James Bond Watches Blog

Any effort to definitively identify a James Bond watch brand and model requires balance.

The more common extreme is largely uncritical, effectively wishful thinking. “I wanna believe this is a James Bond watch — voilà, it is!”

It’s the guy on the fan forum who’s already overextended in some path through Omega or Rolex. He owns it; to be wrong in having made that choice risks painting him a fool, so he just keeps insisting it is, hoping repetition will trump reality.

Bought in through impulsiveness, or a sale pitched to him as too good to be true. Add to that a dollop of ego, and he’s determined to shut out any data that conflicts with his point of view, regardless of how credentialed, substantiated, or otherwise indisputable.

Or the fella caught up in the limelight after posting “his” definitive list of James Bond watches on the Internet.

With each response of praise, he grows less able to admit that no one knows less about his own list than he does, since he actually only cut-and-pasted it from elsewhere (can’t believe no one else hasn’t seen this gem before!). Challenged to account for labeling the obvious Heuer PVD Night Dive watch featured The Living Daylights as a stainless steel Submariner, for example, he’s quick with an indignant, “Why so serious? James Bond is only a fictional character, don’cha know?”

A retort that could only be uttered by someone who knows little or nothing about watches. The sort who drones on at a fine restaurant — attempting to cover the fact that she’s grossly outclassed — grasping at straws to fit in by saying, “I could make this same dish a lot cheaper at home.”

Yeah, and the Seiko G757 “Silverwave” and “Sports 100” originally cost the same to manufacture.

Silly goose! That’s hardly the sole determining factor for valuation of wristwatches. Nor, for that matter, many other things. And it’s specious to argue that objective measures of enhanced brand value by association with “a fictional character” somehow negate that value. Just ask Tony the Tiger. Or are you gonna let a cartoon make a fool of your pontifications as well?

At the other end of the spectrum is deliberate creation of doubt. In other words, if we cannot know everything, to an absolute, irrefutable, (unattainable) certainty, the argument goes, then we don’t know anything.

This sort of misapplication (based on misunderstanding, if not malicious use) of the Socratic Method is of such concern that The Law School at The University of Chicago is almost apologetic in explanation of its use there. The “Socratic Method is not used at Chicago to intimidate, nor to ‘break down’ new law students,” promises its website. I agree. But no need to be defensive about it.

Properly used — which means a rejection of creating questions for sole purpose of stirring controversy or building site traffic otherwise unmerited by value of original, if not expert, content — The Socratic Method is actually the key to discerning the best possible historical information on James Bond watches.

Take the photo above, a publicity still courtesy Warner Brothers, for Never Say Never Again.

From what we can see of the wristwatch dial here, it’s different from the one seen on-screen in close-ups of presumably the same watch, black case, black bracelet. Does this image “prove” there was another variation for that James Bond watch? Or, is it de facto invalidated from any further consideration because it is, in fact, a photograph taken outside the movie proper?

In another example, is the Seiko SPW001 diver’s watch worn by Roger Moore in A View to a Kill not a gadget-watch, because the gadget function, while, in fact, filmed, was not included in the final edit of this movie?

Put in perspective, we must also ask if you think these are likely to become $10,000 questions anytime soon? How about answers upon which there’d likely even be $5,000 at stake, one way or the other, based on fact? Okay, then: Attenuate your anal retentiveness accordingly.

On the other hand, let me assure you that there is a whole lot more than a few grand riding on true whereabouts of the Rolex 6238 Chronograph worn by actor George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. On Monday, this James Bond Watches Blog started investigating allegations that its location may not be as certain as reported elsewhere.

So much of the opposing claims depending on serial number as bullet-proof authentication.

Ah— definitive James Bond watch identifications à la Rolex serial numbers. As those familiar with my presentation at the 2009 annual convention of the National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors will recall, even the very first James Bond watch, Ian Fleming’s personal Rolex 1016 Explorer, cannot be certainly identified by its serial number. (Internationally recognized vintage Rolex watch expert Bob Ridley, of Watchmakers International, reconfirmed this by physical examination in June of 2010.)

That said, returning to the Lazenby-Bond Chronograph, I have an eMail stating that the original Christie’s listing had the wrong serial number in the first place.

The Socratic Method not only seems appropriate, then, as we weigh competing claims of present-day ownership for that Rolex 6238, but perhaps one of the best means of finding fact.

• Do photographs exist of the Sale 9771, Lot 164 Rolex 6238 pre-Daytona, clearly showing a clearly verifiable serial number (case number)?
• If so, what is that number?
• Which watch, if not both, matches it? The watch in Florida (United States)? or the one with the “euro-collector”?

It’s the difference between someone owning — and, at some point, someone buying from them — a $250,000 wristwatch, versus a $18,000 wristwatch. Or a watch not even worth that much. A $232,000 difference in value. Not a question that can be left to wishful thinking; nor one that can be allowed to escape focused scrutiny as if it were merely a trumped up issue to keep postings flowing on an otherwise irrelevant James Bond fan forum.

“James Bond” is, indeed, a fictional character. But the credible identification of James Bond watches is, without a doubt, big business.

Image courtesy Warner Brothers