A RARE STAINLESS STEEL CHRONOGRAPH WRISTWATCH, ROLEX, REF. 6263, CASE BACKREF. 6239, CASE NO. 2'085'533, COSMOGRAPHDAYTONA 'PAUL NEWMAN PANDA DIAL', CIRCA 1969
brushed and polished Oyster case with screw-down crowns, pushers and back, black bezelcalibrated for 200 units per hour. Bi-colour black and white dial, applied square and pointshapedluminous indexes, luminous baton hands, three subsidiary engine-turned dials at 3,6 and 9 for 30 minutes and 12 hours registers and constant seconds, outer minute and 1/5second divisions. Caliber 727 manual winding movement. Stainless steel Oyster bracelet, ref.7835, endlinks stamped 271, deployant clasp. Case, dial, movement and bracelet signed.
Diam. 37,5 mm
The success of Daytona’s ‘Paul Newman’ version is a quite peculiar phenomenon since it boomed nearly 20 years after its creation.
It was projected as an ‘exotic’ dial version for the Cosmograph Daytona, the first chronograph model produced by Rolex to celebrate the Maison’s role of official timekeeper of Daytona and Le Mans racing circuits. This new model, however, was not welcomed with much enthusiasm and the public continued to prefer the classical dial for many years.
As a result, Rolex produced a limited number of exotic dials that were mounted in the years between 1964 and 1972 both on push-down and on the later screw-down buttons watches.
The style of this dial was undoubtedly eccentric compared to the ones the public was used to.
The dial looked definitely too innovative for the time’s sober taste: numbers and indexes reminds to the Déco style, the center part of the dial, the registers and outer tracking are not on the same level thus conveying three-dimensionality and emphasizing the chromatic contrast between withe and black.
In the 1980s this dial begins to attract the collectors attention thanks to its rareness and unusual look but mostly because famous people from the international jet set started to look for this watch that soon became a must have.
Italians were among the most enthusiastic collectors since advertising posters for Italy’s market of the film Indianapolis portrayed the actor Paul Newman while wearing a Daytona ref. 6239 with exotic dial: this is where the ‘Paul Newman’ nickname came from.
From the 1980s on, the Paul Newman Daytona started to increase its value on the international market, thus becoming the most craved collection watch allover the world. Nowadays, the screw-down buttons models reach the highest quotations and the most appealing between black dial with off-white registers and off-white dial with black registers versions is the second one, the so called ‘Panda’ version.
The watch we present here, is one of the first pieces of Rolex’s Paul Newman Daytona reference 6263 in the ‘Panda’ version. The impressively excellent state of preservation of the watch and the dial combined with a slight natural darkening of the parts featuring luminous material which emphasize the contrast between the off-white dial and the black ring thus giving it a fascinating look.
