Reference:116505

Daytona -> 116505

The 116505 is the first Daytona made entirely in Rolex's Everose gold. Launched at Baselworld 2008, it shares the cal 4130 architecture and 40mm Oyster case profile of the steel 116520 and full-yellow-gold 116528, finished in the warm pink alloy Rolex patented in 2005 to keep rose-gold colour stable across the life of the watch. Production ran fifteen years on a single reference number before the cal 4131 successor 126505 took over in early 2023.

What sets the 116505 apart from its yellow-gold and Rolesor siblings is dial breadth. The Everose case carries a wider catalogue of dial colours and stone treatments than any other cal 4130 generation Daytona — chocolate, black, ivory, sundust pink, and (from 2021) meteorite, with diamond-marker and baguette variants layered onto each base. The watch sits between the engraved-bezel 116528 yellow gold and the Cerachrom-bezel 116515LN as the engraved-Everose option of the modern Daytona line.

Core facts

detail	value
reference	116505
family	Daytona (Cosmograph, automatic)
production	2008–2023 (fifteen years)
case	40mm, 18k Everose gold
crystal	flat sapphire, no Cyclops
bezel	engraved 18k Everose gold tachymeter, fixed
crown	Triplock screw-down, Everose gold
movement	Rolex caliber 4130, in-house, COSC
frequency	28,800 vph (4 Hz)
power reserve	72 hours
jewels	44
water resistance	100m / 330ft
bracelet	18k Everose gold Oyster, SEL
clasp	Oysterlock with Easylink 5mm comfort extension
siblings	116520 (steel), 116528 (yellow gold), 116523 (Rolesor), 116519 (white gold, leather)
successor	126505 (cal 4131, 2023, out of scope)

Where it sits in the line

The 116505 is the engraved-Everose-bezel chronograph in the cal 4130 generation. It launched in 2008, eight years into the cal 4130 production run that started with the 116520. Yellow-gold and Rolesor versions on Oyster bracelets had carried the in-house movement since 2000; the 116505 added pink to the catalogue without changing the case profile or the movement.

The reference holds the same case, bracelet, and movement architecture as the 116528 yellow-gold Daytona — same 40mm Oyster shell, same screw-down pushers, same engraved metal tachymeter bezel, same 78509 / Everose-cast SEL Oyster bracelet — finished in the 2005 Everose alloy. Rolex describes Everose as a copper-rich rose-gold variant stabilised by a small platinum addition that prevents the copper-driven colour fade typical of conventional rose-gold alloys, cast in Rolex's own foundry rather than bought in.

The Cerachrom-bezel Everose Daytona 116515LN launched alongside the 116505 in 2011, and the two ran in parallel for twelve years. The 116505 is the engraved-bezel option for buyers who wanted the same case and movement without the ceramic insert. The 2023 126505 (cal 4131) replaced both the engraved-bezel 116505 and the engraved-bezel 116528 with a single thinner-cased successor; the 116505 is therefore the last engraved-Everose Daytona Rolex made.

Production outline

Production runs 2008 to early 2023 — fifteen years on a single reference number. The reference launched at Baselworld 2008 with chocolate, black, and ivory dials documented at introduction. Sundust (a soft pink lacquer) appeared in the catalogue alongside the launch dials within the early production window. Meteorite, the slate-grey iron-nickel mineral dial Rolex had used on Day-Date and earlier Daytona references, joined the 116505 catalogue in 2021 — late in the run, alongside the parallel meteorite rollout on the 116515LN, 116518LN, and 116519LN.

The serial format on the 116505 is the random alphanumeric system that Rolex moved to in mid-2010, applied across the entire catalogue. Every 116505 from 2010 onward carries an eight-character random serial; only the earliest two years of production (2008–mid-2010) carry the conventional letter-prefix serial. See Reference:Serial-numbers for the full key.

The lume across the run is Chromalight blue rather than the cream-to-white Super-Luminova that bracketed the 116520 production. Chromalight had rolled across the modern Rolex catalogue by 2008 and the 116505 carries it from launch.

Movement notes

Caliber 4130 sits inside every 116505 — the same first-in-house Rolex chronograph that launched on the 116520 in 2000. Vertical-clutch chronograph coupling, column-wheel start-stop-reset switching, 72-hour power reserve, 44 jewels, 28,800 vph, COSC certification, blue Parachrom hairspring on production from around 2005 onward. Hour and minute counters share a single side of the movement; mainspring replacement does not require uncasing.

The 116505 runs the Rolex Superlative Chronometer specification across its production span. Rolex tightened the specification from −2/+2 to the modern −2/+2 Superlative chronometer rating during the cal 4130's life, and 116505 production from the early 2010s onward carries the tighter spec.

For the full caliber lineage and the architecture comparison with the predecessor cal 4030, see Reference:Movements#cal-4130.

Dial map

The 116505 has a broader dial catalogue than any other cal 4130 generation Daytona. The Everose case invited colour and stone variations that the steel 116520 never received and that the yellow-gold 116528 only partially shares. The variants below are the configurations documented in Rolex catalogue editorial across the production run.

