A watch given as a reward to an Apollo spaceman is being auctioned next month and already it’s valued at $100,000. 

Russell Schweickart piloted the Apollo 9 space lunar module as the moon programme headed towards its climax on July 20, 1969. 

Apollo 9 in action in March 1969. Every Apollo astronaut risked their lives, and some paid the ultimate price. 

 

Many of those flights were helped to run smoothly with one of the most famous watches in world history. 

The Omega Speedmaster was designed for racing drivers. But it achieved immortality on the wrists of the heroes of NASA. 

Passed for use in space after a series of tough tests - the other applicant watches were reportedly destroyed - in 1965, the Speedmaster is the Only Watch on the Moon. 

Russell’s watch didn’t make it that far, but it is a memento of that incredible success, perhaps the crowning human achievement of the 20th century. 

It was given to Russell at a banquet in November 1969 to honour the successful completion of President Kennedy’s 1961 promise to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. 

The watches were individually numbered and named and inscribed with a motto: “to mark man’s conquest of space with time, through time, on time.”

Definitely used, this watch has a unique story to tell. Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions. 

 

The watch is numbered 25. Numbers 1 and 2 were intended for the President (Richard Nixon) and his Vice President Spiro Agnew, but they turned them down to comply with ethics rules. 

Those two are now in the Omega museum. 

Numbers 3 to 28 were given to NASA astronauts and are among the most precious watches in history. 

Neil Armstrong’s example, numbered 17, was sold for $2.1 million last month. 

The Speedmaster is a revered reference in its own right. The most valuable example was an early issue from 1957 that sold for $3.4 million in 2021. 

Russell Schweickart’s Speedmaster is being sold by Heritage Auctions on June 3. 

He told them: “The event in which we were given the watches … was just after the Apollo 12 mission.  

Russell thought he'd lost the watch until this year. Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions. 

 

“We had all been wearing Omega watches, but they were the silver ones. The gold watch is a real beauty.”

It’s obviously been used, and Russell wore it as he continued to work as a pilot. He stopped after he saw a colleague injured when a ring caught in an emergency. 

So, the watch went into a drawer. And until earlier this year he thought he’d lost it. 

Now, it’s one of the star lots in the June 3 Watches & Fine Timepieces Signature Auction with a $100,000 pre-sale bid already logged.