One of the Crown’s biggest achievements – just ask them, they’re happy to tell you – has something to do with Mount Everest. Evidence seems to suggest a Rolex probably wasn’t on the wrists of Tenzing Norgay or Sir Edmund Hillary when they became the first mountaineers to summit Everest (that was a Smiths, thank you very much), but no matter. There were some Rolex timepieces tucked away in their kits somewhere. Anyway, Rolex had been sponsoring and supplying expeditions with luxury replica Rolex watches since the 1930s, so its high-altitude bonafides are well established.
Perfect Swiss Rolex fake watches on Everest is nearly an entire sub-section of research in its right, but it got three new additions in the textbook this past auction season. All performed well, too, so let’s take a look at the watches, their journeys, and what they mean to Rolex.
The ‘Jürg Marmet’ Rolex 6298 Replica Watches
First up, the best-performing watch of the bunch – and honestly, for me, one of the best wholesale Rolex replica watches of the auction season. Not only is it “historically important,” as auction houses are fond of saying, but this watch also just looks damn good. Let’s start with the story, since that’s what turned an otherwise humble pre-Explorer ref. 6298 into a CHF 289,800 hunk of steel.
This Rolex belonged to Jürg Marmet, a Swiss engineer who also happened to be quite the mountaineer in his younger years. In 1953, Marmet was part of an expedition to Canada’s Baffin Island – look way up at the top of the map to find it – an expedition Rolex happened to sponsor, so he got this high quality US Rolex copy watches, engraved “Baffinland” on the caseback. Turns out Marmet was just getting started when he made the journey to Baffin Island: In 1956, he was tapped for a Swiss expedition to summit Everest – three years after Norgay and Hillary conquered the peak, it was finally time for the Swiss to get another crack at it (they came just short in 1952; more on that expedition in a minute).
This time, the Swiss made it, and Marmet became just the third person to summit Everest, after Norgay and Hillary. For good measure, the expedition was also the first to summit Lhotse on the way up to Everest, the fourth-tallest peak in the world. As I said, whether a particular watch was actually on someone’s wrist at the summit can lead to nearly endless debate, but what can’t be debated is that this watch went through the absolute ringer with Marmet, from Baffin Island to Lhoste to Everest.
According to Christie’s, the 6298 came from Marmet’s family, and it looks absolutely gorgeous and honest. The dial’s taken on that warm, sand-colored patina you love to see, and the rest of the watch looks like it’s got some scratches and nicks on it. And when you get that perfect storm of condition and original provenance, you get a big result, probably as high as you’ll see for a watch that, on the outside, seems like an unassuming, time-only 36mm cheap Rolex replica watches.
The ‘Norman Günther Dyhrenfurth’ Rolex 6098 Fake Watches
Next up was this ref. 6098 that sold at Phillips for CHF151,200. This particular AAA replica Rolex watches belonged to a fella named Norman Günter Dyhrenfurth, who was part of that Swiss expedition to Mount Everest in 1952, the one that came soooo close to reaching the peak but stopped about 1,000 meters short, blazing a trail for the next year’s ascent. (The following year, the British expedition with Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary would make it to the top.) Turns out, Rolex covered its bases, sponsoring a number of Swiss and British expeditions, providing each of the mountaineers a watch that was supposed to be returned after the expedition. All the guys on the 1952 Swiss expedition were even from Geneva – imagine how badly Rolex must’ve wanted its hometown team to make it to the top. Guys like Dyhrenfurth were supposed to give their watches back to Rolex after the expedition. But whoops, he forgot, and 70 years later we’ve got its story to tell.
Phillips says that Dyhrenfurth gave his watch to the eventual consignor in 2017, a few months before he died. In addition to the provenance, the watch itself is interesting – it’s engraved “B6” on the caseback, and doesn’t even have a serial number between the lugs (this kind of reminded me of this steel 1:1 fake Rolex Day-Date watches that Christie’s sold this week, which also has no serial number, often presumed to be because these rare steel Day-Dates were given to Rolex watchmakers). Phillips makes no guesses as to what the B6 engraving might be, but it’s somewhat reminiscent of other Everest watches we’ve seen: some examples from the 1953 Norgay-Hillary expedition have been engraved “H2,” H6, and so on, along with the mountaineer’s name (but those examples also had serial numbers). But perhaps B6 denotes Dyhrenfurth’s expedition?
Unlike those perfect Rolex replica watches, this example also didn’t have the mountaineer’s name or expedition engraved on the caseback, something that would be engraved for the expedition. Otherwise, the watch itself looks very similar to Hillary’s Rolex we’ve seen at the Beyer Museum.
So why did Dyhrenfurth’s Rolex super clone watches online site sell for about half the price of Marmet’s? Surely, it’s not just because Marmet made it to the top of Everest, while Dyhrenfurth came up short, right? (By the way, Dyhrenfurth did eventually summit Everest, leading the first American expedition to the peak in 1963.) In addition to the honest condition and direct, straight-from-the-family provenance of Marmet’s watch, it likely had to do with some of these interesting, unanswered questions about Dyhrenfurth’s Rolex.
The Commemorative ‘Raymond Lambert’ Rolex 6298 Replica Watches
Okay, finally we get to the last one: commemorative replica Rolex watches shop given to Raymond Lambert, who was also on the Swiss expedition with Dyhrenfurth in 1952. In fact, Lambert, along with Norgay, were the two who reached the highest-recorded point at the time when they attempted to, but ultimately fell just short of summiting Everest. No doubt, they established a route to the top for the British expedition the next year.
A year later, when Hillary made it to the top, he recalled “an incredibly lonely sight, the battered framework of the tent that Tenzing and Lambert of the 1952 Swiss expedition pitched over a year before and where they had spent an extremely uncomfortable night without food, without drink, and without sleeping bags. What a tough couple they had been, but perhaps not very well organized.” (Well, there was also a monsoon and they were effectively climbing without oxygen at that point.) Hillary added that Norgay and Lambert were likely not adequately hydrated, relying mostly on cheese and melted snow by then.
Unlike Dyhrenfurth, it seems that Lambert returned his Rolex fake watches for sale at the end of the expedition. In return, Rolex gave Lambert this commemorative watch. As Phillips points out, this watch was likely serviced by Rolex at some point: While we can date the case to about 1953 (based on its serial number), the caseback is engraved 1967, illustrating that the watch was most likely taken in for a service that year, and Rolex probably serviced the dial and swapped in a new caseback (but still reproduced the original caseback engraving “Expedition Suisse À l’Everest 1952 – Raymond Lambert”).
No doubt, a combination of this service that compromised some of the Swiss made Rolex replica watches’ originality, along with the simple fact that it was given to Lambert after his Everest expedition made it sell for “only” CHF 69,300 at Phillips. Interestingly, Phillips mentions that Lambert’s original watch, the one that did take on the mountain, “resides within Rolex’s collection.”
