Thread: For sale: Rolex sent by mail order to Stalag Luft III

A mail order watch bought by a British prisoner of war and delivered to him in the Nazis’ notorious Stalag Luft III camp is expected to fetch more than £66,000 at auction tomorrow.

The story of the elegant Rolex watch ordered in 1943 by Corporal Clive James Nutting casts light on an extraordinary commercial enterprise that defied the disruption of war.

The camp, in what is now Zagan, Poland, was made famous by the 1963 film The Great Escape, which told the story of an imaginative but ultimately ill-fated breakout.

Corporal Nutting helped to organise the escape and later advised the film-makers. He ordered the stainless steel Rolex Oyster 3525 Chronograph, which cost the equivalent of £1,200, directly from the founder of Rolex, Hans Wilsdorf, in Geneva in 1943.

Mr Wilsdorf, a German, immediately arranged for the timepiece to be sent to the camp and, in a letter to Corporal Nutting, even apologised for the possible delay, making it plain that his unlikely customer should not “even think of settlement” until the war was over.

Corporal Nutting eventually paid for the watch in 1948, after his return to London.

However, because of British currency restrictions at the time, he was invoiced for only £15.

His Rolex and the correspondence with Mr Wilsdorf over several years are to be auctioned tomorrow by the Swiss firm Antiquorum at a hotel in Geneva.

It is the most expensive lot in a sale that also includes the gold pocket watch of the war-time US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a pink gold watch that belonged to Charlie Chaplin.

A spokeswoman for Antiquorum told The Times: “We have the complete documentation of the watch in question, along with the correspondence between Corporal Nutting and Mr Wilsdorf, who believed a British gentleman’s word was more than enough of a guarantee. We know Corporal Nutting was involved in the preparation of the escape and we believe that he might have used or even ordered the watch for that purpose.”

A watch bought by a Canadian air force major and PoW in the same camp will also be on offer.

“We are certain that Rolex and probably other watchmakers were regularly delivering to Allied PoWs, but we sadly only have solid proof for this particular case,” the spokeswoman said.

Mr Wilsdorf founded Rolex in London in 1905 but then moved to Switzerland for tax reasons. According to the auction house, by accepting the unusual arrangement with the PoWs he was betting on his homeland losing the war and at the same time boosted the Allied soldiers’ morale.

Clive “Nobby” Nutting worked as a cobbler in the PoW camp and was apparently able to save enough of his earnings to order the expensive watch. After the war he moved to Australia, where he died in 2001 at the age of 90.

The above story was published in May 2007 in The Times. Interestingly, it had been sold 8 months earlier:

The Great Escape, auction news at Bonhams and Goodman Auctions, Australian Auctioneers

and

Bonhams & Goodman Sells Prisoner of War's Rolex Watch and Great Escape Unpublished War Diary / Scrapbook, auction news at Bonhams and Goodman Auctions, Australian Auctioneers

Building on the recent world-record breaking sale of the Captain Shout Gallipoli Victoria Cross, another historic military lot was sold by Bonhams & Goodman.

A rare 1943 Rolex 3525 Oyster Chronograph 'Prisoner of War' watch with associated war memorabilia (lot 83) sold on Monday 11 September for $65,340 (including buyer's premium) at Bonhams & Goodman's Fine Jewellery Sale.

Lot 83 had an auction estimate of $30,000 - $50,000 which was impressively exceeded. There had been much interest in the watch in the lead-up to the sale, both locally and from overseas.

The Rolex purchased by C.J Nutting, a Corporal in the Royal Corps of Signals in the British Army was offered with an extensive collection of receipts and letters relating to the purchase of the watch. Also in the lot were photographs, news-cuttings and a personal diary/scrapbook kept by Nutting, referencing his time at the infamous 'Great Escape' prison camp.

The watch sold to a private Sydney collector who was bidding in the auction rooms against a London dealer on the telephone. The buyer of the historic lot wishes to remain anonymous.

'I am thrilled that the watch and memorabilia sold as well as it did and am thrilled it went to a local bidder despite the overseas interest,' said Gary Draper, Head of the Jewellery Department at Bonhams & Goodman. 'We were excited at the prospect of selling the watch but so much more so when we became aware of the outstanding provenance that the Nutting family were offering with the watch. Like the VC medal, there was so much personal history involved', he added.

Nutting was captured by the Germans at Dunkirk in 1940 and was then transferred to Stalag Luft 3 (Stalag meaning 'prisoner of war', Luft meaning for the 'air-force') in Poland, where he spent five years as a prisoner of war (POW). Stalag was the camp made famous by 'The Great Escape'.

Nutting was a shoemaker by trade and was therefore very useful to the Germans who kept him busy repairing officers' boots in a workshop. Although he was not one of the soldiers who attempted escape, he helped the escapees by making them civilian style shoes to wear on the outside that had been made from leather stolen from the German officers who had their boots repaired in the workshop. He is also said to have assisted with the distribution of the soil removed from tunnels by dropping it out of the legs of his trousers, as depicted in the 1963 film, The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen.

While in Stalag Luft 3, Corporal Nutting wrote to Rolex, probably via the International Red Cross who, like Rolex, was headquartered in Geneva, requesting the purchase of the watch. British prisoners of war were in need of watches because the Germans confiscated them when they were captured. Rolex supplied the watches on the understanding that they did not have to be paid for until after the war.

and some great photos of the watch and other documents that were sold:

POW Rolex Part 1 - TimeZone
POW Rolex Part 2 - TimeZone

The May 2007 sale price for the Lot was £66,000