Eight grounds are built on this reference and only one of them is a color that was not made for the metal. Two are chocolate and two are sundust, both developed alongside the Everose alloy and pitched to agree with it; three are neutrals, white, slate and black. Mint green is the exception, a cool pale color on a warm two-metal watch. Reference 126301 is the 41mm Datejust in a combination of stainless steel and Everose gold, carrying a smooth bezel, and this configuration pairs a mint green dial with a full set of Roman numerals and an Oyster bracelet.
The Oyster is built from three-piece links with the gold running as one continuous center line flanked by broad flat steel, which is the arrangement showing the least warm metal of the two bracelets offered. On this ground that has a visible effect. Mint green is cool and pale, so on a Jubilee, where the gold is broken into three narrow strips and multiplied across five-piece links, the watch reads as a warm object with a cool face; on an Oyster the steel dominates the wrist and the dial belongs to the same family as the bracelet, with the gold reduced to a rim, a crown and a line. The case is forty-one millimeters with the Everose bezel smooth rather than fluted, which keeps that rim as one unbroken band. Roman numerals in gold stand at the hours on a sunray ground that lifts and darkens as the wrist turns. Those numerals are the only warm element inside the crystal and they are what tie the dial to the case at all. Remove them and the watch would separate into two objects, a steel bracelet with a green disc in it and a rose gold ring around the outside; the numerals are the bridge, and they are the reason this ground works in this metal rather than merely being offered in it.
Hours, minutes, running seconds and a date changing in one step at midnight. The self-winding movement in the 41mm case holds roughly seventy hours of running time, from a movement built for the larger diameter rather than shared with the smaller cases. The date sits at three under a magnifying lens and occupies the position a numeral would take, so the set runs to ten characters. What Roman numerals give a pale dial is weight. Twelve applied batons on mint green would leave the ground almost undivided and the watch would read as a wash of pale color; ten full characters break the surface into sections and give the eye something to measure the color against. That is the argument for the arrangement on this ground specifically, and it is presumably why the two references carrying mint green with numerals are the two warm ones, where the characters are gold and read strongly, rather than the steel and white gold cases, where cool characters would have less to work with on a light ground. The seventy-hour reserve is worth stating plainly because it is the one specification here a buyer will notice without looking for it: the watch can be set down on a Friday and picked up on a Monday still running, which the smaller Datejust cases and the previous generation of this one cannot do.
Mint green is not built on a yellow case at any size, and at 41mm the two yellow references are precisely the two that skip it. The ground appears on four of the six references here, on five at 31mm, on six at 36mm and on one at 42mm. Its marker set follows the metal at both of the sizes where it comes two ways: at 41mm and at 36mm the Everose references take Roman numerals and the cooler cases take applied markers. Within this reference it is one of eight grounds and one of six with no stones on the dial, since only chocolate and sundust are offered set. The 41mm family is six references deep, built without solid gold, without a set bezel and without a President bracelet, so the dial, the rim and the bracelet are the entire specification. The fluted twin 126331 carries the same eight grounds, and the steel and white gold references carry mint green in the other marker arrangement. The family is built in twinned pairs, each warm metal combination appearing once smooth and once fluted with an identical dial roster, while the steel reference is only smooth and the white gold combination only fluted. Mint green is therefore available at this size in four watches, and half of them carry the numerals. Because the two references building it with numerals are the smooth and fluted Everose pair, a buyer wanting this dial in this metal is choosing between two rims and two bracelets and nothing else at all, which is four watches narrowed to a single decision made twice.
This is the coolest configuration the reference builds. A pale green dial, gold numerals, and a bracelet keeping most of its surface in steel, on a case whose warm metal is limited to a rim, a crown and a center line. For a buyer who likes the Everose combination but does not want a warm-toned watch, it is the most direct answer the reference offers, and the only one that does not involve slate. Anyone who wants the color to sit inside a warmer object should take the Jubilee version of this configuration, where the gold is distributed across the bracelet rather than concentrated in one line. Anyone who wants the same ground with applied markers will have to move to the steel reference or the white gold combination. And anyone who wants a cool dial with no color in it at all should take the slate, built on all six references at this size in a marker arrangement no other ground receives.
