ENTERTAINMENT
Rolex Gifted Drake a Daytona Dealers Already Priced
Rolex sent Drake a one-of-one Ice Gradient Daytona in August, after Iceman’s chart sweep, a gift the resale market already knows how to price.
Rolex sent Drake a one-of-one Ice Gradient Daytona in mid-August, three months after Iceman opened at No. 1. He posted the watch on Instagram on August 14 and thanked “the wonderful team at Rolex” for a piece he called a generational ticker, according to a caption quoted by XXL.
The gift landed on a year dealers can already price. Wind Vintage had asked $500,000 this spring for the gold GMT-Master II from the Take Care cover, and that page now reads sold.
What Rolex Put on Drake’s Wrist
Drake’s caption named it the “One of One Piece Unique Ice Gradient Daytona,” crafted for “the record breaking milestones of 2026.” Complex described white and blue diamonds laid in a gradient, more stones on the dial, and “Freeze the World” cut into the caseback in blue. One Instagram watch account put the piece around $300,000. Rolex has not posted a matching newsroom note.
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Complex tied the custom to Rolex’s off-catalog platinum Daytona line, reference 116576TBR. Factory versions of that watch, first shown around 2014, already used a 40 mm platinum case, a baguette-cut diamond bezel, and ice-blue counters. Drake’s example goes further: a unique stone mix and an album slogan on the back.
THE ICE GRADIENT SPECS
- The name: Drake called it a Piece Unique Ice Gradient Daytona, not a catalog reference.
- The platform: Complex mapped it to the off-catalog platinum Daytona 116576TBR.
- The caseback: “Freeze the World” is engraved in blue, matching the Iceman slogan.
- The street guess: an Instagram watch account cited by Complex put it near $300,000.
Database listings for the 116576TBR case and movement describe a 40 mm platinum chronograph on Rolex caliber 4130. That is the factory starting point. The gradient stones and the slogan are what make this one unrepeatable from a boutique.
The Iceman campaign had already used Rolex hardware. Drake wore another model in the “What Did I Miss” video. Complex said a platinum Daytona was on his wrist in a frozen-room livestream on July 4, while the album was still a tease. His August caption dates receipt of this 1-of-1 to months after the records were in.
Three Albums, 687,000 Units, Then a Watch
Iceman, Habibti, and Maid of Honour all arrived on May 15. Billboard, using Luminate figures, put them at Nos. 1, 2, and 3 on the chart dated May 30, the first time one act had held the top three at once since the Billboard 200 went weekly in March 1956.
| Album | Billboard 200 debut | First-week U.S. units |
|---|---|---|
| Iceman | No. 1 | 463,000 |
| Habibti | No. 2 | 114,000 |
| Maid of Honour | No. 3 | 110,000 |
Iceman’s 463,000 units were the biggest R&B/hip-hop week of 2026 and the second-largest week of the year for any album, behind BTS’s Arirang at 641,000, Billboard said. Streaming made up 449,000 of that opening sum, equal to 462.2 million on-demand plays of the album’s songs. Pure sales were 13,000 digital copies. Track-equivalent units were 1,000. Combined, the three titles did 687,000 units in seven days.
Iceman is Drake’s 15th No. 1 album, Billboard wrote, moving him past Jay-Z among solo men and tying Taylor Swift among soloists. Only the Beatles, with 19, sit ahead. Guns N’ Roses in 1991 and Nelly in 2004 had debuted at Nos. 1 and 2 together. Nobody had opened at 1, 2, and 3.
Rolex’s gift, by Drake’s own dating, did not land on release Friday or on the May 30 chart. It arrived in August, after the sweep was a closed file and the slogan on the caseback already had a chart to match.
Ice Blue Already Marks Rolex Platinum
Rolex did not have to invent a cold palette for Iceman. The house already treats ice blue as a platinum cue. A current ice-blue platinum Cosmograph Daytona sits in the U.S. catalog as a 40 mm Cosmograph with spray-coated counters. Rolex’s model list has priced that platinum Daytona at $84,600, a fraction of the Instagram guess on Drake’s unique piece.
