It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than Jay-Z’s Royal Oak

Welcome to Watches of the Week, where we’ll track the rarest, wildest, and most covetable watches spotted on celebrities.

The combination of widespread vaccines and getting deeper into the NBA playoffs means A-list celebrities and their A+ watches are back sitting courtside. The very beginning of the second round has already given us a ton to look at, including watches from Jay-Z, Trevor Noah, and Bryan Cranston. Those sitting courtside aren’t the only ones upping their game, though. Players and secretly huge watch collectors like Danny Green are dislodging the best pieces from their watch winders for their trips to the arena, too.

Jay-Z’s Audemars Piguet Royal Oak

Over the past few years, Audemars Piguet has relied on this specific combination—openworked dial plus perpetual calendar—to flex its watchmaking muscle. More recently, the brand has made this watch in black and white ceramic—watches as popular among celebrities as Calabasas real estate. But Jay’s version, in just straight 18-carat gold, might be the absolute peak of all Royal Oak models. For Jay, this apex-predator watch is just one in his arsenal for sitting courtside. He takes this seriously, swapping in customized 1-of-1 Rolex watches and show-offy Hublots depending on the matchup.

Bryan Cranston’s Rolex Oyster Perpetual

He is the one who clocks! Thanks to his Rolex, that is. Cranston is wearing one of Rolex’s best new releases from 2020: an Oyster Perpetual with a flame-orange dial. The watch is inspired by the lacquer-dial pieces from the ‘80s known as “Stella”-dial Rolexes. The watches take their name from a manufacturer—named Stella, naturally—that originally supplied the dials decades ago.

It’s a great watch…but! It’s hard for it not to feel like a missed opportunity. The orange-dial piece was released alongside a buffet of candy-color pieces, including one with a blue face that happens to perfectly match the signature shade of ice-blue meth Cranston’s character sold on Breaking Bad.

Danny Green’s Jacob & Co. Bugatti Chiron Tourbillon

There are watches inspired by racing that make sure to include useful tools like chronographs. Others go further, imitating colors and designing subdials that look like speedometers. A few brave souls say to hell with all that. Green’s Jacob & Co. Bugatti falls in the last category. The watch echoes the literal shape of a Bugatti engine, and, because this is Jacob & Co., that’s not just for aesthetics, either. Click a button on the side of the watch and the “engine” comes to life.

Maybe, with this watch, we can finally get Danny Green trending on Twitter for something good.

Trevor Noah’s Audemars Piguet Royal Oak

With Jay-Z and Noah, the full range of the Royal Oak is on display this week. While Jay’s is complete with all the bells and whistles, Noah’s Royal Oak is the watch in its purest form. Simplicity is only fun in small doses, though. Just a few days after this photo was taken, Noah was seen appearing “to rekindle romance” with Minka Kelly while wearing the aforementioned white ceramic openworked perpetual calendar Royal Oak.

Jake Paul’s Gucci x Disney Grip

The Gucci Grip uses what is known as a “jumping hours and minutes” complication. Those aperture windows show a rotating disc that “jumps” into view to display the correct hour and minute. The complication was invented all the way back in the late 1800s and was mainly used in pocket watches to make them very easy to read. These are known as the original “digital” watches because they used these digits to display the time.