EXCLUSIVE! Hands-On Sylvester Stallone's Watch Collection Auction

Did you read the article? Yeah, so the panel that he's selling is one of them, like the bronze though, right? The bronze is the one he wore in Expendables, where... Expendables 2. Expendables 2, I watched all of them. And then there's a gold one that is a piece unique, they gave birth to the Slytech. The 202, the big one, the 47mm. Right, yeah. See that one? The Slytech, yes. Well, the Slytech is cool too, because it's number 0 out of 1000. It's like 0, 0, 0, 0. And then you had the gold one, which I'm not sure if it was the gold one that was made first. No, it was the gold one that was made first, and then he gave birth to the actual Slytech, the limited edition. Of course, the granddaddy is the Grandmaster Chime. Yes, he never worn that. No, it's still sealed in plastic. I heard even Sybil Stallone has to write an essay to get the Grandmaster Chime. Is that true? Look, I know there's the whole interview process, there's the whole approval process. You have to be a collector, but I'm pretty sure that when it comes to celebrities, there are exceptions. You're Sylvester Stallone. You call Pat and you're like, I want this watch. What are you going to say? No? Make an essay? Right. Like, come on. Pat, most iconic watches, in your opinion. I hate that ******* question, you know? It's like, it's so biased. Okay, so no. No, but it's fine. I guess it depends on how you look at things, in terms of, is it mechanical innovation? You've got to kind of take the concept of how you're looking at things, right? I'm going to pick, and I'm going to be biased too, I'm going to pick the Royal Oak as the first sports luxury watch. That Genta did in 72, because it started a craze of sports luxury watches, right? Before it was just a tool, right? A throwaway watch. Yes. You've got to go with a Daytona, because it's iconic in a way where it's the most recognizable watch in the world. Not to throw Nautilus in there would be a shame, but that was not the first thing that Genta did as a sports luxury watch, right? Right. A Patek Perpetual Calendar's got to have its place in there. You know, a Cartier Tank has to have its place in there. It's very hard to pick five, if you will, right? Yeah, the box has his name on it. Yeah, so the Grandmaster Chimes, they do this. The only bigger box than this is the 5175. Right, but that was the anniversary piece. Yeah. The one that's engraved. I want one. There they are. Oh, I forgot about that piece. I mean, obviously, the Grandmaster Chime is going to be exciting, but that's only for a select few. I'm most excited about... Well, look at the Panerai. He's known for Panerai. So, obviously... Piece unique. Piece unique for him. So, this is the one. They started with this, and then they made the 202 Slytech. They did it in white, and they did it in a black dial. That's why it's piece unique for him. So, that one, I think that was the one that actually started. This, it's got the strap from the Expandables. Yes, in the actual movie. In the actual movie, Expandables 2. Yeah. Which I love. Well, he's what made Panerai huge. Remember when it first started? He's the one that made Panerai. Let's start there. Movie Daylight, he wore the 196, and that was it. And then the Paneristi Club started popping up, and then everybody was like... And then my boy OJ, remember that? Yeah. He was like Mr. Panerai. Yes. OJ Wadley. But to be fair, a lot of people are going to overlook this, but that's a really important watch, too. So, I got a question for you. Was it the Pasha of Marrakesh that made the Pasha, or was it Gerald Genta? Gerald Genta. See, we're talking about, what, 1930s. It was the guy who was known as the Pasha of Marrakesh that ordered the watch from them, but it was a custom piece. I think this is probably not the best piece. But it's a sleeper. It's a sleeper. For him, it's a Piaget. But the thing of it is, with the hype of the anniversary, the Polos, and this, that, I think this is going to do well. I'm going right to the big boy, right away. The Grand Master Chime 6300 white gold from Sylvester Stallone. You're a Philly guy, so this should resonate to you. As much as I would love to bid, I'm not quite there yet. I still have a few colleges to pay for and weddings. The auction estimate is $2.5 to $5 million. I called six. Here's the thing. I look at market values on a secondary, what's actually out there available. I know there's one watch out there for sale today, and they're asking prices over $5. You put it in an environment of Sotheby's. World stage. No, it's not even that. We talked about provenance earlier, right? What people don't realize, it's not just a question of Sylvester Stallone. The minute a watch goes through an auction house, Sotheby's, that's the provenance. And that adds value to an item, automatically. I don't care if it's a Grand Master Chime or something that's slightly cheaper. That adds provenance right there and then. So, that's why I put this at a minimum six and then maybe even more. And then what a lot of people don't know is this is also a watch that chimes out the date. There's no other watch out there that will chime out the date. It came out in 2014. The original is the 5175. Well, that was the anniversary piece. But that's the DNA that's in here right now. Right, but it's the same watch, essentially, right? Except that one was engraved and it's a lot more money. This is the first time one is coming to