Critical Mass: Keeping time can be costly — just ask 007

Jerry Seinfeld is wearing a Breitling Aerospace EVO Titanium 42mm watch with white dial in this shot from his Netflix Comedy Special 23 Hours to Kill.
Jerry Seinfeld is wearing a Breitling Aerospace EVO Titanium 42mm watch with white dial in this shot from his Netflix Comedy Special 23 Hours to Kill.

You see this watch? You see this watch?... That watch cost more than your car. I made $970,000 last year. How much you make? You see, pal, that's who I am. And you're nothing.

— Alec Baldwin as Blake in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross

"A gentleman's watch is thin and gold."

I read that somewhere, a long time ago. I've spent a few hours trying to come up with a source. I ran it through the Google Books machine and got no matching results.

I tried Google Regular. It's not there either. I was sure I'd read it in Gatsby or maybe Paul Fussell's iconic 1984 work of comic sociology, Class.

A passage in that book that comes close. Fussell writes:

The general class rule about wrist­ watches is the more scientific, technological, and space-age, the lower. Likewise with the more information the watch is supposed to convey, like the time of day in Kuala Lumpur, the number of days elapsed in the year so far, or the current sign of the zodiac.

Some upper-class devotees of the Cartier tank watch with the black lizard strap will argue that even a second hand compromises a watch's class, implying as it may the wearer's need for great accuracy, as if he were something like a professional timer of bus arrivals and departures. The other upper-class watch is the cheapest and simplest Timex, worn with a grosgrain ­ribbon strap, changed often: black ones for formal wear are amusing.

Maybe it was something someone told me. It was something I believed, if not actually believed in. But there's always been a little seed of shame that accompanies my fascination with gear, the nagging sense that were I a better person I wouldn't care so much about specs and model numbers.

Wristwatches have fascinated me since I was a child in the 1960s and my father, returning from a mission in southeast Asia, brought me a Seiko watch from Japan. That watch stopped working after a few months, but it came with a warranty. They mailed us a catalog from which I could pick any watch up to a certain point.

I chose the same model, but with a gray dial rather than the blue dial my father picked out. I wore that watch until I graduated from high school. One of my signal memories of those years is of the time I was hurrying down the Rialto Junior High school hall and lightly brushed the face of the watch against the stucco wall, scratching the Hardlex crystal.

I can barely remember the names of any of my eighth-grade teachers or classmates but still feel a little sick remembering that crystalline moment.

I pay attention to watches, especially men's, because they signify certain things.

For instance, watching comedian Jimmy O. Yang's Amazon Prime special Good Deal, I was drawn to his Rolex GMT-Master. Yang wears the model nicknamed the "Pepsi" for its red and blue bezel; it's highly prized by collectors. If you can find one for $15,000 you've got a good deal.

Comedian Jimmy O. Yang wears a Rolex GMT-Master Ref. 1675 Pepsi in his Amazon Prime comedy special Good Deal. Used, good condition models of this watch are generally listed at between $8,000 and $16,000.

(This is an Amazon Prime photo. Were good with the terms and conditions.)
Comedian Jimmy O. Yang wears a Rolex GMT-Master Ref. 1675 Pepsi in his Amazon Prime comedy special Good Deal. Used, good condition models of this watch are generally listed at between $8,000 and $16,000. (This is an Amazon Prime photo. Were good with the terms and conditions.)

And watching Marc Maron's End Times Fun on Netflix, I wondered what he was wearing. It's a (relatively) modest Tag Heuer Link, a quartz model his mother gave him as a birthday present in 2014. You should be able to find one for between $1,000 and $1,500.

Jerry Seinfeld has a lot of watches. He tends to favor Breitlings. On his recent Netflix standup special 23 Hours to Kill he wore a Breitling Aerospace EVO with a white face, a quartz model combining analog and digital displays that runs a little over $4,000. It's not my favorite. The face is too busy and, for that price, I'd prefer an automatic movement to quartz.

We can assume that these guys were wearing their own watches that they chose for themselves. They might or might not have thought a lot about their choices. But in the movies, where every detail ought to tell us something about the characters we're watching, it's often profitable to pay attention.

Or at least it was until the mid-1990s when those details were more often decided by contractual marketing agreements than by directors, costume designers and actors. It's telling that when producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli approached Rolex for product for a movie, the Swiss watchmaker refused.

