Jonah Hill’s watch in The Wolf Of Wall Street is a baller style move
In a film packed to the rafters with coked-up douchebags, Jordan Belfort’s best friend in The Wolf Of Wall Street, Donnie Azoff, stands out for being particularly obnoxious. Firstly, there’s the teeth, which are an almost phosphorus white and as loud and vulgar as his peculiar brand of fugly WASP fashion. In the preppy style canon, there is something known as “go-to-hell” pants – usually bright red or embroidered with ducks, which are worn as a kind of in-joke among the posh. Azoff seems to have taken this idea and applied it to his outfits from head to toe, only without the irony. White Gucci loafers with shorts and socks, a brazenly striped shirt and pastel pink jumper tied around the shoulders – that’s what Azoff is wearing when Belfort first meets his second wife, Naomi, at a pool party. Unfortunately, Azoff has sniffed so much coke and popped so many Quaaludes that he proceeds to masturbate at the sight of her, in full view of his own wife and everyone else present.
But he does have one redeeming feature: his watch. The Wolf Of Wall Street watches are interesting in themselves. As we wrote in a previous column, the solid-gold watch that Belfort claims is worth $40,000 is often assumed to be a Rolex GMT-Master II. It is, in fact, a gold-plated TAG Heuer Professional 1000 series from the late 1980s, a perfectly good watch that would set you back about $1,000 when it was first released.
Azoff, played by Jonah Hill, however, is wearing a Rolex. Specifically: a yellow-gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona (probably ref 16528) with black dial. The Daytona is legendary among enthusiasts – it is arguably the model that helped make rare Rolexes as stratospherically collectible as they are today. A stainless-steel Daytona once owned by Paul Newman fetched a price of $17.75 million when it was auctioned by Phillips in 2017, making it the world’s most expensive wristwatch at the time. Today, a preowned yellow-gold Daytona ref 16528 will set you back about £26,000. And for those of you with the patience to sit out the waiting list, a brand-new Daytona in yellow gold costs £29,350.
Rolex Daytonas now come in all kinds of bejewelled and bedazzled variations, including the ref 116595RBOW, more commonly known by its street name, the Rainbow. The model, beloved by rappers such as Stormzy (he wore one to pick up his Male Solo Artist Brit Award in 2020), is now one of the most coveted in the Rolex line-up. If it was available in the 1980s it would have surely been just the thing for Donnie Azoff and his white Gucci loafers.
Rolex Daytona 16528, £26,422. At chrono24.co.uk
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When Andrea took her most-prized possessions to a pawnbroker, she did not expect him to start smashing them up.
The make-up artist is hoping to release funds by selling her three watches after her income was hit badly by the Covid-19 pandemic.
A mother-of-two, Andrea hopes to raise enough money to buy better equipment for her business so she can provide for her children.
“When coronavirus came along, as a make-up artist we couldn’t work. It was a nightmare really because without any money it was very stressful,” she explains.
On tonight’s Million Pound Pawn, Andrea visits third generation pawnbroker Dan Hatfield to discover how much her watches are worth.
Among Andrea’s valuables is a ladies Rolex and a pocket watch given to her by her godfather before he died.
She also shows Dan a coveted Rolex Daytona which she bought for just £25 at a car-boot sale, but could be worth as much as £15,000 if it’s real.
Admitting it could be the best car-boot bargain of the century, Dan claims if it’s not real it’s a very good fake.
Andrea hopes to sell all the watches for a combined £600 in order to buy better equipment for her make-up business and eventually have her own studio.
She feels emotional parting ways with her precious valuables, which have great sentimental value, but realises it’s for a bigger picture.
“I’m very worried about the times we’re living in. I worry for my kids’ future,” she explains.
“I need something that’s going to give me more stability. My dream would be to have my own make-up studio and hopefully that would give me some stability.”
(Image: ITV)
However, Dan is worried by the rise of the “super fake” as the market in counterfeit watches is growing - with an estimated 40 million sold last year alone.
Rolex is most faked brand on the market, so Dan first checks the strap to make sure there are no clear edges.
He also looks to find the microscopic Rolex crown, which can only be replicated with very sophisticated machinery.
Dan breaks the bad news to Andrea that the wording inside the Daytona watch isn’t crisp enough, therefore it’s not a real one.
The other give away is that it is not the right weight because the workings inside aren’t correct.
