Legendary American actor Paul Newman, who died in 2008, was also an accomplished car racer and a lover of fine watches: two of his Rolex Daytonas will be auctioned in New York in June, Sotheby’s announced on Tuesday, which is counting on a million dollars for each.
Even at this price, we will be very far from the record sale for a wristwatch sold at auction in October 2017 by the New York house Phillips: another Rolex Daytona that also belonged to Paul Newman and left at the time in a few minutes for 17.8 million dollars.
One of the two Swiss watches auctioned on June 9 by Sotheby’s had been offered to the Hollywood actor by his wife of half a century, the American actress Joanne Woodward, during a test of the famous ” 24 hours of Daytona”, an endurance car race on the circuit of Daytona Beach, Florida.
Estimated between 500,000 and one million dollars, the Rolex Daytona jewel with a black dial and a leather strap bears the inscription engraved in capital letters “drive very slowly”, signed “Joanne”.
The other Rolex “Zenith” Daytona, estimated at the same price, almost identical model, but with a white dial and a metal bracelet, had been offered to Newman for the victory of his team at the “24 hours of Daytona” in 1995.
The actor was then 70 years old and was thus the oldest racing driver to win a race, according to a press release from Sotheby’s.
The auction house, which belongs to the French, Moroccan and Israeli tycoon Patrick Drahi, announced at the end of February an auction in June of 300 objects having belonged to the legendary Hollywood couple, Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman.
They were married from 1958 until the death, in 2008 of lung cancer at the age of 83, of the legendary actor who won an Oscar for “The Color of Money” by Martin Scorcese ( 1986). Joanne Woodward, 93, also received an Oscar in 1958 for “The Three Faces of Eve”.
Sotheby’s said it was “proud” to put these two Daytona watches on sale, which the Swiss luxury watchmaker Rolex celebrates 60 years this year, “models worn by the Hollywood legend and which tell of the eternal love which he shared with his wife Joanne and his immense passion for motor racing”.