On a Day-Date product page, Rolex describes the exclusive ice-blue platinum dial as the signature of that metal, used on the Day-Date, the Cosmograph Daytona, the Perpetual 1908, and the Land-Dweller. Drake’s watch takes that in-house color and loads it with baguette stones until it reads as album merch you cannot buy.
That is the part Rolex does not sell at the counter. Off-catalog diamond Daytonas already trade far above list. A factory unique with a Drake slogan on the back is not a product. It is a private object that will photograph for the rest of the Iceman cycle.
The Take Care GMT Listed for $500,000
Florida dealer Wind Vintage spelled out how the market treats a Drake Rolex. This spring it posted the 18k yellow gold GMT-Master II, reference 116758SANR, that Drake wore on the Take Care cover and in the “Marvin’s Room” video. Robb Report, Complex, and Hypebeast all carried the ask at $500,000. Regular examples of the same reference trade near $100,000 on Chrono24, Robb Report wrote. The Drake link was the other $400,000.
The watch has 36 baguette diamonds and 12 black sapphires on the bezel, diamond work on the lugs and crown guards, and an OVO owl engraved on the caseback. Wind Vintage says it was bought in 2011. The Take Care GMT-Master II listing now shows sold. The shop did not publish a hammer price.
I love watches with great provenance and stories. I think Take Care is one of the most important albums from the last 20 years. Drake is an icon.
Eric Wind, Wind Vintage, quoted by Hypebeast
Wind, a former Christie’s watch specialist, bundled the gold owl statue from the cover, clothing, and backstage passes with the watch. Take Care is a diamond album at more than 10 million copies, spent 400 weeks on the Billboard 200, and won Best Rap Album at the 55th Grammys, the dealer’s copy says. That is the comps sheet for the Ice Gradient, whether or not Drake ever lets it out of the house.
Drake Has Handed Out Rolexes Before
The same man now thanking Rolex has used custom Rolexes as gifts when other people’s albums hit No. 1. In late June 2021, Lil Baby posted a Chrome Hearts-bracelet Day-Date and credited Drake, days after Lil Baby and Lil Durk’s The Voice of the Heroes topped the Billboard 200. Time and Tide read it as a factory Day-Date case on a custom Chrome Hearts bracelet. GQ Australia called it a Day-Date outfitted by Chrome Hearts.
DRAKE’S MILESTONE ROLEXES
- Take Care GMT: A 2011-era 116758SANR with an OVO owl on the back, listed at $500,000 and now marked sold.
- Lil Baby Day-Date: A Chrome Hearts bracelet on a Rolex case, posted June 28, 2021, after The Voice of the Heroes went to No. 1.
- Iceman campaign watches: A separate model in “What Did I Miss,” plus a platinum Daytona Complex spotted on a July 4 livestream.
- Ice Gradient Daytona: The August 14 factory unique with “Freeze the World” on the reverse.
He collects them, he gives them, and he now has one Rolex built around his own chart week. The brand that almost never does celebrity ads still found a way to put its name on the coldest visual of his year without taking out a billboard.
The Clone Market Drake Tried to Head Off
The line people kept quoting was not the thank-you. It was the warning. “Please do not get your local jeweler to recreate. This is a stand alone and a part of history,” Drake wrote, as quoted by XXL. He already knows how this goes. Ice-and-diamond Daytonas are a cottage industry. A factory unique with a slogan is a template the moment the stills circulate.
THE 2026 DATES ON THE CASEBACK
- May 14, 2026: A livestream the night before release reveals Habibti and Maid of Honour beside Iceman.
- May 15, 2026: All three albums land as digital titles.
- May 30, 2026: The Billboard 200 dated that week puts them at Nos. 1, 2, and 3.
- August 14, 2026: Drake posts the Ice Gradient Daytona and says he received it that day.
Rolex waited until those dates were fixed, then put them on a wrist in platinum and blue stones. Dealers already ran the math on the last Drake Rolex that left a vault. This one is not for sale. The people with a stake are the brand that built it, and the shops that will someday be asked what a Freeze the World Daytona is worth.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Many Tracks Are on Iceman, Habibti, and Maid of Honour?
