Auctions Two Rolex Daytonas Belonging To Paul Newman To Appear At Auction In New York Next Week

The first watch is a "Zenith" Daytona ref. 16520 that was given to Newman in 1995 when his team placed first in its class in the 24 Hours of Daytona race. At 70, Paul was the oldest race winner, and the Daytona is engraved "Rolex Daytona 24 Paul Newman Rolex Motorsport Man of the Year 1995" on the caseback. The Zenith Daytona actually appeared at auction four years later in 1999 at Antiquorum's "Famous Faces" sale, where it sold for $39,000 (the best-performing lot of the sale), with all the proceeds benefitting charity. The 1999 auction catalog is a true time capsule, also featuring watches from Elton John, Jerry Seinfeld, and Madonna; the second-best performer of the auction was a Franck Muller perpetual calendar chronograph donated by the self-proclaimed Master of Complications on behalf of Robert Redford.

At some point after that sale, Sotheby's says that a close family member gave the Daytona back to Paul. Newman's daughter, Nell Newman, discovered it years later when going through his home office in Connecticut. Now, it's one of more than 300 items that Sotheby's is offering as part of its "World of Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman," a series of auctions spanning several departments over the next few weeks.

The second Daytona is a white-gold ref. 116519, this one given by Joanne Woodward, Newman's wife, in 2006 and inscribed with a variation of the now-famous (to watch lovers) "Drive Very Slowly Joanne" on the caseback. It's one of three known watches that she gave to Newman over the years. The other two have appeared at auction in the past few years: his 6263 sold for $5.475 million in 2020, and of course, the Paul Newman Paul Newman 6239 sold for a then-record-breaking $17.7 million in 2017. According to Sotheby's, this is the only precious-metal Daytona Newman ever owned, and this was the last watch ever gifted to him by Woodward before he died in 2008. But just a month before his death, he took his final racing laps in his GT1 Corvette at Lime Rock Park, with this Daytona strapped to his wrist.

While this pair of Daytonas won't touch the results of the vintage 6239 or even the 6263, the estimates of $500,000 to $1 million seem conservative. Of the two, the white-gold Daytona given by Woodward feels like the more desirable; it's part of the lineage of watches she gave to her husband, dating all the way back to that original Paul Newman. Sure, it's modern, and he only owned it for a couple of years, so it doesn't have the patina of memories that his older watches do. However, it's still special as a token of one of the more famous Hollywood relationships of the 20th century and one that practically created the modern watch-collecting market.

I'll be watching to see if it can top the high water mark for a modern Daytona, the $3.27 million achieved by the unique platinum example with lapis dial sold in 2020.

If, like me, these Daytonas are a bit outside your budget, there are a few other Newman pieces in the sale: there's a presentation Tiffany & Co. alarm with Paul Newman's name inscribed on the bottom with no reserve, a gorgeous white gold Patek Philippe cushion-shaped watch owned by Joanne Woodward (est. $2,000 to 5,000), and even Newman's suit worn during his last racing laps.

For more, see Lot 27 and Lot 30.

Sotheby's sale isn't just about Newman and Woodward – it's got a strong catalog top-to-bottom, probably stronger than what we saw it put together in Geneva last month (when I said it had the weakest of the big houses).

The biggest lot of the sale is a fresh-to-market pink-on-pink Patek 1518 perpetual calendar chronograph, just the fifteenth known. I saw this watch briefly in Geneva last month, and it's absolutely gorgeous. It's not quite as pristine as the last example Sotheby's sold for nearly $10 million in December 2021, but it is nearly as exciting. Sotheby's specialist Jonathan Burford discovered this 1518 thanks to the monster sale of that last 1518 – the consignor of this watch had it sitting in a drawer for 30 years without a crystal on it. This explains why the example looks so good, with just a bit of uneven wear near the center of the dial. But the case looks gorgeous, with thick and sharp lugs that are so often polished to toothpicks on these old watches. Sotheby's has placed an estimate of $2.5 million to $4.5 million on this 1518. After the strong performance of complicated Pateks in Geneva last month – including a pink gold 2499 that sold for CHF 3.2 million – I'd expect this 1518 to land somewhere near or above that high estimate. As I've mentioned before, a fresh-to-market watch in crisp, original, and honest condition like this can get even the most cynical of collectors excited.

See Lot 38 here.

Many of the watches in this sale – including Newman's Daytonas – are what I think of as "caseback watches." Those watches that, when you flip them over and see their caseback engraving, really start to tell their story. A few weeks back, I wrote about the odd cosmic forces that had aligned to bring eight astronauts' commemorative Omega Apollo XI Speedmasters to auction in the span of less than a year. After Wally Schirra's sold for $1.9 million last fall, the market has cooled considerably, with Captain Peter Conrad's the latest to sell, for about $178,000 at Phillips Hong Kong in May. Sotheby's has the last of this deluge of Speedies, and it comes from Jack Swigert Jr., the command module pilot of Apollo XIII, having been sourced straight from Swigert's nephew.

Omega gave the first 28 of these commemorative gold Speedmasters to astronauts (and President Nixon and Vice President Agnew, who had to decline them) at a gala after the successful moon landing of Apollo XI. Later, an additional ten watches were presented to astronauts who first flew after that gala, up to the Apollo 17 astronauts. Like the original run, they have the engraving, "To mark man's conquest of space with time, through time, on time."

Sotheby's has an estimate of $120,000 to $180,000 on Swigert's Speedmaster – it's hard to know how it'll perform given how up and down these have been over the past year, but if it goes anywhere in that estimate (like Conrad's did last month), someone will have gotten a hell of a deal in the long run. No matter how many have appeared in the past year, there are still less than 40 astronaut Speedmasters like this – for me, they're still some of the coolest and most historically interesting watches around.

For more, see Lot 104.

It'll be interesting to see how this Daytona "John Player Special" 6241 performs after Rolex set the market, paying CHF 2.23 million for a pristine example at Sotheby's Geneva. Like that record-setting example, this one comes from the family of the original owner (Lot 78, est. 400,000 to 600,000). One more Rolex with interesting provenance is this modern Submariner that's a special limited edition for the U.S. Secret Service, engraved with the Old Star and Secret Service motto on the caseback (Lot 72, est. 40,000 to 60,000).

As far as issued watches go, there's a Tornek Rayville TR-900 that was issued to a U.S. Navy Lieutenant (look for a separate article on this one) and a Comex Sea-Dweller 1665 from the family of the original owner. It was given to Comex engineer Jesse Sanders, who wore it all the time according to his wife Judy. After being able to see some of the equipment Comex still makes for Rolex (take a look at it here), I have a bit more appreciation for this long-standing partnership. This Comex Sea-Dweller is great not only because it comes from the original family, but also because of all the accessories that come with it (Lot 74, est. $100,000 to 200,000). 

Sotheby's Important Watches sale takes place on June 9; check out the full catalog here. The watches (along with other items from Paul Newman) will be on exhibit at Sotheby's New York headquarters through June 8th.