Here's how the most important wristwatch in the world made history at auction.
“What do you think it will go for?” It is the legendary, monumental, and sought-after Rolex exotic-dial Daytona watch owned by Paul Newman—a watch so synonymous with its owner it’s known as simply Paul Newman’s Paul Newman. Tonight, it’s up for auction here at Phillips in New York, where estimates are being tossed out: maybe $8 million; someone else guesses $12.5; yet another $17.5; “$21 million!” someone chimes in. For context: the most expensive wristwatch ever sold went for “only” $11 million late last year.
The Paul Newman watch is scheduled to go eighth tonight, as “lot 8”—not too early, but not so late that everyone’s already blown. It’s preceded by other gorgeous pieces—an Omega Speedmaster special made for NASA, an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, and a gold Rolex encrusted with diamonds that resemble suction cups and is “affectionately called,” the auction booklet explains, the Octopussy.
Auctioneer Aurel Bacs, a senior consultant at Phillips, conducts the auction like a symphony, switching easily between languages—Italian and English tonight—to court bidders. After the bidding on the Omega seems all but over, a long moment of quiet is cut by a bidder’s “$150,000!” Bacs stumbles backwards as if he’s been shoved. “See, it’s a fucking circus,” James Lamdin, the owner of New York City vintage watch shop Analog Shift, says to me, smiling. There are 700 people in the salesroom, according to the press release. The previous high for a watch auction in New York? 100.
The event is the culmination of a four-month lead up that started with the announcement that sent tremors through the watch world: Paul Newman’s Paul Newman had been found. The watch was presumed missing, but it was really in the hands of James Cox, the one-time boyfriend of Newman’s daughter Nell. Newman gave Cox the watch in the early ‘80s, and Cox decided a couple years ago to sell the watch to raise money for Nell’s foundation, of which he’s also the treasurer. The sale has collectors slobbering. “It's setting the world, certainly the auction world, but also the watch community on fire,” Yoni Ben-Yehuda, the chief marketing officer at New York City watch store Material Good, tells me.
It’s not an overstatement to declare this watch the most important wristwatch to ever go up for auction. Here are some of the terms people used to describe it to me: “the holy grail,” “the Michael Jordan of Paul Newmans,” “an artifact of museum quality,” “the most iconic Rolex you could possibly imagine,” “the perfect storm of awesomeness,” and “the fucking watch.” “This watch has, probably, worldwide, the most votes for the most desirable, relevant, meaningful, historically important wristwatch of the twentieth century,” Bacs had told me before the auction. And now, after going missing for three decades, it’s going to be won by one of the incredibly wealthy people in this room, or participating over the phone. They’re here not just to push our idea of how much a watch can cost, but to recalibrate how the entire watch market works. They want timepiece auctions to look like the ones Phillips holds for record-shattering visual art.
The bidding starts at $1 million, and quickly jumps to 10. To understand why the price is skyrocketing, you have to understand the amazing confluence of people, trends, and events that led to the Paul Newman being the Paul Newman. “The Paul Newman watch is the perfect storm,” says Bacs. “It's the greatest Rolex collector's model, the 6239 with the exotic dial, with a perfect provenance, in perfectly original condition. Paul Newman wasn't just another famous man. He basically, unknowingly, was the trigger for why Rolex Daytonas became what they are today, triggering a movement of Rolex collecting...because he had this watch on his wrist for 15 years. I call it the Adam and Eve moment in Rolex collecting.” How does a watch become the watch, and blow past every record? The answer starts with Newman’s wife Joanne.
Legend has it that Joanne Woodward bought the Daytona in the late ‘60s at a Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue—only a couple blocks over from the Phillips auction house it’s auctioned off at. Woodward was looking for a present for Newman that could somehow articulate cautious support to a husband who had recently picked up racecar driving. She landed on the exotic dial Daytona—racing is “in its DNA,” says Ben-Yehuda—with an inscription on the back that reads “Drive Carefully Me.”
In that moment, Woodward created the foundation for the entire vintage watch market as we know it today. See, the Daytona wasn’t even a popular model at the time. Its funky art-deco lettering and bright colors were garish, and many of them sat on shelves waiting to be sold off. Because demand was low, Rolex kept supply low, too. So when the watch gained notoriety on Newman’s wrist, people started seeking them out. Prices for Paul Newman Daytonas have climbed quickly, from $9,257 at Antiquorum in 1992 to $871,500 at a Christie’s auction house in June of this year.
And while we’re handing out credit, next in line is Aurel Bacs. Bacs was previously an auctioneer and the head of the watch department at Christie’s, which he turned into a money-making machine, turning $8 million in annual watch sales in 2003 to over $130 million by the time he left in late 2014.
In the ‘80s, the most sought-after watches were restored, meaning old parts might be replaced with new ones or scratches and signs of wear buffed out. Or as Bacs puts it to me, “Taking away the flavor, the patina, the signs of wear, what gives the watch all the charm and the history.”
