Rolex King Midas Cellini Hexagonal White Gold ref. 4342 from 1976

Introduced in 1962, the King Midas occupied an unusual place in Rolex’s history. For more than a decade, the company produced a relatively narrow range of models. Around 1974, the watch entered a broader King Midas and Cellini chapter—one that would soon bring an exceptional variety of references, designs and configurations.

The years 1975 and 1976 appear to have been the high point of that creative gold watch burst. Rolex produced more King Midas watches during this period than at any other time, while also offering its widest range of models and configurations. Experimental Cellini designs emerged alongside them. In retrospect, this brief interval may be one of the brand’s most inventive—and least conventional—periods.

The Explanation

The timing is striking. Gold, the defining material of these watches, raised sharply during the decade. Depending on the measure used, its price moved from roughly $35 an ounce in the beginning of the 1970s to about $160 in 1974 and reaching a record intraday high of $850 in January 1980. The broader pattern was marked by two inflationary waves, Yom Kippur War  that made Oil prices surged, raising the cost of fuel, transport, production and eventually gold. Also the Iranian Revolution disrupted oil supplies and triggered a second sharp rise in prices by the end of the decade.

It is tempting to see Rolex’s concentrated investment in precious-metal dress watches as a bet on a market that was receptive to them. As gold became more expensive, however, the economics of producing gold-cased watches would have changed. Rolex may have responded by placing greater emphasis on steel models, whose production involved less exposure to the cost of gold. That explanation remains an interpretation rather than a documented statement of the company’s strategy.

Seen this way, 1975 and 1976 mark a short, remarkable moment: Rolex explored an unusually broad range of precious-metal designs just as the economic conditions around gold were beginning to shift.

In 2022, we sold another white-metal example of the reference 4342. Its serial number was only two digits away from this watch’s. That example, serial no. 4,278,257, can be found in our website archive.

We do not know how many examples of the 4342 were made, but the proximity of these serial numbers offers a compelling clue to just how scarce the white metal reference 4342 example may be. Definitely rarer even than the legendary first-series, asymmetrical King Midas reference 9630 in white gold. Perhaps only a handful were ever produced, and fewer survive today.