Patek Philippe execs have said that even they don’t know why there’s been such a recent mania for the Nautilus model. Walk into any Patek dealer and ask for a Nautilus 5711 (the simplest and best version), and you’ll see the result of the insane hype. If they let you add your name to the waiting list, it could take eight years or longer to get the call that your Nautilus is ready.

Which is why this pair of Tiffany-stamped 5711s are extra special. The partnership between Tiffany & Co. and Patek Philippe dates back to 1851, when Antoine Norbert de Patek and Charles Tiffany met in New York. They parted with a handshake, and Tiffany has been selling Pateks ever since. Now, almost every modern model of Patek Tiffany offers receives a small mark of approval on the dial.

If the regular 5711 is practically impossible to get, the Tiffany-stamped versions might as well not exist. It’s thought that Tiffany sells only two or three blue-dial 5711s and one or two white-dials per year.

So why would a sane person go through the effort to get a 5711, let alone a Tiffany-stamped one? There’s a reason it’s one of the only timepieces CEOs and rappers can agree on: The Gérald Genta-designed watch, inspired by ship portholes, is simply one of the prettiest you will ever gaze upon. (Genta, who is also responsible for the iconic Audemars-Piguet Royal Oak, sketched out the Nautilus design on a restaurant napkin in five minutes over lunch.) The Nautilus was built to be a status symbol. When the first model was released, in 1976, it cost $3,100—an enormous price for a steel watch at the time.

The 5711 now retails for $30,619. If you’ve got more money than time, you can buy a regular 5711 on the secondary market for 50 to 80 grand. But don’t count on finding the Tiffany-stamped version for resale anywhere, because it’s too hard-won to get rid of. (When one did come up for auction, it hammered for an astronomical $125,000.) You can only buy them from one of Tiffany’s four Patek boutiques, and in order to do that, you need to know a guy. The stores reserve the few they get for the clients who spend time (and plenty of money) developing friendships with the salespeople. In fact, Tiffany knows who’s buying a Nautilus as soon as it gets stamped. Then the store takes a photo of it on the new owner’s wrist before they walk out the door.

The watch world is weird. Two timepieces may be completely identical, save for a minuscule dial stamp. That stamp can raise the value by four times because it means something—that you were willing to invest more than just money in a special piece. If you put in the work, then you stand a chance of getting one someday. You could wait 15 years. But it’s time well spent.

A version of this story originally appeared in the September 2019 issue with the title “Things That Don’t Come Easy…”