Watches: Steve's Rolex "Rescued"

As Fire Chief Mike O’Halloran, Steve McQueen saved helpless A-listers in The Towering Inferno. His second fire rescue came in 2016, but this time he was saved — or, more accurately, his watch was.

That’s just one anecdote behind McQueen’s Rolex Submariner, a “historically important and previously unknown” timepiece going up for auction at Phillips in October.

The auction house announced the acquisition and upcoming sale today, hyping the timepiece as a worthy follow-up to Paul Newman's “Paul Newman,” a Rolex Daytona which became the most expensive watch sold at auction when it closed at $17.8 million at Phillips’ New York “Winning Icons” sale last October.

In the press release for that auction, Phillips called the Paul Newman “arguably the most iconic collector's wristwatch of the 20th century.” In that case, let's argue why this McQueen Submariner is better.

As alluded to, this Rolex survived not just any ol’ blaze, but California’s devastating 2016 Sand Fire.

The story goes like this: during the two week wildfire — which killed two, ravaged 40,000 acres of land and destroyed 18 buildings — one of the homes reduced to rubble was that of McQueen’s former stunt double, Loren Janes. He thought everything was destroyed, including the Rolex McQueen gifted to him.

That is, until Michael Eisenberg, a real estate broker and developer who also deals in memorabilia, read a story about that particular loss and contacted them.

“I begged them to go back to the house and sift through ashes,” Eisenberg told Forbes. “A few weeks later, they called me back to say they had found it.”