“Rare Rolex Milgauss fetches record $2.5 million at auction”

The secondary market for luxury watches is rattling and Rolex, which could add a real record sum to the files after a watch auction in Geneva this weekend.

Pre-owned luxury watches continue their triumphant streak in the market, with prices that really tickle the fancy.

We can thank Rolex for the latest example of this, which nearly sixty-five years ago produced its first Rolex Milgauss, writes Bloomberg.

A special watch, which saw the light of day in the same era as Rolex’s other niche models, which, among other things, were aimed at deep-sea divers, pilots and racing car drivers.

This includes, for example, the Rolex Daytona, which currently rules the second-hand market. You can read more about it here!

Intended for researchers

The Rolex Milgauss, in turn, was a model developed for researchers who worked in laboratories.

In this case, it means that the sleek piece of stainless steel from 1958 was designed to withstand magnetic fields.

Distinctive to the watch are also the rotating bezel and the seconds hand shaped like a lightning bolt. Features that almost stopped the clock during the weekend’s watch auctions in Geneva.

Made the clock stop

If nothing else, time stood still as the Milgauss clock brought in twice as much as expected and broke sales records at the auction house Phillips Auctioneers.

A whopping 2.5 million dollars, equivalent to almost 26 million kroner, was the price tag for the lucky bidder who finally called home the bell.

The last time something like this happened was in 2013, when a similar watch went for 317,000 francs at the Christie’s auction house. Another luxury watch was sold for 300,000 francs in 2022. That, too, was a considerable sum, albeit a bit short of the weekend’s record.

Rolex themselves behind?

However, it is worth mentioning in this context that the winning bidder is likely to have bought this particular watch on behalf of Rolex, although this has not yet been confirmed by Rolex themselveswrites Bloomberg.

The motive behind such a maneuver is usually to fill the archives with unique vintage specimens, or to display them in a museum. Something that partly explains the sky-high prices at auctions like this one, where valuables that are no longer manufactured go under the hammer.

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