Paul Newman’s Rolex he won in famed 24-hour race expected to fetch millions at auction

A pair of rare Rolex watches owned by Paul Newman are expected to fetch millions at auction after the late actor’s daughter, Nell, discovered them in a desk drawer at her family home.

One of the watches, a white-dial chronograph with a metal strap, was awarded to Newman after he won the 1995 Daytona 24-Hour race, and the other, a black-faced, leather-strap, was given to him by his wife and is enrolled with the ‘Drive Very Slowly Joanne’ council.

Both watches will go up for auction in June as part of a sale of more than 300 items that belonged to Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward.

Although Sotheby’s estimated the watches would sell for between $500,000 and $1 million each, watch specialists predicted they could fetch more than a million each, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The race car-driving actor’s watches have fetched high prices at auction before, with another Rolex with a unique dial selling for nearly $18 million in 2017.

The two Rolexes that belonged to Paul Newman and that will be auctioned in June

The white-faced Daytona is a 1993 Rolex Daytona Zenith 16520, with ‘Rolex at Daytona 24 Paul Newman Rolex Motorsports Man of the Year 1995’ inscribed on the back.

Newman was 70 when he won that watch, the oldest person in history to win the 24-hour race in Daytona, Florida.

It appeared to be on Newman’s wrist in later race photos, including when he was behind the wheel at a 2007 race in Mexico City.

The watch was previously auctioned off in 1999 after Newman donated it to a charity auction. He raised just $39,000 back then, which Newman donated to his camp for special needs kids called The Hole in the Wall Gang.

Some time after the sale, the watch returned to Newman, which Nell was unaware of until she discovered it in the family home, according to the Wallstreet Journal.

“That was news to me,” Nell said, “and I thought, what a delicious story.”

She said she discovered the watches while searching for a pencil in the office on Newman’s desk in her family home several years after his death.

“There they were with their driver’s license,” he said. They were in a box on his desk.

Newman received the watch in 1995 after winning the Daytona 24 Hour race (above)

The reverse of Paul Newman’s watch that won the 1995 24 Hours of Daytona

The reverse of Paul Newman’s watch with a message from his wife Joanne Woodward

The black dial watch, a 2006 Daytona 116519, has a white gold case and leather strap. He wore it at the Lime Rock Park race track in 2008 during his last race before his death that same year, according to the Wallstreet Journal.

His wife’s message advising him to drive carefully is similar to the advice inscribed on the back of two other watches she gave him, which read “Drive slowly, Joanne” and “Drive carefully, me.” The former sold for $5.5 million at auction, while the latter sold for $17.8 million.

New York City watch dealer Andrew Shear told the Wallstreet Journal that the Rolexes Newman wore prominently during his life and career helped fuel today’s vintage watch market.

“We can relate it to vintage watch collecting, vintage Rolex collecting,” he said.

Shear added that simply Newman wearing any watch while keeping time at the race track or checking to see if he was late for dinner added hundreds of thousands of dollars in value to a watch.

His daughter said that although she loved Rolexes, she did not treat them as valuable jewelry, but as tools to measure the time they worked hard.

He didn’t put his watches on a pedestal,” Nell said, adding that his Rolexes were “everything to keep time, be on time and time the race cars.”