Billboard’s first-week recap counted 18 tracks on Iceman, 11 on Habibti, and 14 on Maid of Honour. Luminate’s paired stream counts were 462.2 million, 110.63 million, and 105.48 million on-demand U.S. plays in that opening week, and all three titles were sold only as digital albums.
Who Consigned Drake’s Take Care Rolex to Wind Vintage?
Wind Vintage says the GMT-Master II was purchased in 2011 by a colleague of Drake from the years he broke through, not consigned by the rapper. The package on the now-sold page also includes the gold owl statue from the album cover, clothing, and backstage passes from the Club Paradise tour.
How Long Did Take Care Stay on the Billboard 200?
Wind Vintage’s copy says Take Care spent 400 weeks on the Billboard 200 and is certified diamond by the RIAA at more than 10 million copies. Rolling Stone ranked it 95th on its 500 Greatest Albums list, and it won Best Rap Album at the 55th Grammy Awards, Drake’s first of five Grammys, per the same listing.
What Movement Do Off-Catalog Platinum Daytonas Like the 116576TBR Use?
Dealer and database listings for the 116576TBR name Rolex caliber 4130, an in-house chronograph with a 72-hour power reserve. They also list a 40 mm platinum case about 12.4 mm thick, 20 mm lugs, and 100 meters of water resistance, the factory skeleton under Drake’s unique stonework.
ENTERTAINMENT
Ricky Gervais Bets His Career on Alley Cats Forever
Ricky Gervais wants Alley Cats to run until he dies. Netflix has a UK number one, a 38 Metascore, and no season 2 order yet.
Ricky Gervais told fans he wants his Netflix cartoon Alley Cats to run until he dies, days after it hit number one in the UK. Critics scored it 38 on Metacritic. Netflix has not ordered season 2.
The six-episode Netflix comedy dropped on August 7. It is already the worst-reviewed show of his career, and the first one he has called the rest of his working life.
He Wants These Cats to Outlive Him
At the Annecy animation festival on June 25, Gervais turned 65, showed the first two episodes, and described the job in the simplest terms he had. No hair, no makeup, no dawn call. “The cats never get old. So as I get older and fatter, I can still sit in a chair and continue to make this forever,” he told the room, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
He had already said the same thing to the Mirror in July, before anyone had seen a finished episode. After the premiere he said it again on YouTube, this time to his own audience, and pushed the point past a gag.
It’s the first thing I’ve ever created that I’d like to go on forever. I can see myself just making this show till I die.
Ricky Gervais, YouTube, August 2026
He added that the cats will not age, and that it will not matter how fat, old and bald he gets. Someone can put him in a chair with a microphone, surrounded by the rest of the cast, “and off we go.” Senility, he said, would not matter much “as I’m usually talking bollocks anyway. It’s the dream job.”
That is the wager. After Life ended after three seasons. Stand-up specials come one at a time. Alley Cats is the format he has designed so the work can outlast his face, his back, and a shooting schedule. Netflix now has to decide whether it wants that show, or just the one week at the top of a chart.
A 38 Metascore Sat Next to a UK Number One
The critic pile-on was fast and public. Radio Times gave it one star. The Telegraph’s Anita Singh called it “staggeringly unfunny” and Metacritic logged that review as a zero. ScreenRant, tallying Rotten Tomatoes, said the Tomatometer made Alley Cats Gervais’s worst-reviewed series, worse than Derek at 60 percent and Life’s Too Short at 53 percent.
The season page on Rotten Tomatoes has since sat in the low 20s, most recently at 24 percent. Metacritic, which has 13 critic reviews on file, is the sturdier snapshot: a Metascore of 38, labelled generally unfavourable, with only two of those reviews in the green.
| Publication | Metacritic score | What they wrote |
|---|---|---|
| Wall Street Journal | 80 | John Anderson said it is “so gleefully vulgar it could make a TV critic blush,” then noted that all six episodes end on a sweet beat. |
| The Times | 60 | Carol Midgley found it “funnier when it isn’t being juvenile.” |
| Empire | 40 | John Nugent compared the laughs to Nightmare Alley and the look to Cats. |
| The Hollywood Reporter | 40 | Angie Han said it turns from vicious to “ooey-gooey sweet” without the depth to make either tone land. |
| Radio Times | 20 | Jack Seale wrote that in 2D, “his writing falls flatter than ever.” |
| The Telegraph | 0 | Singh’s one-line verdict was that the show is staggeringly unfunny. |
Gervais treated the chart as the reply. On August 9 The Independent reported he had posted “Oh. My. God.” on Instagram next to a screenshot of the UK number one slot, and said he had “never been so happy.” Radio Times recorded the same thanks to “the best fans in the world” on X. The Mirror later quoted him saying the fan response made him feel “like crying,” and that he has “had a few number ones.”
