The Submariner without date is an argument about what a watch should be at its minimum functional expression. It has no date window at three o'clock, no Cyclops magnification lens in the sapphire crystal, no subsidiary indication beyond the rotating bezel, the hours, the minutes, and the seconds. The reference 114060 that preceded it and the 124060 that replaced it in 2020 share this specification absolutely: the dial is clean of everything that the standard Submariner Date's date aperture introduces — the visual interruption at three o'clock, the slight asymmetry of the dial's hour marker arrangement around the window, the Cyclops's presence above the three o'clock position. Without these elements, the Submariner's dial resolves into a formal simplicity that the date version, for all its practical utility, cannot quite achieve: an entirely symmetrical arrangement of rectangular indices against the black dial ground, the minute track running to the chapter ring's inner edge without interruption, the hands and markers presenting themselves without any secondary information competing for the eye's attention. The collector community has, for decades, recognized this distinction not merely as a preference for simplicity but as a recognition that the no-date configuration is the Submariner in its most formal and most historically faithful state — the configuration closest to the original 1953 reference 6204 whose purpose was purely functional and whose dial architecture reflected no compromise toward daily calendar utility.
The 124060's most significant departure from the preceding 114060 is its case diameter: 41 millimeters, an increase of one millimeter from the 114060's 40 millimeters, accomplished without an increase in case height, the added millimeter absorbed by a slightly wider bezel and a fractionally larger dial. The practical wrist presence difference between 40 and 41 millimeters is imperceptible; the design consequence is slightly more visible. The new Calibre 3230 powering the 124060 was the reference's primary engineering advancement: the Chronergy escapement — a nickel-phosphorous pallet fork and escape wheel fabricated using LIGA process methods, paramagnetic and 15 percent more efficient than the Swiss lever escapement of the previous Calibre 3130 — operating in conjunction with the Parachrom hairspring and the variable-inertia Microstella balance, the power reserve increased from the 114060's 48 hours to 70 hours. Paraflex shock absorbers. The Superlative Chronometer certification confirms precision within plus or minus two seconds per day.
The black Cerachrom bezel insert — Rolex's proprietary ceramic, virtually scratch-proof, corrosion-resistant, its color stable against UV radiation across decades of wear — is engraved with the 60-minute diving scale, the numerals and graduation marks filled with platinum applied by physical vapour deposition. The graduations are graduated from zero to sixty, with the first fifteen minutes marked in red against the black ceramic — the red zone's diving-safety significance in the watch's original professional application being the period during which the diver's surface-supplied air reserve was consumed, the red zone representing the fifteen minutes during which a diver without an independent air supply could safely ascend. The bezel rotates in one direction only, the unidirectional mechanism preventing accidental forward rotation from reducing the apparent elapsed time and creating the false impression that more air remained than actually did. The click mechanism that positions the bezel in 120 distinct one-degree increments provides the tactile feedback that allows precise bezel positioning without visual confirmation during actual underwater use.
The dial is the 124060's visual argument in its most concentrated form. Applied rectangular hour markers in white gold — their three-dimensionality casting subtle shadows on the black dial field in the right lighting — carry Chromalight luminescent fills whose blue glow in darkness distinguishes the current generation's luminescent material from the green glow of tritium and Super-LumiNova that earlier generations carried. The Mercedes-style hands — the hour hand whose form has been the Submariner's most recognizable dial element since its introduction in the late 1950s — also carry Chromalight fills in the same blue-glow formulation. The minute track runs around the dial's inner circumference without interruption, the symmetrical arrangement of twelve rectangular markers against the black ground achieving the specific formal clarity that the no-date configuration makes possible. The Rolex coronet and the "OYSTER PERPETUAL SUBMARINER" text below it, with "SUPERLATIVE CHRONOMETER OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED" below that, constitute the dial's only text — no "DATE," no model year, no additional designation — the typography occupying the upper third of the dial in the clean hierarchy that the no-date version's designers have never been tempted to crowd.
The case is the standard Oyster architecture in Oystersteel: the 904L stainless steel alloy whose additional nickel and chromium content relative to standard 316L stainless provides superior corrosion resistance and a more highly polished surface finish. The Oyster case's triple-sealed architecture — the Twinlock screw-down crown, the screw-down caseback, the monobloc middle case — maintains 300-meter water resistance through the pressure differential of descent and the salt water chemistry of actual diving environments. At 41 millimeters in diameter and 12.7 millimeters in thickness, the case proportions are consistent with the Submariner's current generation, the case's brushed and polished finishing alternating between the polished central case flanks and the brushed lug tops and lower surfaces in the Rolex finishing convention that has been applied to the Submariner since the early references.
The Oyster bracelet in 904L Oystersteel — with the Glidelock clasp system providing approximately five millimeters of extension adjustment without tools, and the Oysterlock safety clasp preventing accidental opening — provides the standard deployment in the configuration appropriate to a professional diving instrument. The bracelet's links in the Submariner's solid-construction format — not the hollow-link construction of the earliest Oyster bracelets — maintain the dimensional stability across decades of use that a diving bracelet worn in varied thermal environments and salt water requires.
The no-date Submariner's position in the collector market is the one that most directly reflects the watch's functional and historical authority rather than its material or complication value. It is the reference with the lowest secondary market premium above retail among the current-generation Rolex dive watches, a position that has consistently confused observers who interpret it as undervaluation and that has consistently rewarded the collectors who understand it as accurate valuation: the no-date Submariner's retail availability, relative to the Submariner Date and the GMT-Master II, reflects precisely the demand relationship between a watch that is functionally complete without a date and a market whose consuming majority prefers the date's practical utility. For the collector whose criterion is the watch rather than the calendar — whose primary relationship with the Submariner is with the dive instrument and its formal authority rather than with its secondary calendar function — the 124060 is the reference that most accurately represents what the Submariner was designed to be and continues to be.
