A rare Rolex watch, The Rolex Cosmograph Daytona once owned and worn by Hollywood legend Paul Newman, sold over the weekend in New York for $17,752,500, making it the most expensive watch ever auctioned. It was sold to a buyer who wished to remain anonymous.
The watch was given to Newman by his wife, Joanne Woodward, in 1968. She’d bought it from a Tiffany’s store in New York, and engraved it with the words “Drive carefully”. Newman wore the watch every day for 15 years and the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, which was on sale between 1963 and 1970, became known as the “Paul Newman watch”.
The auction house defined the watch as “well-preserved” and said that the case “retains its original proportions, lines, and edges, and in our view, has never been polished”. “Drive carefully” engraving on the case back “is perfectly crisp and completely intact”.
