The Rolex Cosmograph Daytona "Rainbow" (ref. 126598RBOW) that headlined First State Auctions' single-owner sale hammered at $510,000. Add the 20% buyer's premium and the winning bidder paid $612,000.
That is the most expensive watch ever sold at auction in Australia. The previous mark was $450,000, set by a 1946 Patek Philippe ref. 1436 through the same house in late 2023, and it has now been cleared by $162,000.
There is a second, quieter record in there too. First State says this is the first
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Anonymous Aussie Tech Founder Auction Delivers Massive Result
via dmarge.com
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Drake Just Scored The Rarest Rolex In The World
via dmarge.com
Drake owns something in the region of 140 watches, and a serious chunk of them wear a crown. Most of those you could theoretically buy tomorrow if you had the money and the relationship. This one you could not.
He posted a carousel showing a Cosmograph Daytona described as a 1 of 1, built for Drake, running a graduated blue sapphire setting and nicknamed the "Ice Gradient". Flip it over and the caseback is engraved with the words "Freeze The World".
If that phrase rings a bell, it should. It is
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McLaren Just Did The One Thing Ferrari And Lamborghini Won’t
via dmarge.com
Every supercar brand spent the last decade telling us the manual gearbox was dead. Slower, heavier, less efficient, an emotional indulgence that no longer made engineering sense. McLaren has just called the whole thing off.
The McL 6GT landed at Monterey Car Week overnight as a concept, and buried in the spec sheet is the detail that matters most: an authentic manual transmission driving the rear wheels. It is the first proper three-pedal McLaren since the F1 in 1992.
The Car Bruce McLaren Neve
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I Got Busted By Police In Bali, You’ll Never Guess How I Paid The Fine
via dmarge.com
I have been riding scooters around Bali for twenty years. Sometimes with a helmet, mostly without, which is nobody's fault but mine.
In all that time I had never once been pulled over, which given how much time Australian men now spend in Bali is either luck or a statistical miracle. Twelve hours into this trip, on a main road I could not name if you paid me, my perfect record went in the bin.
The officer waved me across, looked at my bare head with the weariness of a man who has seen a thousan
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Only Bell & Ross Could Create This, And That Is Exactly Why You Want One
via dmarge.com
Bruno Belamich, Bell & Ross Co-Founder & Creative Director, was staring at a seconds hand doing its endless lap of a dial and realised it looked exactly like a rotor coming up to speed. That is the entire origin story of the BR-03 Helipad, and it is a rare case of a watch idea being both completely obvious in hindsight and genuinely new.
The result is a 41mm black ceramic square with a helicopter hovering permanently above a landing pad. The hours come from a rotating black disc marked
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Nike Has Built An Entire Shoe System For The Fitness Trend Taking Over The World
via dmarge.com
Nike has announced Nike Hybrid, a new performance footwear system built from the ground up for athletes who run, lift and throw themselves at a sled in the same session. It is the biggest signal yet that the world's largest sportswear brand is taking hybrid racing seriously.
Hybrid racing has gone from niche to everywhere in about three years. Events like Hyrox and Deka have turned the format into a global participation sport, and the gym floor has followed: run, lift, row, ski erg, repeat.
The
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Australian Men Are Flying To Bali For The Hard Conversations They Won’t Have In Australia
via dmarge.com
Zahra Ciardi has spent more than a decade watching men arrive with the wrong diagnosis already in their heads.
They do not think they are anxious or burnt out. They think they have a temper problem, a sleep problem, or a business that needs one more brutal quarter before things settle down.
Ciardi is the Australian psychologist behind Ascendant Bali, a private mental health and addiction clinic run out of a three-level villa with a private chef, a pool and an ocean view. It treats one client at
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Xpeng’s New SUV Has A Fridge And A Bed In The Back, And Australia Gets It This Year
via dmarge.com
Xpeng pulled the covers off the inside of the G9L on Monday, a day after the exterior images landed, and the feature everyone will talk about is not the screens or the chips or the 800V charging.
It is the fridge.