The term for a watch that’s been untouched is “honest.” And honest watches are cool now. “In our world, calling a watch honest is probably the best thing you can say about it,” says Ben-Yehuda. It’s a preference ushered in by Bacs. “Aurel was the guy who basically created that entire culture,” adds Wei Koh, founder of watch magazine Revolution.
The idea is that these vintage watches, when left untouched, have stories to tell. Each scuff mark and color shift is a sign of a life well lived, both by the watch and the wearer. These are values that Bacs prefers in watches and it seems he’s shaped the entire industry in his image, with much success. “When you look at a beautiful face of a 60, 70, 80-year-old man or woman with wrinkles, with gray hair, with signs of a life, that is much more attractive than a sort of artificial Barbie perfection,” says Bacs. “We see that now when it comes to watches.”
And the Newman watch doesn’t just have marks of wear—they’re marks of wear made by American icon Paul Newman, created during his time on the course during the historic 24 Hours of Le Mans race. “It's one of the things people are going to be paying for: the life that this watch has lived, the things that this watch has seen,” says Ben-Yehuda.
Googling the name of Lebanese watch collector and jeweler Claude Sfeir’s almost doubles as a way to find the most important watch auctions of the past decade. If Sfeir didn’t walk away from these auctions with the most high-priced and desired item, he probably came awfully close. The collector claims to attend over 30 auctions a year and dropped a record-setting $24 million on a Patek Philippe pocket watch in 2014. It’s Sfeir’s name that is most loudly whispered—alongside institutions like Rolex or the Smithsonian—when people wonder aloud about who will win the Newman before the event. If only because Sfeir is testing the limits for what a watch can sell and is symbolic of a maturing watch market.
The watch market, according to Bacs, is still young. “Impressionist paintings have been collected now for centuries,” Bacs says, while watches have been auctioned for maybe 40 years. And why, he asked in an interview with Koh, should a watch sell for 20 times less than a famous Basquiat painting?
Buyers like Sfeir are pushing watch prices to their upper limits, escalating records every couple years. And a watch like the Paul Newman can reset the standard. “Because this watch isn't just about watch collecting,” Bacs explains. “This is a work of art. An artifact of museum quality.” So shouldn’t it fetch museum-quality prices? The hope in the watch world is that because the Paul Newman watch attracts so many people from outside the art world, the auction will find bidders undeterred by what watches “normally” sell for. Koh has heard estimates in the $13 to $15 million range, “but, again, these are watch guys,” he cautions. If someone from the art world is interested in this watch, that price “could be a relative bargain,” Koh says. “It can be a turning point or a milestone in the history of wristwatch collecting,” Bacs adds. ”Absolutely.”
As I watch the bids roll in, I’m reminded of how Lamdin described the auction as a spectator sport when we spoke beforehand. “We watch it like fucking Sunday night football,” he says. The Newman watch, then, is the Super Bowl. The audience responds accordingly by raising their phones in the air and filming the ensuing madness.
Bacs kicks off: “I have a commission bid at $1 million that someone entered to me earlie—" "10 million dollars, sir!" Bacs doesn’t even get through his opening line before he’s interrupted with a bid from the phone galley that’s already only a million off from the world record. There’s not another watch the entire night that breaks a million. Scattered whoops break out, followed by a stunned silence—and then the crowd starts cheering, whistling, and pounding their hands together.
Within seconds the bidding comes down to a trio anonymous buyers placing bids over the phone. Everyone in the room is rapt nonetheless. Bacs is truly a conductor now: there’s total silence whenever the hammer goes up and we all wait for it to fall before we launch into the finale.
A bid of $11 million is followed by a counter of $11.5 then $12, $12.5, $13, $14 million. The bidding finally slows; One buyer on the phone is playing a game of inches, while the other is bombing hail marys. It doesn’t take 15 seconds for the price to reach $14.5. Almost three minutes pass and Bacs, while juggling a multi-million transaction, defuses the tension with humor. “What would he like to do now,” he chides the intermediary on the phone, “go to dinner, go to drinks, or maybe leave a bid?”
Finally, a bid of $14.6. There’s no hesitation from the other buyer: $15 million. Two more agonizing minutes and Bacs is all but ready to finalize the sale, but he allows a bid of $15.1. 10 seconds pass, and then the clinching $15.5 bid comes in from the first phone buyer—a sale of $17.8 million after the buyer’s fees. It sets the world record for a wristwatch sale by a mile. One portion of the room rises to give a standing ovation. “Madness;” “so much fun;” “a shit show,” people say when it’s all said and done.
The next lots fly by. Someone is noisily replaying the clip on their phone just minutes after witnessing it, many are shuffling towards the exit, and everyone else isn’t even pretending to pay attention. Friends dap each other up for no reason other than the high that’s fallen over everyone in the room.
I turn to Lamdin and ask him if there’s a larger meaning here. He’s mostly dubious—“This isn’t real life people,” he says, referencing the bidders on the Newman watch—but thinks out loud until he reaches a hopeful place. What does a $15 million dollar Rolex mean for the rest of us? “There's 20 or 30 people in the world who can spend that money on a watch, but there's thousands of people who can buy a watch that looks like that one. That's tangible
