A Rolex Cosmograph Daytona. Image credits: Wikimedia Commons
In the summer of 1984, Paul Newman asked his daughter Nell’s boyfriend, James Cox, what time it was. Cox kept the watch for roughly 33 years. In October 2017, he and Nell Newman consigned it to Phillips in New York, where it set a world record for a wristwatch at auction. Newman had died in 2008 and never saw the resale. Joanne Woodward gave the Daytona to Newman in 1968 The watch was a gift from his wife. UPI reported that Joanne Woodward gave him the Cosmosgraph Daytona in 1968. Phillips also indicated that he wore this watch daily from 1969 to 1984. Cox met Nell Newman in the fall of 1983 at College of the Atlantic The two started dating while they were both still fellow students. In the summer of 1984, the two were staying at their family estate in Westport, Connecticut. It appears to have been lost in 1984 when Newman got a new Daytona watch from his wife, according to Autoblog. NBC Los Angeles also says that the watch went off the radar and was assumed missing, following the death of Paul Newman in 2008. The Daytona sold for $17,752,500 on October 26, 2017 The watch was auctioned by Phillips in New York on October 26, 2017. The 1968 Cosmograph Daytona Reference 6239 reached a hammer price of $15.5 million, according to Phillips. Phillips claimed that their final price was $17,752,500, including the buyer’s premium and thus they achieved a world record for an auctioned wristwatch. As stated by Hodinkee, the former recorded for the most expensive wristwatch, which sold for approximately $11.1 million in 2016, was held by the steel Patek Philippe Reference 1518. That made the Newman Daytona about 60 percent more expensive. The Newman Daytona held the record for just over two years, from Phillips’ sale on October 26, 2017 to the Christie’s Geneva auction on November 9, 2019. Christie’s reported that on November 9, 2019, the steel Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime Reference 6300A-010 sold for 31 million Swiss francs, about $31.3 million, at the Only Watch charity auction at Christie’s Geneva. The same report also notes that the price topped the Newman Rolex’s $17.8 million.
Cox said he did not own a watch, so Newman handed him the Rolex on his own wrist. The case back was engraved “Drive Carefully, Me”, a nod to Newman’s racing. The girl only came clean about her surname after listening to a particular story, according to Phillips. One day he asked Cox what the time was and Cox told him he did not know and had no watch. Newman gifted him the Rolex and explained that all he needed to do was to wind it daily and then “it tells pretty good time”. It is said by Phillips to be one of the greatest mysteries in horology that was only solved when Cox came forward. A portion of the proceeds went to Nell Newman’s foundation and Newman’s Own Foundation The watch was listed for sale by both Cox and Nell together and according to UPI, Cox is the treasurer of the Newman Foundation. Cox was going to donate a major part of the money he earns to the Newman Foundation, according to the report by KOMO News.
A casual question about the time on a Connecticut riverbank led to one of the best-known watch sales in history. Newman put it to work. He timed races with it and bet friends that it ran more accurately than theirs, a habit Phillips has described in its sale notes. He would call the speaking clock, a phone line that gave the exact time, to get his money. She went by the name Nell Potts in school, but hid her association with her family. In her letter to Cox that accompanied the watch, Nell stated that her father went to the riverbank to see how James was doing. Portrait of Paul Newman. Image credits: Wikimedia Commons Collectors were completely oblivious about the whereabouts of the watch. All along, Cox owned it. The Newman Daytona still ranks as the most expensive Rolex sold at auction. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
The watch seemed to vanish after 1984
In some versions of the story, the quote has changed to “keeps good time”, which is the version published in City AM. UPI also mentioned that Cox had responded to the question “a hair past a freckle,” his way of saying he had no watch.