Geneva auction house Christie's has just conducted the first auction in a decade dedicated to just one model of mechanical replica watches. Its results exceeded all, even the wildest expectations.
Last Sunday, November 10, Christie's Geneva auction house held a truly unique auction in the scale of the entire market. Its main and only hero was the Daytona, celebrating its 50th birthday this year - the legendary, iconic Rolex chronograph. Although the fake rolex version celebrating this anniversary was rather disappointing (we wrote about the platinum Daytona HERE), the Chriestie's auction is a real tribute to the chronograph considered by many connoisseurs to be the most perfect in history.
50 Daytona watches went for the auction hammer, including unique models from practically the entire history of the model, which first went on sale in 1963. More importantly, all 50 watches were auctioned (!), and the total amount obtained is - a trifle - CHF 12,032,850(!) (~PLN 40,887,000). And that's for mostly steel watches with a simple stopwatch complication.
As I have already mentioned, all auctioned items found new owners, but some of them achieved a really cosmic result. And the absolute hero of the auction - Daytona Ref.6263.6239 - broke a certain psychological barrier, the breaking of which was probably not expected even by the most ardent collectors. Nicknamed "Paul Newman" (due to being made famous by the famous American actor), the 1969 model, with an estimated price in the range of CHF 200-400,000, sold for over $1 million USD (!) - exactly $1,089,186 USD (~3,391 PLN .000).
No less spectacular results were also achieved by items No. 2 and 3 of the Geneva auction - Ref.6263 and Ref.6239. The first one, made in 1974 for the Sultan of Oman - Quaboos Bin Said Al Said, went for CHF 785,000 (estimated price 300-600,000).