The full-size five-seat electric SUV claims 5.1 square metres of usable cabin area and what Xpeng says is the widest second row in the class, which is a very specific brag until you see what they have put back there.
The right-hand rear seat gets a power leg rest and a zero gravity mo
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Rafa Nadal Just Backed The Indonesian Island Australians Keep Flying Past
via dmarge.com
Rafa Nadal is opening his first tennis centre in Southeast Asia, and he has not put it in Bali.
The Rafa Nadal Academy has confirmed that Samara Lombok, a 150-hectare coastal destination on the island's south coast, will host the region's first Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre when it opens in the first quarter of 2028. It joins a portfolio that already spans Mallorca, Kuwait, Hong Kong, Marbella, Greece, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
For an island most Australians still treat as a side trip from
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Spider-Man: Brand New Day Just Delivered Australia’s Biggest Opening Weekend Since 2019
via dmarge.com
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has just posted the biggest opening weekend at the Australian box office since 2019, grossing $30.4m over four days and confirming what everyone already suspected: Tom Holland swinging back into the suit was never going to be a quiet affair.
The Thursday to Sunday result puts Columbia Pictures' latest web-slinger outing second only to Avengers: Endgame's $34.1m opening from 2019, and ahead of Star Wars: The Force Awakens' $27.3m from 2015. For a franchise entry, that i
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United Is Sending Its Most Premium Plane Ever To Sydney, And It Comes With Caviar
via dmarge.com
United Airlines has confirmed that its Boeing 787-9 with the new Elevated interior will fly to Sydney from 24 October 2026, making it the most premium aircraft any American carrier has ever put on an Australian route.
The daily Houston to Sydney service starts southbound on 24 October, with northbound flights following on 26 October. It runs through the northern winter season and finishes on 25 March southbound and 27 March northbound.
That gives Australians a five month window to try it, which
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A Chinese EV Will Beat A Porsche, Ferrari or BMW In Every Measurable Way But Will It Ever Feel Like One?
via dmarge.com
Last September a Chinese car went 496km/h on a test track at Papenburg in northern Germany. Not a concept and not a one-off, but a road-registrable production car: BYD's Yangwang U9 Xtreme, four motors, 1200-volt architecture, close to 3000 horsepower.
Weeks later it lapped the Nürburgring in 6:59.157, the first production EV under seven minutes, clear of a Rimac Nevera and a Porsche Taycan Turbo GT.
Then it sold 945 cars. Not the U9. Yangwang, the entire brand, across the first quarter of
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Audi Did Stuff All For Years Then Dropped Three Of The Coolest Cars Going Around
via dmarge.com
Audi has had an interesting half-decade. They killed the TT and the R8 in 2023 and put nothing in their place, dropped the A7 and S7, launched e-tron variants nobody could tell apart, and renamed half the range according to a rule they abandoned before the paint dried.
The numbers caught up. CarsGuide reports Audi Australia is down 11.2 per cent across the first half of 2026, the worst of the German three, against BMW at 8.0 per cent and Mercedes at 1.7.
Then, inside six months, three of the co
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Dior Winter 2026 Men’s Collection Is Jonathan Anderson Picking A Street Fight With Fashion And Winning
via dmarge.com
Jonathan Anderson isn't tidying up the Dior codes. He's reimagining them on the pavement of Avenue Montaigne and inviting you along.
Winter 2026 opens with his young, style-obsessed cast drifting through Paris with nowhere to be, until one of them spots a small plaque set into the footpath outside the Dior boutique. A woman in a yellow dress. The name reads Paul Poiret.
If that means nothing to you, here's why it should. Poiret worked a few doors from Dior on the same street a century ago. He c
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I Sold My Audi RS4 After Five Years, And The Science Says I Am Allowed To Be Sad
via dmarge.com
Back in 2021, I wrote a story about how selling a car can quietly gut you. I was quoted in it, talking about the BMW 335i Touring I had let go after seven years, admitting I was melancholy for a week and that I asked my girlfriend to photograph me next to it, something I had never done in my life.
I read it again this morning, hours after signing over my 2019 Audi RS4 Avant. Five years on, apparently I have learned nothing. Nothing, I tells ya.
