The N°1 Deep Sea Special goes to auction

The catalog of the Christie’s Rare Watches Auction on 8 November 2021 (Hotel Four Seasons Les Bergues, Geneva) features the Rolex Deep Sea Special that made the first dive attached to Auguste Piccard's bathyscaphe Trieste off the Island of Ponza in 1953. This history-making expedition paved the way to the trip down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench (1960, 10,916 meters). I related the two feats in my books about Rolex: Rolex dalla A alla Z (in Italian) and Rolex 1905-1960 (in English and Italian). Both feature images of a display model made by Rolex in the early 1960s to celebrate the event, currently owned by the Musée International d'Horlogerie in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

 

The "N°1" entrusted to Christie's is the first of the three identified prototypes of Deep Sea Special, and the only one with "low" glass - the other two being equipped with the thicker and higher glass that Rolex developed later on for further extreme testing.

Will the "N°1" break the record set by the Paul Newman's Daytona chronograph that sold for $ 17.8 million in 2017?