A never-before-seen Rolex split-seconds chronograph dating from 1942 has sold for €3,284,000 (around £2.83 million) at an auction in Monaco.
The oversized, 44mm, Reference 4113 watch is one of the rarest and collectible Rolex watches in part because of its creation for pilots in World War II.
According to Monaco Legend Auction, which sold the watch, there were only twelve Reference 4113 made with serial numbers ranging from 051313 to 051324, of which experts have knowledge of only eight.
Another example was sold by Phillips in Geneva in 2019 for CHF 2.5 million.
Monaco Legend’s notes say that the full history of the watch, which has not been sold before, remains partly shrouded in mystery.
Initially intended for aviation pilots, the large split-second chronographs became popular among motor racing enthusiasts in Italy thanks to them having both a tachymetric scale for measuring accelerating and a telemetric scale that helps measure the distance to an approaching object like another plane.
