In early February, expert spotter Nick Gould noticed that Vanessa Redgrave was wearing a special watch during the filming of legendary 1966 movie Blowup: a very rare Rolex Submariner Reference 5513 with so-called Explorer dial.
You can read Nick’s story at Vanessa Redgrave’s Rolex Reference 5513 Submariner With Explorer Dial: Should It Be The Female ‘Paul Newman’ Daytona?
We felt that this topic deserved more discussion, so we turned to the latest form of social media: Clubhouse. This app is currently only available for the iPhones and iPads, but is developing a strong following. The premise of Clubhouse is like that of an old-time party line phone call: a discussion that many people can join.
I have been using Clubhouse quite a bit since joining in January and quite like it. The only drawback so far is the potential rabbit hole of just chatting with people all day and night.
Our Clubhouse chat was called “Nicknaming Vintage Watches: Quill & Pad Musings” and took place on Thursday, March 4, at 10:00 am CET. As it was an interesting 39-minute chat with a number of side discussions and participants, we recorded it so you can listen to it in the link below.
Joining me were spotter Nick Gould as well as Alexandre Ghotbi of Phillips auction house. We discussed how Nick found the special Rolex on Vanessa Redgrave’s wrist in a photo after 55 years, then moved on to how vintage watches get their nicknames – highly qualified people like Sacha Davidoff and Fred Mandelbaum joined the chat and shared their expertise and opinions.
Questions we posed and tried to answer included the following:
Who coins vintage nicknames?
How do the watches’ nicknames stick?
Why wasn’t “Vanessa Redgrave” picked up on earlier as a nickname for that rare Rolex?
Is it feasible the collecting community might have named this dial and/or model after her if it had been noticed at the time?
Is it possible to retroactively do it now?
Was Vanessa Redgrave a cool enough actress for the nickname to stick?
If you’re curious to the answers to this and more, please hit the arrow below to listen to the recording. And don’t forget to join us next time on Clubhouse. You can follow me there at @doerrquillpad.
You can listen to this Clubhouse discussion at
You may also enjoy:
Prices Reached: 12 Watches On The Block At Phillips New York December 2020 Racing Pulse Auction, Including Some Celebrity-Owned By Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Bono, Andy Warhol, And John Lennon
Hello, Newman: A Collector Looks Askance At The Cult Of The Paul Newman Rolex Daytona
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