HuffPost UK, writing once the first surge had cooled, had the title down at number four in Britain, behind new episodes of My Life With the Walter Boys and documentaries on Charles Manson and José Mourinho. Netflix still had not spoken.
The audience numbers on review sites do not match the “fans versus critics” story either. Metacritic’s user score is 2.9 from 58 ratings, with 69 percent negative. Rotten Tomatoes audience figures have been warmer, in the high 50s to mid 60s depending on the day you look. A UK number one measures who pressed play. It does not measure who thought the jokes worked.
The craft complaint, once you read past the culture-war posts, is narrower than outrage. It is repetition. The insults settle into a loop, then each short episode swerves into a sincere close that a lot of viewers do not feel has been earned. Radio Times, the Telegraph, Empire and The Hollywood Reporter all filed pans. That is not a single blog pile-on. It is the British and American trades saying the writing is thin.
How Alley Cats Was Built to Run Forever
The production is the other half of the bet. Gervais did not make a cartoon the usual way, with storyboards first and actors last. He pitched a sitcom about swear-y cats to Netflix, then built it like a radio comedy that someone would later have to draw.
On Netflix Tudum he said his girl tabby-tortoiseshell, Pickle, is part of Gus, the lazy ginger tom he voices. “The rest of Gus is probably me, a fat bloke on the sofa watching telly.” Variety, at the 2025 first look, carried his other self-portrait: “I play a fat, lazy, rude, opinionated creature with fangs, who’s not as smart or brave as he thinks he is. So quite a stretch.”
Each episode runs about 15 minutes. Netflix lists episode one, Lost, at 17 minutes: Gus and the gang go to a cemetery to hunt mice and find a lost kitten. The official tagline is “Nine lives, zero fucks.”
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He told Tudum he wanted the cats unwanted on purpose, “to add to the pathos and the jeopardy,” and to set a posh house cat among hungry strays like a British class sitcom. The models he named were The Phil Silvers Show, Cheers, Porridge and Only Fools and Horses. “It’s not surreal apart from the fact these cats talk. I’ve tried to make it quite naturalistic.”
- September 2023: Gervais later said he found original sketches from this month, and that the gap to screen felt “mental.”
- September 11, 2025: Netflix unveiled the show for a 2026 launch, with Gervais creating, writing, co-directing and voicing Gus.
- June 25, 2026: He screens two episodes at Annecy, turns 65, and tells the festival he can make this forever.
- August 7, 2026: All six episodes land on Netflix as a TV-MA comedy.
- August 9, 2026: He celebrates the UK number one slot while the reviews are still coming in.
Animation Magazine, in an interview before launch, said Blink Industries won the contract after a tiny sample, “like, 20 seconds worth.” Gervais then wrote all six episodes and recorded them with the actors in the same room at the same time, before a frame was drawn. That is the opposite of most animation, and it is also the thing that makes a second season logistically easy for him and expensive for the people with pencils.
He told the Annecy crowd, “Don’t do cartoon voices. Talk as you normally do.” He told Tudum he hands the tapes over with a blunt instruction: “Animate what’s happening. Don’t add to the joke.” Because the cast recorded together, the show keeps real laughs. “It’s funny when you see a cat laughing in the background. Nothing happens by mistake in animation.” Every corpsing line still has to be drawn.
The After Life Deal Netflix Already Signed
Netflix has already seen this movie with Gervais, minus the fur. After Life was a critic-splitter that the streamer kept going anyway. Rotten Tomatoes now lists season 2 at 79 percent and season 3, which arrived in January 2022, at 64 percent. The show still ran three seasons, and Gervais closed it on his own timetable.
