The watch in question was a steel Rolex Cosmograph Daytona reference 6239 with the rare "exotic dial" variant later nicknamed the Paul Newman dial: contrasting sub-counters, square hour markers, and Art Deco serif sub-dial graduations. Joanne Woodward purchased the watch in 1968 and engraved the caseback "DRIVE CAREFULLY ME", a reference to Paul Newman's growing motorsport racing activity following his role in the 1969 film Winning. Newman wore the Daytona daily for the next sixteen years.
In 1984, while teaching James Cox (then the boyfriend of his daughter Nell) how to fix a treehouse at the Newman family home in Westport, Connecticut, Newman gave Cox the Daytona off his wrist. Cox kept it for thirty-three years, retained the original engraving and its provenance documentation (handwritten notes, photographs, supporting Newman family correspondence), and consigned it to Phillips in 2017 via the auctioneer's Geneva office. The Phillips watches department, led by Aurel Bacs (formerly head of Christie's watches), spent six months authenticating provenance and producing a 78-page catalogue.
"Sold for fifteen million five hundred thousand dollars."- Aurel Bacs, hammer call, 26 October 2017
The sale was the centrepiece of Phillips' "Winning Icons: Legendary Manufacturers of the 20th Century" auction at the Park Avenue Armory in New York on 26 October 2017. The lot opened at USD 1 million; bidding ran from telephone, online, and floor for approximately twelve minutes; the hammer fell at USD 15.5 million to a Phillips telephone bidder, who has remained anonymous through the buyer's premium settlement. With 14.5% premium the final price was USD 17,752,500, surpassing the previous wristwatch auction record (the Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication, USD 24 million in 2014, was a pocket watch).
The market significance of the sale became visible immediately. The pre-2017 vintage Rolex Daytona market had a recognised top-tier of "Paul Newman" exotic-dial 6239/6263/6265 references trading at USD 200,000 to USD 1,500,000 depending on condition. After the 26 October sale, the market re-rated rapidly: top-tier examples doubled or tripled in price within months. Phillips' subsequent vintage Daytona sales (May 2018, November 2018) achieved hammer prices that would have been considered impossible the year before. The "Newman effect" rapidly extended beyond Daytona to vintage Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet, and (over the following two years) to modern allocation-driven Rolex and Patek references.
The sale is now generally identified by auction houses, watch journalists, and market analysts as the inflection event of the modern luxury watch market. The vintage segment had been growing slowly through 2014-2017; the headline sale created a permission structure for institutional money, family offices, and non-traditional collector demographics to enter the market. The 2017-2022 vintage market boom dates from this point. The boom peaked in April 2022 and corrected by 30-50% through 2023; the 2017 Newman sale price would still be a significant outlier in 2024 prices, but no longer absurd.
The buyer's identity has remained anonymous through to 2024, the only public confirmation being that the watch is held in a private collection and has not been resold. James Cox donated a substantial portion of the proceeds to the Nell Newman Foundation (Nell Newman's organic-food charity) and to the Newman's Own Foundation. Joanne Woodward, then 87, was photographed at the sale; she died in 2024 at 94. The Newman Daytona ref. 6239 itself is now the most-photographed wristwatch in modern auction history, and the 78-page Phillips catalogue is a collector item of its own.