Yet James Bond was originally associated with Rolex, specifically the Rolex Submariner (reference 6538, the "no-date" model) because Sean Connery wore his personal watch in the first movie. (An alternate legend is that Broccoli gave Connery the watch off his wrist to wear right before shooting began.)

Connery (or Broccoli) probably paid no more than $150 for that watch in the 1950s (Rolex discontinued it in 1959). In 2012, a mint condition standard 6538 sold for $92,000 at auction. Models with rarer variations have sold for more than $500,000.

If you're trying to buy a new Submariner, well, good luck. Rolex intentionally shorts demand on its highest demand models — especially steel sports models — which creates years-long waiting lists at its dealers and inflated prices on the secondary (used) market.

While the (non-negotiable) retail price of the new no-date Submariner is $7,500 (a date complication costs $1,000 more) good luck finding a used (or "gray market") one for less than $10,000 or so.

Bond's creator Ian Fleming only occasionally commented on his character's timepieces in his 007 novels, though Fleming — an ex-Naval Intelligence officer — was known to wear an understated Rolex Explorer. He does mention that Bond was supplied with "a heavy Rolex Oyster Perpetual on an expanding metal bracelet" which he counts as a weapon in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

In the book, Bond damages the watch when using it to break the jaw of a thug. He muses about replacing it: "Another Rolex? Probably. They were on the heavy side but they worked. And at least you could see the time in the dark with those big phosphorus numerals."

To Bond, a watch was a tool, not a fetish item. In the '50s and '60s, Rolex wasn't regarded as a particularly high-status item. Its brand image was of a watch for sportsmen and technically-minded professionals. The Submariner was for divers, the Explorer for mountaineers, the Milgauss — with a shielded movement capable of withstanding electromagnetic fields — for scientists. Bond had been a Royal Naval Reserve Commander; the Submariner fit the character.

Connery would also wear that watch — or a similar model — in To Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964) and 1967's Thunderball, in which he was also outfitted with a Breitling Top Time Chronograph with a built-in Geiger counter, the first of many gadget-y watches Bond would use throughout the series. (Some of us mark the introduction of the gadget watches as the beginning of the end of the best Bond period.)

The Breitling was the first non-Rolex model to make it into the series; Connery would also wear a simple gold Gruen. When George Lazenby showed up to audition for the part of Bond, he wore a tuxedo and a Submariner. When he played Bond in 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, he wore no less than three Rolexes: two different Submariner models and a Chronograph reference 6238, the predecessor to its Daytona model, made famous by Paul Newman.

Marc Maron is (trust us) wearing a Tag Heur Link that was a gift from his mother in his Netflix special End Times Fun. The watch has a quartz movement, which might put off some purists, but can generally be found second-hand for $1,000 or less.

(Courtesy of Netflix)
Marc Maron is (trust us) wearing a Tag Heur Link that was a gift from his mother in his Netflix special End Times Fun. The watch has a quartz movement, which might put off some purists, but can generally be found second-hand for $1,000 or less. (Courtesy of Netflix)

The Daytona, particularly the model with a white face and three black inner dials that make it resemble the face of a panda, is among the most iconic. When a character in 2018's Crazy Rich Asians wants to give her self-made husband the ultimate gift (because he "needs to start dressing like a CEO"), she chooses a 1968 Daytona, valued at about $600,000 on the day the scene was filmed. That was before Newman's personal 1968 Daytona sold at auction for $15 million. Fees and commissions drove the final price up to more than $17 million.

And Rolex, among watch people — horologists — isn't even considered a real luxury brand. It's a good mid-level watch, with excellent branding, but it's not Patek Philippe, Lange & Söhne, Audemars Piguet or Vacheron Constantin.

So, on HBO's Succession, when Rupert Murdockian patriarch Logan Roy's (Brian Cox) future son-in-law Tom (Matthew MacFayden) wants to suck up, he doesn't give the old man a mere Rolex; he opts for a $750,000 Patek Philippe, which, spoiler alert, doesn't impress the old man a whit.

Interesting, if true, character note: Tom wears a Ballon Bleu de Cartier, which some watch watchers allege is a fake. While a lot of the watches that appear on TV shows and movies are replicas, it would add a layer to the character if corporate striver Tom was actually wearing a knockoff. Unless this becomes a plot point —maybe Rolex-sporting Roman (Kieran Culkin) will call Tom out for wearing a counterfeit — or someone asks the writers, we'll never know.

