Nell Newman, son of actor Paul Newman, while searching for a pencil in her late father’s desk, found two multimillion dollar treasures: a pair of Rolex Daytona watches that Newman wore in his later years.
“There they were, with his driver’s license,” Newman’s son said. “They were just in a box on your desk.”
The pair of chronographs When it is auctioned this June, it will cause a stir in the watch world. The auction will be conducted by Sotheby’s, a Londonbased auction company.
Paul Newman, 1958. (Public domain)
Sotheby’s has valued $500,000 to $1 million per watch, although experts say each watch is likely to fetch more than $1 million.
The actor loved the Rolex brand, which is said to be “the most accurate in the world.” Newman said his father had a “peculiar habit” of betting guests by a quarter that his Rolex kept time better than anything on his wrist.
The items recently sold at auction show that the ‘watch world’ has a special appreciation for the actor’s pieces. In 2020, Phillips auction house sold a Rolex watch, reference 6263, given to Newman by his wife with the inscription “Drive Slow, Joanne” for nearly $5.5 million. Newman’s sale of the Rolex Daytona reference 6239 for $17.8 million three years earlier remains the high point for his watches.