THE BRUCE LEE WATCH THAT NEVER WAS (A CAUTIONARY TALE)
In 2014, and then again in 2018, respected Los Angeles auction house Nate D. Sanders put a Timex watch purportedly owned by Bruce Lee up for bidding. According to the info provided by the auction house Bruce gave the watch to student Herb Jackson around 1968. The only problem was, it was never Bruce Lee’s watch. Keep reading.....
Sure it came with a letter of authenticity from Herb Jackson’s son Mark Ashton-Jackson but was there really anything else to prove Bruce Lee had once owned it? According to the letter of authenticity it was “documented in many photos and magazines” but I couldn’t find any. Plus, the auction listing was suspiciously devoid of any specifics about the watch, including the model number.
I decided with a little research I might be able to identify the model number and potentially the year it was made to confirm whether Bruce might have actually owned the watch. You see, for every watch created since 1963 Timex has imprinted the dial with a code number near the bottom of the face for ease in model identification. The code will also tell you the movement number and year of manufacture. All the pictures I could find were too blurry to confidently read the model number but I could barely read the watch movement number (025) and year of manufacture (last two digits) and it was looking like 7 "something".
The next step was to start perusing every Timex catalog I could find to match the look of the watch and therefore the exact model number and date of manufacture. Then I found it - the watch was a 1977 Timex Sprite calendar model 24560(1) with a retail price of $16.95.
Just to be sure I got on eBay and bought the exact same model watch for $30. My scratched eBay watch is on the left and the much rustier "Bruce Lee Watch" is on the right.
So there you have it. The watch Nate D. Sanders was auctioning as a "Bruce Lee Watch" was actually a Timex Sprite, model 24560 02577 sold in 1977. Obviously, since Bruce Lee died in 1973 there is no way Bruce could have owned that watch much less given it to Herb Jackson. To Nate D. Sanders credit, as far as I can tell they never actually sold/completed the listing. And when I reached out to them for details on the model number and higher quality photos of the watch, not only did they not respond but they also wiped their website of any references to the Timex watch.
But still, how does a major auction house NOT have a resident watch expert on staff? Or at least someone that understands the model and date coding that Timex uses on their watches? Interestingly, a different watch owned by Bruce Lee and given to Herb Jackson was successfully auctioned off in 2019 for just under $29,000 US. The watch was a 1950’s era Geneve Polerouter by watch manufacturer Universal. You can read about it here. However, the most famous Bruce Lee watch was the Seiko 6139-6010 which Bruce began wearing around 1969. To my knowledge that watch has never been auctioned off. You can read more about this watch here.
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