Kevin Hart and Ed Sheeran Know This Rolex Is the Ultimate Collector’s Piece

If you’re a super-collector these days—a true member of the Swiss-made cognoscenti—then you better have Rolex’s limited- and extremely special-edition “Le Mans” Daytona on your wrist. Immediately upon its 2023 debut in white gold, this impossible-to-source chronograph shot to the top of the Most Wanted list of every collector from here to Hong Kong. Case in point: Both Ed Sheeran and Kevin Hart saw fit to wear theirs this week. Don’t know precisely which Daytona we’re referring to? Let’s restart our chronographs for a moment, winding the proverbial watch back to 2023…

We thought Rolex had played its hand in early April of 2023 at Watches and Wonders with its “Emoji” Day-Date, “Celebration” Oyster Perpetual, and 1908. All of these would have been perfectly good headliner releases for the year! Little did we know that the pièce de résistance would come out one random day in June of that year.

The “Le Mans” Daytona, made in celebration of 100 years of the famous 24-hour endurance race, was a bombshell. The design is inspired by vintage Daytona designs and bespeckled with tiny Easter eggs and broke the collective mind of the horological internet while sending collectors into an absolute tizzy. And if you thought it was tough to secure a $15K steel Daytona, try snagging one of these highly limited-production totems of Swiss-made beauty. With a retail price of $51,400, they were quickly trading on the secondary market for a cool quarter-milly.

As quickly as the white-gold version (ref. 126529LN) entered the Rolex catalog, it just as swiftly exited stage left to make room for one in yellow gold. Either way, both watches feature the same notable quirks. Those details include 24-hour totalizer, rather than the traditional 12-hour counter, in reference to the race’s day-long run time. Speaking of the chronograph subdials, these are pure white (without contrasting rings) much like those on the vintage and highly collectible “reverse panda” models. Even more significantly, the typeface used within the small confines of the subregisters is based on the one found on the “exotic” dials used in so-called “Paul Newman” Daytonas. Those dials, made by Singer, were originally unpopular and languished on shelves. However, their association with actor and driver Paul Newman—whose own reference 6239 hammered for nearly $18M back in 2017—saw their value skyrocket over the past several decades.

But, wait, there’s more! Take a look at the “100” index on the watch’s tachymeter bezel and you’ll notice it’s in red to highlight the 100th anniversary of Le Mans. (It also matches the red “Daytona” text, a feature of current-production Daytonas but also a reference to vintage “Big Red” versions such as the beloved ref. 6263.)

No doubt it’s this special model’s many little quirks that caught the eye of Sheeran, who wore his white gold version at the 2025 Time100 Gala this week, and Hart, who wore his yellow gold version while seated courtside at the Nuggets-Clippers game this week. And to be fair to these two gentlemen, this is a killer watch. Handsome and heavy, it’s the type piece that every Rolex is desperate to own.