On May 6, 2020, Variety reported After Life’s third-season renewal in the same breath as an overall Netflix deal covering scripted series and stand-up. That order came less than two weeks after season 2 launched. It was, as the After Life record later noted, the first time a Gervais fiction series had gone past two runs.
When Netflix showed Alley Cats in 2025, AV Club treated that overall deal as still in force, and listed the rest of the account: the film Special Correspondents, then the specials Humanity, SuperNature and Armageddon, the last of which won a Golden Globe and a Guinness mark for the highest-grossing single stand-up date. His Mortality tour was already lined up for the same platform.
That history is why a 38 Metascore does not settle the question. Netflix has renewed him when the audience showed up, and it has used him as a stand-up house brand for eight years. Alley Cats is shorter than After Life, cheaper to shoot for the star, and harder to make for the studio. The streamer’s own record says the reviews are not the whole test. It does not say a cartoon with a 2.9 user score gets a free pass.
Someone Still Has to Draw the Next Season
If Gervais sits in the chair forever, other people have to keep coming back. The voice company is mostly the After Life and Derek gang, recorded as a group so they can interrupt each other. Co-director Elliot Dear came from a Love, Death and Robots episode. The drawings are Blink Industries adult animation, the London studio behind Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared and Dead End: Paranormal Park, with Tang Heng (Kung Fu Panda) as production designer. Metacritic lists Derek Productions, Shush Creative, Blink and Netflix Animation as the companies on the title.
Tudum names the gang that would have to reassemble.
- Gus: Gervais as the curmudgeon tom, part Pickle and part “fat bloke on the sofa,” alleged tough guy of the crew.
- Fang: Andrew Brooke as the chaotic tuxedo cat.
- Puke: David Earl as the shameless fleabag, the part several viewers already say steals scenes.
- Olive: Diane Morgan as the dim stray, another After Life regular back on the mic.
- Ponce: Tom Basden as the dapper domestic, the middle-class pet Gervais planted to start the class row.
- Kitten: Jo Hartley as the lost cat trying to get home, the plot engine of episode one.
Kerry Godliman, Natalie Cassidy and Tony Way are also in the voice cast. Gervais exec-produces through Derek Productions with Steven Hamilton Shaw of Shush Creative. For him the next season is a microphone. For Blink it is another six episodes of 2D on a show whose creator has already said he does not want an ending.
He told Tudum he wanted people “to love the cats,” and that the stories should surprise. He also said the show is existential because cats “know they haven’t got long.” That is the odd hinge of the bet. The characters are written as short-lived. The production is written as endless.
Will Netflix Order Alley Cats Season 2?
Netflix has not confirmed Alley Cats season 2. Gervais has said, more than once, that he wants the cartoon to continue until he dies, and the streamer has previously renewed his work fast when the audience showed up. That is the whole public record as of August 20. Everything else is inference from a UK number one, a 38 Metascore, and a format built for reruns.
WHAT WE KNOW
- The order: Netflix has not confirmed or denied more episodes, which is the same silence HuffPost UK reported last week.
- The chart: The show reached number one in the UK in its first days, then slipped; HuffPost had it at number four behind Walter Boys, Manson and Mourinho.
- The scores: Metacritic’s critic average is 38 from 13 reviews; its user average is 2.9 from 58 ratings.
- The pitch: Gervais has repeated the forever line at Annecy, in the Mirror, and on YouTube after launch.
WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED
- A second season: No episode count, no date, no internal Netflix leak has been verified.
- The overall deal: The 2020 Netflix pact is public; whether Alley Cats is already covered by it has not been spelled out.
Global hours: Tracker pages exist, but no clean worldwide hours figure has been published in a form that can be cited.
This week the argument on X had already jumped from the jokes to whether Gervais is finished. GB News ran a headline on August 18 about retirement calls in the backlash. On August 19 he posted a laughing emoji, and people underneath were already treating a second season as the thing that would prove the obituaries wrong. That is a lot of weight for six short episodes about cats in an empty flat.
He still has the chair, the old cast in one room, and a studio that already knows the faces. Netflix still has the only yes that counts.
