That’s right, a Rolex Submariner owned and gifted by the King of Cool will go under the hammer at Phillips auction house in New York on October 25. A year after the blockbuster sale of Paul Newman’s Paul Newman Daytona. It’s not just the timing of the sale that these two celebrity watches share either, with McQueen’s 1964 Rolex Submariner ref. 5513 sharing a similar story of provenance, complete with a few extra burning details. Phillips tell us the watch was purchased by McQueen in the 1960s. It was then gifted by him to his long-time stunt double Loren Janes, sometime in the mid-to-late ’70s, according to members of Janes’ surviving family. Having worked together on 19 of McQueen’s films over two decades, including Bullitt, The Great Escape and The Thomas Crown Affair, Janes was McQueen’s go-to stuntman, and before giving him the watch, McQueen had the case back inscribed: “LOREN, THE BEST DAMN STUNTMAN IN THE WORLD. STEVE.” Making this not only the earliest McQueen-owned Submariner ever put up for auction, but also the only known watch to bear the actor’s name. The story gets even more interesting. In 2016, a wildfire outside of Los Angeles, now known as the Sand Fire…
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