Two rare Rolex watches with important provenance will be among the highlights of Christie’s Rare Watches auction at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues in Geneva on November 10.
The first is a circa 1970 stainless steel Rolex Daytona reference 6262 with the rare “Tiffany & Co.” inscription on the dial purchased by actor, George Peppard. Its estimate is $130,000 - $250,000.
Peppard purchased the watch in 1972 at the Tiffany & Co. store in Beverly Hills, Calif., as a last-minute gift for his son, Brad. It’s the same watch he owned.
The watch being offered in the auction has an inscription on the caseback that reads, “Brad Peppard December 1972 Love Dad.” The watch has remained in the hands of Brad Peppard, for more than 50 years.
Christie’s said fewer than five examples of the reference 6262 bearing the Tiffany & Co. signature are thought to exist today.
“The dial is double signed with both the Rolex signature and ‘Tiffany & Co.,’ making it one of the rarest specimens among all steel reference 6262 models,” the auction house said in a statement.
In addition, the reference 6262 was in production between 1970 and 1972, “and as such, remains one of the scarcest and most desirable of the ‘pump-pusher’ vintage Daytona timepieces,” according to Christie’s.
Peppard (1928 – 1994) is an internationally known actor whose feature role was as struggling writer Paul Varjak starring alongside Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). He later portrayed a character based on Howard Hughes in The Carpetbaggers (1964). On television, he played the title role of millionaire insurance investigator and sleuth, Thomas Banacek, in the early-1970s mystery series Banacek. He was also known as Col. John “Hannibal” Smith, the cigar-smoking leader of a renegade commando squad in the 1980s action series, The A-Team.
The second watch is a single-owner 1967 Rolex Daytona reference 6239. This steel Cosmograph is nicknamed “The Doctor,” with a pulsations dial bearing the model name “Cosmograph” but without the Daytona name. Christie’s said this configuration was last seen at auction a decade ago. This example is one of the rarest variants of the reference 6239 and the entire Cosmograph family, Christie’s added. “Only a handful have surfaced over the years, with probably fewer than five examples existing today.”
The estimate for this Rolex is $510,000 - $760,000.
The timepiece features a silvered soleil dial with black subdials and an outer bright blue pulsations scale calibrated for 15 pulsations. Chronographs with pulsation scales were created for medical doctors in the days when a watch was commonly used to take a patient’s pulse. This is why this watch is nicknamed The Doctor. Fittingly, the watch is consigned by a Florentine doctor.
Christie’s said the watch is in “superb condition,” with a ‘pared down’ aesthetic compared with the standard 6239 dial. To accommodate the pulsations scale, the black minute track and ‘T Swiss T’ text was repositioned, as were the applied hour indexes.
Produced in stainless steel, 14k and 18k gold, reference 6239 was Rolex’s first chronograph with the tachymeter scale engraved on the bezel, with subsidiary dials printed in a contrasting colors for improved legibility, Christie’s said. The dials of the early models featured only the “Cosmograph” name, which the auction house attributes to the fascination with space exploration during the early 1960s. The “Daytona” name was added on later series watches to mark Rolex’s sponsorship of the NASCAR stock car race.
The catalog for the Rare Watches auction hasn’t been released as of October 15.