. But what we haven’t done, until today, is head straight to the most valuable Daytona: the Paul Newman. We didn’t even know if we’d find five of them worth writing home about, but indeed we did. They’re all killer examples that you can buy right now.
It would be about a decade after receiving the 6239 Daytona from Woodward before anyone would really pick up on the unique dial configuration in a meaningful way. In the late ‘70s, Rolex sponsored the publication of a book about Paul Newman’s career,), which would place an image of Newman on the cover with the watch clearly visible on his wrist. It was this image that sparked the acknowledgement and eventual popularity of the exotic dial Daytona reference.
Whatever happened, this exotic-dial differs from the standard Daytona in a few ways, most notably within the registers that totalize the minutes and hours for the chronograph function, as well as display the running seconds hand. The indexes within these registers received large squares at their tips in an effort to improve legibility. Additionally, the numbers themselves were rendered in a different typeface that was slightly more stylized than a non-exotic dial .