Feel Good Friday... Every Step Up This Ladder Gets Better.....

 This is a few years old so some may have seen it. I just happened upon it last night.

 If you haven't seen it yet, enjoy:

 

 

 

Vietnam veteran finds out how much his Rolex watch is worth pic.twitter.com/bwziOLzsEU

— Time Trip (@TimeTriping) January 21, 2024

 

 Story from FORBES below the fold...

What do you do with a Paul Newman Rolex Daytona that you bought for $345 in 1974? You prepare for a windfall. US Air Force veteran David (whose last name is not being released) fainted with delight upon receiving an appraisal on a recent episode of the PBS series Antiques Roadshow held in Fargo, North Dakota. He discovered that his $345 Rolex Ref. 6263 is now worth between $500,000 and $700,000.

David says he bought the watch, which cost nearly a month’s salary at the time, because he heard it was a good brand for scuba diving. In the end he decided it was too nice to take into salt water so he kept it mostly in safety deposit box for the past 40 years. He also kept the warranty papers, two receipts and the original box. The watch, mostly unworn and in pristine condition, is a model much coveted by collectors, particularly with original papers and box. Any auction house would be happy to consign it. “The watch appears exceptionally well-preserved and complete, and I’m in agreement with the appraisal,” says Paul Boutros, head of watches for the Americas for Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo, a leading watch auction house. “It’s a watch that Phillips would be thrilled to offer at auction,” he says. “It’s a reference 6263, and based on the bracelet date code shown –  “ 1 71” – we can be reasonably sure it was manufactured in 1971.” A similar Ref. 6262 manufactured a year later, in 1972, sold at a Phillips auction in December for $425,000.

The Rolex Daytona is currently the hottest watch on the secondary market, and particularly prized are the so-called Paul Newman styles. Newman’s own Paul Newman Daytona broke the record for highest price paid for a watch at auction when it sold for $17.7-million in 2017 at a Phillips auction. The model is distinguishable from other Daytona models for the “square lollipop” ends on the subdial markers and for its Art Deco font and contrasting subdials and colored seconds scale along the periphery of the dial. Officially called the Rolex Oyster Cosmograph Daytona, it was produced in six different series between 1963 and the late 1970s. Newman wore his model in the 1969 film “Winning.”