Last weekend‘s Phillips annual New York watch sale was full of notable timepieces but one in particular that came under the hammer has the most remarkable story. Causing a stir at the auction was a 1968 Omega 40mm Speedmaster Professional Ref. 145.012-67 SP that once belonged to the celebrated US author Ralph Ellison. His Omega wasn‘t just one in a collection but was the watch he wore regularly between acquiring it in 1968 – a year before the Speedmaster took its trip to the moon – and his death in 1994. 

Ellison, the Oklahoma-born novelist, academic, radical and critic, is best known for Invisible Man, his book published in 1952, an articulate and blistering expression of the black experience in the USA. Its genre-defying impact won great acclaim and he was given the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953, becoming the first African American to take the accolade. This significant and influential work is said to have inspired Barack Obama‘s 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father. Something of a polymath, Ellison was a gifted musician, who also composed, and was admired for his dapper, well-turned-out appearance. Always impeccably stylish, to complement his sharply tailored suits he wore under his cuff his Omega Speedmaster, continuing to sport it even when the top chronograph pusher fell off.

After Ellison‘s death, the watch was sold at a small auction house in Long Island City in 2016 where it was purchased by Ted Walbye, a collector who was looking for an original Speedmaster. Noting the auction featured belongings owned by Ralph and his wife Fanny Ellison, Walbye began researching to prove the watch had originally belonged to the great writer. Eventually finding a photograph of Ellison wearing a Speedmaster with a missing pusher, he felt confident of its provenance. Enlisting the expert help of author and watch writer Michael Clerizo of the Wall Street Journal, their detective work tracked down insurance paperwork in the Ralph Ellison Archives, housed at the Library of Congress, that listed the serial numbers and confirmed its identity.

As well as the watch’s unique backstory, it was already on enthusiasts’ radars: it’s one of two references that travelled to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission and is also the last reference made with Omega’s original Calibre 321 movement. So with its ‘collectors vintage’ it has both historical and cultural importance and provenance, and was bound to excite and provoke intense competition at the auction.

At the time of the Phillips’ sale, Ellison’s Omega was described as ‘well loved‘, but preserved in original unpolished condition with the original steel bracelet, enhancing its desirability. The estimate was given as a modest $10-20,000. It sold for an astonishing $667,800, demonstrating the intensity of passion to acquire a piece of history. The good news is that it was bought for Omega‘s museum in Biel, Switzerland, where it will join – among other distinguished pieces – Elvis Presley‘s white gold dress watch, JFK‘s ultra-thin and Richard Nixon‘s own Speedmaster, created in gold to commemorate the first moon landing in 1969. Raynald Aeschlimann, Omega‘s president and CEO, is thrilled: ‘It’s a great honour to bring Ralph Ellison’s watch back to Omega in Switzerland. He was a writer of immense influence and a man with such an inspiring personality and talent. This Speedmaster accompanied him through many years of his exceptional life and will be a special highlight within our heritage collection.’

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