Hodinkee: A Rare Rolex Daytona Fetches $3.27 Million At Sotheby's Hong Kong Auction
“A possibly unique platinum Rolex Cosmograph Daytona with a lapis lazuli dial was the star attraction at Sotheby’s watch auction in Hong Kong today.
The watch, Reference 16516, sold for HK$25.37 million (US$3.27 million) including fees. That’s three to six times Sotheby’s HK$4 million to $8 million estimate for the watch. It sets a new world record for an automatic Daytona. (The world record for all Daytonas, of course, belongs to Paul Newman’s own Paul Newman Daytona, which sold for $17.75 million at a Phillips auction in October 2017. That watch was part of the original series of Daytonas and had a manual-wind movement.)
Sotheby’s billed the watch as “historically important and possibly unique.” It was manufactured circa 1999 at the end of the period when Rolex used Zenith El Primero automatic movements in Daytonas. (Rolex started using the Zenith movement in 1988 and replaced with with its own in-house automatic chronograph caliber in 2000.)”