market. The last one was an only watch in steel that did a crazy number. You know, it's funny. When that happened, people made fun of the guy that purchased it. But this guy was known to buying these assets, his alternative assets. And he did buy it as an alternative asset. And I guarantee you, if you guys got a hand on that watch today, it fetches way over the $1,000,000 mark. Now, it's a very important watch to the fact that it was only watched. Obviously, the auction record was a big to-do. And, again, I'm just excited to, like, I've had one of these in my hands before. It's funny. I was talking about the fact that it's actually still sealed. You know, I think Sylvester Stallone had some special privileges because Patek never releases their watch sealed. They want to cut the seal right away. And the fact that he managed to keep it sealed the way it is, I cannot imagine the excitement level of the guy that's going to take this home and go, and put it on his wrist. He had to go through the same vigorous process as a normal individual? Yes, I do believe so. Because when I worked at Betteridge, we did this for a few clients, and everybody had to go through it. The Stearns love to follow their process. And I think it's, at the end, they look at the collector, regardless of who it is. And they know that he loved watches, so they said yes. But the reason I picked these out specifically to get a closer look is because these are the watches that sing to me. I go back to the days of Panerisi when Panerai was the hottest thing on the planet, right? And, you know, the brand eventually just made too many. Everything became limited, and sort of the appeal died. Of course, these came out during the time when bigger was better. You know, that's when the Offshores were reigning over Royal Oaks. This is when 48-millimeter pieces, it was just it, right? And the Slytex, the 202, and then the white one was the 225, I want to say. The Daylight? Of course. Well, the Daylight is the one that started off. So that's just alone. Let's face it, put Panerai on the map. With the movie, yeah. The minute he put on the 196 on his wrist, that was done, right? I remember the original list on the watch was somewhere around, Anna? $6,300. No, the Slytex were a little more. The regular submersible was $6,300. This one is somewhere like around just under $10,000. And they were selling for $20,000. They were selling at double rates in the hottest peak of the market. The white one was a version of this, was selling for a little bit more. The black one a little bit less. There's still a ton of die-hard Panerisis out there, and I think all of them are going to come out of the woodworks at this particular auction. Where are the Richard Mills? Oh, well, this is your world. The 08, I think, is one of the most important, as much as the 04 and the 02. Because, well, first of all, the 02 is where they introduced the selector from Renown Puppy, right? The 04 was the first split-second chronograph, single-column first split-second chronograph. Also, Renown Puppy did that. How many of those were made? Do you remember? Not to be honest, maybe 100? No, no, less. I think they made like 30 of the Sandblast. This thing is a sleeper. There's a lot of sleepers in this sale. Did you see the Vintage? The Vintage 96 with the sector dial? That's an Adam and Apple watch. That would be $30,000 to $50,000 is the auction estimate. What's to the left you don't see? Turnograph. Oh, shit. Single poster. What's the estimate on that? I think we have it at $50,000 to $100,000. Yeah, but this goes over $100,000. This goes way over $100,000. This is three known examples to the market. You know what it is? It's like since the market adjusted a couple of years ago, there's so many more people out there that are sitting with equity in these watches. Listen, back in our days when you weren't with Sotheby's, we used to sell those for $30,000, right? How many people bought those watches for $20,000, right? And now, I think people are also ready to, you know what, let me pull some equity out of something, put it into something else. Some great more selections. There's about 200 lots in this sale. Yeah, I mean, I reviewed the whole auction. I'd be curious to see what these two do. The Langa. We always say quality is on Langa right there. I mean, look, people always ask me, how do you choose Langa over Patek? I don't choose Langa over Patek. Patek is king, but certain quality on some of these pieces. Look, they're the reason Patek decided to make their in-house chronograph. Yes. Because when they made their datagraph, and they're like, oh, shit, we're using Lemania still, people started paying attention to that. That's when the whole in-house movement with Cree started. Panerai ETA, you know? We have more Panerai than their sale, a few no-reserve lots. The Nostra, what is it? Myra Nostra. Myra Nostra, thank you. Myra Nostra. A lot of pocket watches. Why did you guys decide to go with, this is something I really don't know anything about. Well, pocket watches are undervalued, but there's great, they started everything. Like, people forget about their enamel. What made you decide to, because it's a very eclectic auction, right? You have Celeste of Ceylon, you're heavy on modern Patek, you're heavy on modern Richard Mille, and then you go back. Well, Sotheby's is the only auction house that actually does concentrate on pocket watches. We've had Masterworks of Time, so if you think about it, everything