Continuing in our series of notable classic Rolexes hitting the auction block we have a new entry courtesy of Antiquorum. The auction house’s December 8th sale at its U.S. headquarters on Madison Avenue in New York City includes an exceptional and historically significant 1958 Rolex GMT- Master, ref. 6542, that belonged to Don Walsh, a Lieutenant of the U.S. Navy and Officer-in-Charge of the Navy’s famed bathyscaphe Trieste. The Trieste was a Swiss-designed, Italian-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe (“deep boat”) which Walsh, along with Jacques Piccard, piloted to a depth of about 10,911 metres in the deepest known part of the ocean on Earth, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench near Guam, on January 23, 1960 – a record he still holds.
Subsequent to the dive, Rolex gifted Lt. Walsh with the GMT- Master. It comes accompanied by the original 1960 letter from Rolex; an original 1960 copy of Life Magazine featuring the Trieste on the cover; a copy of Don Walsh’s award citation from President Eisenhower; a copy of Walsh’s award citation from the Secretary of the Navy in 1960; a copy of the Rolex booklet celebrating the 25th anniversary of the deep dive, 1985; a souvenir photograph of Don Walsh, Jacques Piccard, and the Trieste, all signed by Don Walsh, among other ephemera. The estimate is pretty conservative we think at just $20,000 – $30,000. The perfect watch to go with Sir Edmund Hillary’s Rolex Explorer.
