Next up was this ref. 6098 that sold at Phillips for CHF151,200. This particular 1:1 fake Rolex UK 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, Swiss made replica 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 high end copy 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 replica for sale 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 aaa quality replica Rolex Day-Date 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 Swiss movement copy 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 replica watches for sale, 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 cheap super clone Rolex we’ve seen at the Beyer Museum.
So why did Dyhrenfurth’s UK top fake Rolex 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 Swiss movement copy Rolex.