On Showtime's Billions, Master of the Universe Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis) wears Audemars Piguet models, a Royal Oak Offshore with a blue camouflage-patterned dial (retail price $32,200; used ones start about $22,000) and a slightly smaller now-discontinued Royal Oak Chronograph that originally sold for about $24,000.

In the show's first season, Axelrod typically wore a Cartier Roadster, an older model that runs between $5,000 and $6,000 used, but the showrunners apparently figured that was too plebeian.

Axelrod's protege-turned-rival-turned ally Taylor (Asia Kate Dillon) bought herself a $164,000 Patek Philippe in the show's third season. Axelrod's buddy/bête noire Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) reportedly wears a TAG Heuer Aquaracer (about $1,900) but I haven't been able to verify that — and think it must be a mistake because a secondary character on the show, "Dollar" Bill Stern, wears that model.

I tend to think Chuck is more the thin gold watch type.

. . .

The analog Rolex Submariner remained 007's primary time-keeping device throughout most of the '70s, though the Q lab kept augmenting his wardrobe with a succession of high-tech rectangular digital watches. Roger Moore wore a Sub and a Pulsar digital — that also functioned as a saw and a bullet-deflecting magnet — in 1973's Live and Let Die. He also wore gimmicky digital Seiko models in The Man With the Golden Gun (1974) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), which also briefly featured a Rolex GMT Master.

In 1979's Moonraker, Moore wore only the then-brand-new Seiko M354 Memory Bank Calendar watch, souped-up with explosives and a remote detonator, which played a large role in the movie's finale. (For many years Seiko made a version of this watch, marketed as the "James Bond MoonRaker Memory Bank Chronograph." Prices on eBay range from less than $500 to $895 or so.)

Bond continued to wear various Seikos, including a rather ordinary-looking quartz chronograph with a white dial in 1985's A View to a Kill, which also had him glancing briefly at a Rolex Datejust. When Timothy Dalton took over the character in 1987's The Living Daylights, he wore a Tag Heuer. In Dalton's second outing, License to Kill (1989), he returned to the no-date Rolex Sub.

James Bond (Sean Connery) wears a Rolex Submariner (reference 6538, the no-date model) in Dr. No. It was most likely Connerys personal timepiece and it probably cost him less than $200 in the early 1960s. (If you try to buy one now, expect to pay six figures.)
James Bond (Sean Connery) wears a Rolex Submariner (reference 6538, the no-date model) in Dr. No. It was most likely Connerys personal timepiece and it probably cost him less than $200 in the early 1960s. (If you try to buy one now, expect to pay six figures.)

Since 1995, Bond — whether played by Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig — has worn Omega watches exclusively, thanks to a promotional agreement that had the Omega Seamaster Professional 300M (Ref. 2541.80) quartz dive watch marketed as the official Goldeneye watch. (New versions start around $2,500.) Brosnan wore the model through his stint as the character.

Craig continued wearing the Professional and added a new model, the Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean when he assumed the role in 2006. The Planet Ocean is a no-date dive watch whose styling might be seen as either an homage to or a jab at the original no-date Rolex Submariner Connery wore. It retails for a little less than $4,000. When (and if) the next Bond installment premieres, Bond's primary watch will be Omega's titanium Seamaster Diver 300M 007 edition, which sells for $9,200 with a titanium bracelet and $8,100 with a nylon NATO strap.

. . .

Once you get into the habit of noticing watches in the movies and television, it becomes hard not to notice them. (Women's watches are smaller, harder to see. Yet more and more women are wearing watches originally designed for men — Jennifer Aniston often wears a vintage Rolex President. She has also sported the same Cartier Roadster model that Bobby Axelrod used to rock. In the recently canceled Netflix series Messiah, Michelle Monaghan wore a Hamilton — what looked like a Valiant or Jazzmaster model.)

No one needs a watch in these device-heavy days, and the Apple watch cuts across all socioeconomic levels.

Still, wristwatches probably mean less now than they did in the days when sales associates were taught to size up potential customers by checking their shoes and watches.

They knew the millionaires wore scuffed brogans and carried Ingersoll's $1 Yankee pocket watches.

Email:

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Style on 05/24/2020

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