Lot description
PROPERTY OF AN IMPORTANT ASIAN COLLECTOR Rolex Cosmograph Daytona 'Paul Newman John Player Special Cherry', Reference 6264 A yellow gold chronograph wristwatch with bracelet, Circa 1971 Dial: black, exotic Calibre: cal. 727 mechanical, 17 jewels Case: 14k yellow gold, screw down case back Case number: 2’802’702 Closure: 14k yellow gold Rolex Oyster bracelet and folding clasp Size: 37 mm diameter, bracelet circumference approximately 190 mm Signed: case, dial and movement Accessories: none In the Rolex collecting world, several key terms will instantly get any connoisseurs’ attention. Daytona. Paul Newman. John Player Special. All of these terms are no stranger to the community, nor to the gavel. Indeed, Paul Newman Daytonas have made up the bulk of high-flying Rolex auction lots in recent years, with John Player Special versions flying higher still. However, this was not the case half a century ago when the Daytona was first introduced. As the well known story goes, the original Daytonas were so unpopular that they would sit in retailer shop windows for years without attracting any interested buyers. This was one of the reasons why, a few years after the release of the reference 6239, Rolex began producing a new dial type in order to add variety and hopefully increase appeal in its struggling chronograph model. Their plan failed, but only for the time being. No one knew it at the time, but Rolex had just created their most desirable dial design, ever. Few manually wound Daytonas were ever made due to their unpopularity at the time, even fewer with exotic dials, and fewer still were cased in gold. Some experts go so far as to estimate that for every Daytona that was cased in gold, ten were cased in stainless steel, with the total amount of gold Daytonas fitted with exotic dials of any colour never exceeding 100 units. It wasn’t until Paul Newman, star of both race track and silver screen was seen wearing an exotic dial 6239 that people began to take notice. The rest, as they say, is history. Yellow gold Paul Newman dials come in three categories: Champagne, Lemon, and the present John Player Special, which signified a black dial with gold accents, aptly named after the iconic Lotus Formula One team which shared the same colour scheme. Champagne examples are the most common, while JPS and Lemon variants are considerably scarcer. Indeed, no more than 20 JPS examples have appeared at auction in the past decade. However, an even scarcer sub-genre of the John Player Special that may be less familiar to the collecting zeitgeist, and indeed has never yet appeared at auction, is the John Player Special ‘Cherry’. Every single John Player Special dial that has appeared at auction features a gold coloured ‘Daytona’ logo above the 6 o’clock register, with the majority of these belonging to the reference 6241 and serial numbers scattered roughly around the year 1970. However, another small batch of John Player Special dials have surfaced in 6264 cases with serials clustered in 1971. These dials feature a slightly different gold colour tone, deeper and richer compared to standard John Player Specials, prompting some experts to refer to them as ‘Reverse Lemon’ dials. Most importantly, these dials all feature ‘Daytona’ Logo in bright red, earning them the moniker ‘Cherry’. Believed to have been produced as a final batch of gold Paul Newman dials, the handful of known examples are found within a narrow grouping of case numbers. Rarely seen publicly, the JPS cherry has only occasionally featured in reference books and online archives. Further research shows that some 20+ years ago a small group of early vintage Rolex collectors were afforded a tour of the Singer factory, and images from that trip included an example of the JPS cherry within Singers own archives.