The RS4 was the car I drove every day. Home to wor
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I Sold My Audi RS4 After Five Years, And Science Says I Am Allowed To Be Sad
via dmarge.com
Back in 2021, I wrote a story about how selling a car can quietly gut you. I was quoted in it, talking about the BMW 335i Touring I had let go after seven years, admitting I was melancholy for a week and that I asked my girlfriend to photograph me next to it, something I had never done in my life.
I read it again this morning, hours after signing over my 2019 Audi RS4 Avant. Five years on, apparently I have learned nothing. Nothing, I tells ya.
The RS4 was the car I drove every day. Home to wor
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Australians Are Overspending by $6.4 Billion A Year on Holidays, and Here’s Why
via dmarge.com
There is a moment on every trip where the maths quietly stops mathing. The flights are paid for, the hotel is paid for, and a $40 cocktail has been reclassified in your head as a rounding error. And new research from Wise, the smartest account for your travel money, has revealed why.
According to its research, Australians are overspending by an estimated $6.4 billion a year while travelling, thanks to what the company calls "vacay maths”, the phenomenon that sees spending go out the windo
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Australians Are Overspending by $6.4 Billion A Year on Holidays, and Here’s Why
via dmarge.com
There is a moment on every trip where the maths quietly stops mathing. The flights are paid for, the hotel is paid for, and a $40 cocktail has been reclassified in your head as a rounding error. And new research from Wise, the smartest account for your travel money, has revealed why.
According to its research, Australians are overspending by an estimated $6.4 billion a year while travelling, thanks to what the company calls "vacay maths”, the phenomenon that sees spending go out the windo
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BYD’s Denza Z9S Is Bringing Supercar Numbers To A Luxury Sedan
via dmarge.com
A luxury sedan is usually built around comfort, refinement and a quiet bit of confidence. It is not supposed to have the kind of numbers you expect from a supercar. The Denza Z9S clearly has other ideas.
BYD’s premium brand has taken a sleek grand tourer-style sedan and given the top-spec version performance figures that would not look out of place on a Ferrari or Bugatti spec sheet.
It is the sort of thing that makes you stop and check the numbers twice.
RELATED: The Z9GT Is Denza’
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Zeekr Wants Australians To Drive Its Future EVs On Ice Before Anyone Else
via dmarge.com
Most people test-drive a new car around the block. Zeekr would rather hand you the keys in the middle of New Zealand's Southern Alps.
The premium EV brand has opened bookings for Zeekr On Ice, an exclusive customer event combining luxury hospitality with a full day of ice driving at the Southern Hemisphere Proving Grounds in Queenstown.
The bigger hook is what participants will actually be driving. Alongside Zeekr's current Australian lineup, guests will get behind the wheel of two models that
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The Last Bugatti W16 Has Been Built And It Marks The End Of A Hypercar Legend
via dmarge.com
Some cars become legends. So do some engines, and Bugatti's W16 is one of them.
The company's 8.0-litre quad-turbocharged W16 has been one of the great engineering achievements in road car history for more than 20 years.
It powered the Veyron that rewrote the hypercar rulebook, the Chiron that pushed performance further again, and every major Bugatti that followed.
Now that the run has officially ended. Bugatti has unveiled the 99th and final Mistral, the last series production car that will ev
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The Gold MoonSwatch Is Swatch’s Answer To The Royal Pop Meltdown
via dmarge.com
Swatch has spent four years proving that a $570 (~$820 AUD) quartz watch can trigger luxury-level behaviour. Queues outside stores, watches flipped online within the hour, stock that disappears before half the line gets inside.The new Mission To The Moon 1969 MoonSwatch takes that formula somewhere stranger again.
This one does not just borrow Omega's name and the Speedmaster shape. It adds 11 grams of 18K Moonshine Gold, caps the run at 1,969 pieces, and requires every buyer to fill out a 32-q
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Luxury Watch Prices Are Climbing Again And Rolex Isn’t The Biggest Surprise
via dmarge.com
Luxury watch prices have spent the past few years sliding in the wrong direction. The post-pandemic buying frenzy faded, flipping stopped being profitable, and secondary market prices drifted lower as supply finally caught up with demand.
