The Life And Times Of A Very Extraordinary ‘Tool’ Watch

This is a love story. And, as all Watchonistas know, great love stories always have a cherished wristwatch beating at their heart. But this love story has more. It’s about how worlds, watches, and chocolate collide. All very Swiss.

Our story begins in Birmingham, England, between the two world wars when a boy meets a girl. The boy’s name is Graham Morris. The girl is Mary, and he pulls her pigtails in a noisy classroom. But our story reaches its climax in Geneva in hushed silence, followed by a bang.
 

In 1950, after serving with the Royal Artillery all over the world - including Afghanistan, India, and Iraq - Graham returned to civvy street, married his childhood sweetheart, and began a career as a quantity surveyor. Graham is a numbers guy. He likes precision. His profession and his life have always been about accurate measurement. Graham still has a pin-sharp memory for names, dates, and he never forgets a watch face.
 

“Mary and I went to the jewelers,” Graham remembers. “We spent ages choosing a ring. But when it came to the watch, I knew exactly what I wanted. The chap in the shop called it an ugly tool watch. But I loved it. It had complications which fascinated me and all operated by an intricate mechanical movement.”

“Mary bought me the watch. it cost £134.”
 

“I wore and used that watch every day of my life. It was part of my working day. I used the functions and I would have felt very strange without it. It really was a tool I used in my trade.”

Graham is now 93. Mary died in 2015. The watch she bought him forty years earlier was one of his most treasured possessions and a strong connection to his beloved wife of more than half a century. But, one day in 2018 Graham decided it was time to let it go, to say goodbye. Graham’s grandson, Sam, calls that night, “The night of the chocolate bar.
 

“We took the watch to Sotheby’s in London and they sent it on a world tour – including New York and Hong Kong – and it ended up in Geneva. My father and I traveled to the auction house there. By then we knew it was very valuable. We’d had no idea how valuable though.”

“There was total silence in the auction room where seconds seemed like hours. Then the auctioneer brought his gavel down with a bang. There was a lot of cheering in the room. Dad and I were stunned into silence.”
 

The Graham Morris, Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman, Paul Newman sold to an anonymous buyer for almost eight hundred thousand Swiss francs. That’s about £700,000. It is rumored Rolex snapped it up for their collection and one whisper suggested the bidder who lost out on the Paul Newman Paul Newman bagged it.

“I called Grandad,” says Sam. “He’d been watching the auction on a Sotheby’s live feed. It must have been heart wrenching to part with that Daytona. It had been a daily companion for almost half a century, and it was so wrapped up in his close relationship with my grandmother.
 

“However, I think it was when Grandad was walking to the corner shop with a watch on his wrist worth more than his house that he realized, after all those years, the Daytona had a new role to play in the family history.

“I think we’d always assumed it would be inherited and passed down from generation to generation. But in the end, we all benefitted and Grandad took some wonderful cruise holidays.”
 

And finally, does Graham still wear a watch? Yes. When he sold the Daytona, he treated himself to a nice, sedate stainless-steel DateJust, which he says he loves.