is here, in one house. You can do everything. What is this? It's just another, what's better than that is right next to it, 150, a Breguet subscription. Oh, wow. Which is different, you don't see those. And that's what's based on the Jorins now, the subscription models. I mean, you guys always knock it out of the park. Explorer VCA on the dial, Explorer II. When's the last time you saw VCA on the dial? The last time I saw an Explorer II with a VCA dial was never. Yeah, I think that was the last time I saw that. With box and papers. Yeah, with box and papers, definitely never. What's the estimate on the Tiffany? We have it at $200 to $400. I'd give it about a solid $657. From your mouth to God's ears. Talk about value. The Glacier Tourbillon from Harry Winston. $5170. This is a big value today. $5960. This is a big value today. $5960, $30,000, $30,000 to $50,000. Who's not going to buy an annual calendar chronograph? The problem with those is that you had, at the time they came out, this was during the heater leading up to 2008. And back then, Nautilus, nobody cared about it. Everybody cared about $5970s. This was their sport. So when this came out, at the height of the market, that thing reached like $85,000. I know we've sold them for $85,000, and then it dropped back down to $40,000. The problem was, during that time, they also made a ton of them because the market was so hot. This I'm excited about. $5374. Large case format. The chimes are unbelievable. The dial is just insane. Cathedral gongs. Roman, you have to see this. This is amazing. Chuck Yeager's GMT. What? From Casa Venegas with his original receipts and papers. He paid $210,000 for it back in 77. Casa Venegas, Virgin Islands. No reserve lot. Why? Why no reserve? Because it's an amazing piece. The collectors know what it is. It's going to do very well. $1675. You guys have more balls than me, I guess. Or more money, I should say. I wouldn't put that at no reserve. These are all Conjura? Yeah. So we have. We've been very successful in selling these. You know my buddy who lives in Oman. So I get a ton of these things. And people are paying. People are paying up for them. The only thing is you have to be extremely careful. I'm sure you guys did your due diligence. But you need to have the box. The card has to be stamped a certain way. Because on the modern stuff. I wish they continued doing this stuff on the dials. But obviously they didn't because Rolex doesn't care anymore. Well, they stopped doing it with the dominoes. Yeah. But it's still beautiful. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, listen. You have 200 pieces in this auction. Salon's collection is the highlight. But there are plenty of other highlights here. And that's why I brought some of the original. RMs. So the 02 to me. You have the gear selected from Renault and Papi. This is the V2. I can tell by the carbon plate. Which means it works better. Because the V1s were a little bit shaky. These were to me the biggest sleeper. We recently had the 2 in platinum and the 3 in platinum. And it sold for a big amount of money. Due to the fact that people realize just how rare the platinum version of these things are. But the white ones. We had 2 in our sales that just fell through the cracks. Meaning that people didn't really realize what was there. And how rare it was. Well, I was the one that bought one of them. I'm the guy that bought one of them. And when I saw it go for the number one, I'm like, somebody missed. You like the sandblast on this one. So it has 2 issues that they had, right? So the sandblast finish itself. This is extremely clean. You remember we've seen these in worse conditions. Where you have to send it back to the factory to get the proper finish. There are some guys in the secondary that can fix the finish. But it was always, always a big issue. The early on stuff is much better in my opinion. Hold on. But some of the newer stuff that they've come out with from a horological perspective. It also needs to be given credit. The 702 is an amazing watch. I love that watch. How about the Pleat? The Ferrari watch, right? Go make one of those. It's like people sometimes undervalue a Royal Oak grand complication from AP. Because it's big, it's bulky, it's hard to wear. But name me a brand that can make that grand complication. How many brands can you name, right? And this is what you have to look at. You have to look at everything from two perspectives. You know, we've been living in a world of hype and dollar signs. Where people have seen dollar signs first and hype first. But I think we're starting to slowly come back to the world of horology. Becoming just as important. So for me, this is a rarity for one simple reason. So this came from an Only Watch auction. This was sold in Only Watch when? 2015. 