I decided to forego Blue Monday today in favor of my gold Hamilton Dodson reissue, even though I'm wearing a blue shirt. I love this watch.

My Garmin Fenix 6 Pro Solar has been my daily for its ruggedness and health tracking abilities while still being able to look and feel premium. On Saturday I wore it to keep track of my first ever half-marathon. It kept track of pace, splits, distance, and had a GPS map of the course loaded for reference. I’m displaying it here next to my RMRS challenge coin and race medal on my custom coin crack.

Today’s WOTD is probably the most personally significant watch in my collection — my Rolex Cosmograph Daytona 116509 in white gold with a Tahitian mother-of-pearl dial and Roman numeral markers. I don't use the word grail casually. I wanted this watch for more than 20 years before I finally had the opportunity to own one. Plenty of watches came and went from the wish list during that time, and I was fortunate enough to add some wonderful pieces to my collection, but this one never really left the back of my mind. Twenty years is a long time to want anything. And strangely enough, finally owning it hasn't diminished the feeling at all. The dial is a huge part of what makes this particular Daytona so special to me. Tahitian mother-of-pearl changes constantly depending upon the light — silver, charcoal, brown, green and occasionally even hints of purple seem to appear and disappear as you move your wrist, and because it is a natural material, no two dials are ever exactly alike. Mine also has the applied Roman numeral dial rather than diamond hour markers, which I personally prefer. It gives the watch a slightly quieter and more traditional feel while still allowing that incredible mother-of-pearl to do all the talking. I've also learned that this is a particularly uncommon configuration. Rolex doesn't publish production numbers for individual dial combinations, so I don't think anyone can honestly tell you exactly how many were made. But major auction houses have described mother-of-pearl 116509s as extremely uncommon, and period examples confirm that the Tahitian MOP dial with Roman numerals was one of the unusual factory configurations offered during the reference's long production run. That certainly matches my own experience. After more than 20 years of looking at watches, walking into dealers, attending events and inevitably checking wrists wherever I go 😎, I have never seen another one in the wild. Not one. As you all know even though I collect watches, I don't think about any piece simply in terms of ownership.