Variant	Period	Distinguishing features
Chocolate	2008–2023	Warm dark-brown lacquer base; black sub-dial rings on the most common -0013 / -CHOCBKI variant; applied gold five-minute markers; reads as the signature 116505 dial colour and the most-photographed configuration in the auction record
Black	2008–2023	Black lacquer base with pink (Everose-tone) sub-dial rings; applied gold markers; carries the red Daytona script above the six o'clock sub-register on most production
Ivory	2008–2023	Off-white cream lacquer base with three sub-dials in the same ivory tone; applied gold markers; runs the entire production span
Sundust (pink)	~2009–2023	Soft pink-rose lacquer base; black or matching-tone sub-dials depending on suffix code; reads as the "rose on rose" configuration that defines a portion of the late-production market
Meteorite	2021–2023	Slate-grey Gibeon-meteorite mineral base showing the natural Widmanstätten crystal pattern; applied gold markers; introduced 2021 alongside the parallel meteorite rollout on 116508 / 116509 / 116515LN / 116518LN / 116519LN
Diamond-marker variants	2008–2023	Applied diamond hour markers on chocolate, black, ivory, sundust, or meteorite base; documented across the production run rather than on a single sub-period
Baguette-marker variants	2008–2023	Baguette-cut diamond markers replacing the standard applied gold markers; appears on chocolate, black, sundust and ivory bases in catalogue text

The white mother-of-pearl dial documented on the 116509 white-gold Daytona did not formally enter the 116505 catalogue. The catalogue overlap between the gold Daytonas of the 4130 generation is broad but not total, and the 116505's dial branches are the ones above.

Case, bezel, crystal, and crown

The 116505 case is 40mm in 18k Everose gold — the same nameplate dimension as the steel 116520 and the yellow-gold 116528. Lug-to-lug and case thickness track the rest of the cal 4130 generation. Whether the gold case runs to the marketed 40mm or carries the same machining tolerance offset that puts the steel 116520 at a measured 38.5mm is not separately documented; gold and platinum cases in Rolex's modern catalogue generally run closer to the marketed figure than the steel forgings.

The bezel is engraved 18k Everose gold with the tachymeter scale machined into the metal. There is no insert, no ceramic, no PVD-printed scale — the numerals and graduations are cut directly into the bezel surface, the same engraved-bezel architecture the 116520 and 116528 carry. Cerachrom did not arrive on the Everose Daytona until the parallel 116515LN launched in 2011. Buyers who wanted ceramic on the Everose case had to cross to the LN reference; the 116505 stays engraved across its full run.

The crystal is flat sapphire with no Cyclops, the running-seconds sub-dial sits at six o'clock, and the Triplock crown handles 100m water resistance. Screw-down chronograph pushers sit on either side of the crown. The pushers must be unscrewed before the chronograph can be started — the cal 4130 generation's standing trade-off for the case's water rating, identical across steel, gold, and Everose variants.

Bracelets, end links, and clasps

The bracelet is the 18k Everose gold Oyster SEL — solid end links integral to the first link rather than a separable stamped piece, machined entirely in Everose gold. The bracelet is the gold-cast parallel to the steel 78490 that carried the 116520 across its run; the 116505's gold bracelet reference number is documented in the boxed-set paper rather than on the bracelet itself, and auction catalogue text generally identifies the bracelet by material rather than by reference number.

The clasp is the modern Oysterlock with the Easylink 5mm comfort extension — the lever-and-keeper micro-extension Rolex added to the cal 4130 generation around 2002–2003. Every 116505 carries Easylink from launch; the early-production Oysterlock-without-Easylink configuration that defines a small share of 116520 / 116528 production never reached the Everose reference. The clasp blade carries a year code per the Millenary Watches key — single letter through 2010, three-character random alphanumeric from 2011 — and on SEL bracelets the date code, part number, and Rolex crown are stamped into the underside of the end link itself rather than the clasp blade alone. See Reference:Bracelets for the full date-code key.

The Daytona never adopted the Glidelock micro-extension Rolex rolled onto the Submariner-line clasps in 2010. Easylink remains the only on-bracelet adjustment the 116505 ever offered.

Special branches

The 116505 does not carry the kind of single-artifact provenance lots that anchor the 16520 (Newman), 6263 (RCO / Big Red), or 116528 (Clapton). What it has instead is a documented dial-variant programme — chocolate, black, ivory, sundust, meteorite, with diamond and baguette layered on each — that Rolex used the Everose case to differentiate the reference from the engraved yellow-gold 116528.

The meteorite-dial 116505 is the headline late-run variant. Rolex introduced meteorite dials across the cal 4130 generation gold Daytonas in 2021 — 116505 alongside 116508, 116509, 116515LN, 116518LN, and 116519LN — and the variant ran for two production years before the 2023 cal 4131 transition. The Gibeon-meteorite mineral base shows the natural Widmanstätten crystal pattern; no two examples are identical. The variant carries a documented secondary-market premium over the lacquer-dial 116505.

Tiffany & Co. and other retailer-double-signed 116505 examples have not surfaced in the public auction record at the volume that defines the earlier 16528 generation. By the late 2000s the retailer dial-signing programme that produced the documented Tiffany Daytonas of the 1980s and 1990s had largely ended at most of the historical partners; the 116505 sits on the post-programme side of that transition.

Historical market and auction record

The 116505 trades primarily through dealer and private channels rather than at major auction. Sotheby's, Christie's, and Phillips have catalogued individual 116505 lots across the production span, with chocolate-dial and meteorite-dial examples carrying the strongest bids. The reference does not host the kind of headline single-artifact record that defines the vintage Daytona market; collected-on-material-and-movement-terms is the working frame.

Specific lot results vary year to year and are best read in current auction catalogues rather than fixed in a static article.

Sources