2015, this sold in Only Watch auction. And when do you ever see anything that's sold at Only Watch come up for sale? Very, very rarely. Right? So the fact that a watch that went through Only Watch, still a piece unique with Providence now, to come back to auction is also a rarity to see. But you guys decided to do so, I'm not surprised. This is another one that you're going to see. You estimated this 72140. The Independence. You know me and Independence, specifically. I've been at her work and I don't put them in any specific order. But you have an amazing watch on your wrist as well. No, no, no, no. No grubles in this sale. No. But remember a few sales ago, we had like six of them in our sale. And that's another one. That's not somebody snoozed and somebody picked up a quadruple tourbillon. Yes. Unbelievable deal. And I was actually biting my own elbows because that's one... I didn't think in any way, shape, or form that that's the type of number... There's a lot of value there. Listen, there's a lot of value in a lot of the stuff I saw around the showcases. We don't have the kind of time to go through every single piece, both the online sale and the regular sale. I wanted to talk about pocket watches, but I cannot do it. And the reason I say I cannot do it is because, A, I don't have the knowledge. I've never been in the world of pocket watches. And considering that these are the things that started this whole... You know, we went from this to that Grandmaster Chime. I wanted to ask you, the expert, to maybe show us a few things, highlight them, and explain why they are so important. Okay. I can do that. Let's start with this, what we call a simple automaton. And we call it simple because it's a procession. So this one, I believe, was a procession of love trophies. The difference is something like this one that has a full automaton. Understood. So that is the difference. But this is a style of watch that they didn't make many of. We happened to have two in the sale. But what's beautiful about this is the enamel seam and, of course, the simple automaton. They're generally made by Bouvier, who made this one. So how long would it take a master craftsman to just simply paint a seam like that? Oh, gosh. Because the margin of error, I would imagine, is, you know... I would think, well, they were turning them out, you know, in Geneva. No one person made the whole thing. A pocket watch. And how long it would take them to paint them, we should ask Anita Porchet. She might know. So I'm going to go to something. I don't want to call it simpler, but I'm going to go to something that's simpler looking. Well, this one is more technical, obviously. If you notice, it's got a slightly off-color dial. Yes. And what that tells me immediately, before I look at the movement, is that it has a special movement and that it could have been submitted to the observatory in Geneva for testing. So what you have is this would have been submitted to the observatory. Apparently, it didn't win anything, because if it did, it would have received something on the cavette that said Honorable Mention. Some sort of stamp or something. Yeah, and we actually do have one like that in the online sale. The Geneva Observatory seal is stamped twice on the movement, and you also have the movement number stamped twice. From a collectability perspective, things that have been submitted, whether they won or not, what percentage are we looking at in terms of… Because I know a lot of collectors look for things that are less of. So how many watches, what percentage of watches were just even submitted? Oh, you see this very infrequently. Tell me about this. Okay. This is just… Well, now, this… I don't even know… This will blow your mind if you look at the movement. I don't even know where to start. See if you can pick it out. So this is a tourbillon. It's from about circa 1880-ish. The carriage for the tourbillon is most likely by Guénon, who was one of the most preeminent tourbillon makers. In fact, made a lot of tourbillons. Well, a lot. Most of his tourbillons were made for Girard-Perregaux, such as the Triple Bridge tourbillon, which, of course, now they remake. The condition is really quite wonderful. This one would have been made for the Latin American market, either for Spain or Portugal or South America. With the help of guys like you bringing forth Stallone collections, this gentleman's pocket watch, I think it's starting to become more and more important. Before, I've always seen that when it came to auctions, when it came to watches, provenance was not a big deal. Well, here's the problem. Most of the time, we don't know it. That is true, too. But I'm seeing a lot more pieces coming out of the woodworks that carry a big name behind them, big owners behind them. I think, again, Stallone, as much as I know that this gentleman was 10 times or 100 times more important to the world of horology than Stallone, but the name Stallone is still going to bring a lot of eyes. Of course, yeah. No, but it's just I pointed out because it is interesting. So this is a 1436 split-second chronograph Patek from the 40s. 1940s. And it's pink on pink, which is a rare combination. I believe there's, what, six of these known? Yes. There's about six of these known, from what I remember. The dial is absolutely stunning. I mean, you don't even have to look closely. You just have to look in the light, and you see the relief just jumping out. 33, 34 millimeters in size, small keys. Mm-hmm. A big thank you to Ridge for always, always allowing me unlimited access to anything that goes through the Sotheby's auction, and also a huge thanks to Darren. Thank you for giving me one of your books. Thanks for taking me down a historical rabbit hole, which I'm not that familiar in. I'm not a huge expert on pocket watches, but I've been reading her book since I've gotten home to learn about these things. They gave birth to everything you guys see on the wrist today. Guys, I hope you enjoyed the video. Once again, thank you to Sotheby's. Thank you to Ridge. Thank you to Darren for having us. Like, comment, share, subscribe. We'll see you on the next one.