Welcome toWatches of the Week, where we'll track the rarest, wildest, and most covetable watches spotted on celebrities.
Nicolas Cage is constantly shrinking the distance between himself and the characters he
plays in movies. He once told the New York Times that he was on a literal grail quest, almost exactly like his character in National Treasure. He is playing (an exaggerated version of) himself in the upcoming movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. On and off-screen Cage have another thing in common: They love Rolex watches. In 1992’s Honeymoon in Vegas, Cage seems so fond of the brand that he wears three Rolex watches at once (what appears to be a Submariner and Day-Date on one hand, and a Datejust on the other).
Cage’s characters also have a penchant for using Rolex watches to get out of a jam. In ‘95’s Leaving Las Vegas—which is not, believe it or not, the sequel to Honeymoon in Vegas—Cage enters a pawn shop and sells his Rolex Daytona for $500. Woo, buddy, that was a mistake: Rolex Daytonas are currently one of the most sought-after models among collectors, often fetching tens of thousands of dollars at auction. And in National Treasure, Cage uses a Rolex Submariner as a deposit in order to borrow a $100 bill from a cashier. “Here. I have this diver's watch," he says in the movie. "It's called a Submariner. I dive with this, it's actually quite valuable.”
Luckily, there’s at least one Rolex Cage held onto over the years: this awesome 1950s-era Rolex Moonphase reference 6062. The watch is known as a “Stelline”—or “little star” in Italian—because of the star-shaped hour markers on the watch. The 6062 was only produced for three years, between 1950 and 1953, and rarest of all is the pink-gold version that Cage owns. Only 50 or so were made and of those barely more than a dozen have ever appeared in public, according to Christie’s. Rumor has it that Cage purchased the exact watch pictured above at a 2009 Christie’s auction for 597,000 Swiss Francs (roughly $640,000 by today’s conversion rates).
Also this week, Chris Paul’s thumb fracture isn’t preventing him from wearing his own fine Rolex, and Samuel L. Jackson continues his commitment to Panerai.
Chris Paul is wearing what’s known among collectors as the John Mayer Daytona. The watch got its name after its value shot up after Mayer wore the watch on an episode of