish used on the 2015 colors, alongside a black dial in the same finish. Case, bracelet and caliber 3132 carried over unchanged; only the dial palette moved.

Production ended in 2020, when Rolex discontinued the 39mm size entirely rather than carrying it forward. The Oyster Perpetual line was rebuilt that year around a 41mm flagship (124300) and a widened, lacquer-dialed color range inspired by the vintage Stella palette — the launch that turned the Oyster Perpetual from an overlooked entry point into one of the most chased configurations in the modern Rolex catalogue. The 114300 was gone before any of it happened.

Movement notes

Caliber 3132 is the no-date sibling of caliber 3135, built on the same architecture Rolex used across its late-2000s/2010s time-only and simple-complication movements: a paramagnetic blue Parachrom hairspring, Paraflex shock absorbers, bidirectional self-winding via the Perpetual rotor, and roughly 48 hours of power reserve. It shares its core with the caliber 3130 used one size down in the 116000 and 114200, differing mainly in a slightly larger balance assembly scaled to the 39mm case. Every 114300 carries COSC chronometer certification, with "SUPERLATIVE CHRONOMETER OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED" on the dial.

Dial map

Five dial colors are documented across the five-year run, in two batches separated by the 2018 Baselworld refresh.

2015 launch dials

Dark rhodium, red grape and blue, each sunray-finished and each paired with a contrasting accent color on the applied hour markers rather than a neutral luminous fill: light blue on the rhodium dial, bright red on red grape, lime green on blue. Fratello's Lex Stolk later recalled the red grape configuration in stronger terms, writing that a "39mm OP in purple" was, for him, the standout of the whole Oyster Perpetual color story — red grape reads close enough to a deep aubergine purple under some lighting that the two descriptions likely refer to the same dial rather than a separate configuration.

2018 black and white dials

Added at Baselworld 2018, three years into the reference's run. Both are monochromatic with no accent color, a first for the 114300, and both carry a matte, slightly textured finish in place of the 2015 dials' sunray pattern. Monochrome's contemporary review reads the white dial as giving the 114300 "a slightly more 'Professional' look," and notes it functions as the white-dial Explorer Rolex has never actually catalogued, since the 114300 shares the Explorer 214270's case, bracelet and movement under a plain dial.

All five configurations use applied stick or baton hour markers (with the color-matched accents on the 2015 dials only), applied baton hands with Chromalight luminous fill, and a plain black minute track with no numerals, date window or text beyond the Rolex signature and chronometer certification line.

Case, bezel, crystal, and crown

The case is a monobloc-middle 39mm Oyster in solid 904L Oystersteel: integrated lugs, mirror-polished casebands set against brushed flat surfaces, and a domed bezel with a bevelled, mirror-polished edge rather than the flat bezel used on the smaller Oyster Perpetual sizes. Rolex's own catalogue copy for the reference singles out the polished bezel bevel as the model's one visible design flourish on an otherwise unadorned case.

Crystal is scratch-resistant sapphire without a Cyclops lens — a deliberate omission on a no-date watch. The crown is a Twinlock screw-down, rated with the case to 100 metres.

Bracelets, end links, and clasps

The 114300 wears the standard-generation Oyster bracelet: flat three-piece links in brushed 904L Oystersteel, closed with a folding Oysterclasp. It is the same bracelet platform fitted to the Explorer 214270 that shares the 114300's case and movement, and to the contemporary 116000 and 114200 one size down.

Related references

Explorer 214270 — same 39mm case, bracelet and caliber 3132, under Explorer branding
Oyster Perpetual 36 (116000)
Air-King 114200 — same caliber 3130 family one architecture generation down
Oyster Perpetual 1002 — vintage no-date OP lineage the modern line descends from

Sources