That slide looks to be reversing. Fresh data from Morgan Stanley, built on WatchCharts pricing, shows secondary market value retention improved across seven of the eight major Swiss brands it tracks in the second quarter of 2026.
Buyers are still paying below
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Christopher Nolan’s New Film Can Only Be Seen Properly In 41 Cinemas And Australia Has One
via dmarge.com
Millions of movie lovers are watching Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Only a lucky few are seeing it exactly as he intended.
That's because Nolan's latest epic is the first feature film ever shot entirely on IMAX 15/70 film, the highest-resolution film format in existence.
Only 41 cinemas in the world can project it exactly as intended. Australia has one. That cinema sits in Melbourne, the only IMAX 15/70 screen in Australia and the only one in the Southern Hemisphere.
RELATED: Christopher Nol
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Rainbow Rolex Sets New Australian Watch Auction Record
via dmarge.com
It is done. Lot 1 has closed and Australia has a new most expensive watch ever sold at auction.
The Rolex Cosmograph Daytona "Rainbow" that we flagged earlier this month as a genuine record threat finished at $510,000 on the hammer, landing inside its $500,000 to $600,000 estimate.
Add First State Auctions' 20% buyer's premium and the winning bidder is committed to $612,000 before customs, duties or anything else.
The previous Australian benchmark was $450,000, set in late 2023 when a 1946 Pate
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Erling Haaland Was The Passenger In Monaco’s Most Famous Bugatti And His Own Garage Is Wilder
via dmarge.com
Monaco is not a city that gets easily impressed by supercars. Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Bugattis move through its streets with enough regularity that most locals barely look up. Erling Haaland still managed to attract a crowd.
The Manchester City striker was recently filmed as a passenger in a Bugatti Chiron making its way through Monaco's streets, with onlookers capturing the moment as he stepped out. View this post on InstagramA post shared by VDH automotive (@vdhautomotive)He was not behind
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BYD Is Chasing Toyota’s Crown And Has Decided It Doesn’t Need America To Get There
via dmarge.com
There is an assumption baked into almost every major carmaker's global strategy. To become the biggest, you need to win America.
BYD's head of international operations, Stella Li, thinks that assumption is outdated.
When asked about founder Wang Chuanfu's goal of overtaking Toyota as the world's largest carmaker within five years, Li said the company does not need the US market to get there.
BYD is currently locked out of selling passenger cars in America by tariffs and restrictions on Chinese
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The Old Fashioned Cocktail Switch You Didn’t Know You Were Missing
via dmarge.com
There is a certain kind of guy who will tell you the Old Fashioned is sacred ground. Whiskey only. No substitutions. He usually says this while holding a drink he ordered because Don Draper ordered it first.
We used to be that guy. Then we made one with 1800 Añejo instead of bourbon, and suddenly the Old Fashioned had a whole new dimension we hadn't considered.
Same language, different accent
The Old Fashioned is not really a whiskey drink. It's a spirit-forward drink that happens to hav
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Polestar Tried To Kill The Rear Window And Has Now Built A Car With One
via dmarge.com
When the Polestar 4 arrived in 2023, it did something no mainstream production car had attempted. It removed the rear window entirely.
Instead of glass, drivers got a roof-mounted camera feeding a digital rear-view mirror. Polestar argued the change created more space for rear passengers and pointed toward where automotive design was heading.
Three years on, the company is heading somewhere slightly different.The new Polestar 4 SUV is a more practical sibling to the existing Coupé, and i
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Jannik Sinner May Have Accidentally Created Rolex’s Next Famous Daytona
via dmarge.com
The best Rolex nicknames are never planned. Nobody at Rolex called the Paul Newman Daytona the Paul Newman. Collectors did.
The same goes for the John Mayer Daytona and the Panda and countless other references that became legends through years of enthusiastic discussion in rooms Rolex had nothing to do with.
Now another Daytona may be working its way into that tradition.
After winning back-to-back Wimbledon titles in 2025 and 2026, Sinner celebrated both victories wearing exactly the same watch
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