Things get even worse when Dan reveals that the Rolex is also a fake because the winder is far too big and not in place with the rest of the watch.
(Image: ITV)
In a strange twist, the pawnbroker explains that while it is a fake Rolex, he can tell from the way it feels that the gold is real.
It’s worthless as a watch but worth it’s weight in gold, but to find out how much it’s worth, Dan needs to destroy it.
Nervous Andrea isn’t sure she wants her godfather’s watch smashed to pieces.
To help her come to a decision, Dan reveals that he believes the gold is worth a couple of grand.
Michaela can barely look as Dan takes out a little mallet and begins smashing up the watch.
During pandemic, the price of gold has risen to an all time high of £1,500 per ounce, which means Dan offers her £2,700.
(Image: ITV)
But it doesn’t end there, as Dan reveals the late 19th century pocket watch is 18 carat real gold and offers a whopping £2,800.
“Are you for real? So all that time I’ve had over five grand’s worth of stuff. I can’t believe it,” cries Andrea.
After being given a hefty £5,500 for both watches, Andrea says: “I am actually stuck for words for once in her life.”
Dan explains that Andrea is lucky she’s sold her gold at the highest it’s ever been “in the history of humanity”.
He adds: “I’ve got to make sure I flog this stuff pretty quickly as the price of gold could go up but I have a feeling it’s going down. The time for action is now.”
While Andrea says: “I’m definitely sad to see them go as they’ve been with me for a long time but I know he was looking down and smiling at me today.”
(Image: ITV Picture Desk/(C) Twofour)
Every day, pawnbrokers buy, loan and sell against some extraordinary items as Brits like Andrea across the country look to sell their valuables in these tough times.
Well-heeled clients are turning to pawnbrokers to release cash, using anything from the family silver to big ticket items.
The more expensive the asset, the higher the risk for the pawnbroker as they walk a very narrow tightrope.
Borrowing money from a pawnbroker comes with higher interest rates but customers can also sell their assets - with both parties able to make a profit.
Elsewhere, pawnbroker John Freeze is confronted with a tricky proposition when a new client wants to sell 20 luxury handbags.
Sales manager Sandy, who wants to get rid of a tenth of her 200-bag collection, spent more than £40,000 on them in the last 25 years.
After being furloughed, Sandy needs money in the bank as a safety net because she has no savings.
(Image: ITV Picture Desk/(C) Twofour)
She expects to make £6,000 and is hoping the Chanel bag alone will be worth a couple of thousand.
Designer bags can provide higher investment returns than traditional assets such as art and whiskey, but the fickle nature of fashion makes them notoriously hard to price up.
“Fashion assets are very, very hard to price. What is hot today isn’t not hot tomorrow so it’s risky,” explains John.
He spends an hour valuing the 20 handbags to decide whether to invest, then shocks Sandy by only offering £1,400.
With the total far less than Sandy’s predicted £6,000, she rejects the offer and they start negotiating prices for individual bags.
“Of course I want the client to win, but I want to feel like I’ve won as well,” explains John.
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“You don’t want the client to go out with their head in their hands thinking, ‘I’ve been done there’.
“Repeat business is everything so you’ve got to be mindful they will come back if they’re happy.”
Out of 20 handbags, Sandy only sells three to John at a price of £400, which he believes he can make a 20% profit on.
While it’s not the deal either of them wanted, John believes Sandy will be back in six months time begging to sell them.
“He was just way off on what my expectations were versus what he would buy them for.
“It was a bit disappointing, I didn’t come anywhere near what I was hoping for.”
*Million Pound Pawn airs tonight on ITV at 9pm
Boom time for wristwatches that cost an arm and a leg
By any normal measure, 2020 was a terrible year for luxury watches. Switzerland produces 95 per cent of the world’s most expensive timepieces, but with factories shut by Covid-19, exports fell 25 per cent, the worst decline in 80 years. Insiders feared the market wouldn’t recover. Outsiders wondered: can’t you just check the time on your phone?
Naive question. The luxury watch industry has proved one of the most remarkable excrescences of 21st-century capitalism — it has more than doubled in size to £17 billion since 2000, according to Deloitte — and a global pandemic wasn’t about to staunch demand.
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“There was about a week of pause back in the spring, and then, suddenly, the market was white hot,” says Silas Walton, who founded the