Actor Robert De Niro spotted wearing a Bueche Girod

When Martin Scorsese needed a watch to signal Sam 'Ace' Rothstein's position at the top of the Las Vegas food chain, the wardrobe department reached for a Bueche Girod reference Y9624 in 18k tri-color gold. The choice was not arbitrary. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Bueche Girod occupied a very specific niche in the luxury watch world — the brand of choice for the unapologetically wealthy, the kind of people who managed casinos, moved freely between Vegas and Miami Beach, and wore their net worth on their wrist.

The reference Y9624 is a quartz-driven dress watch constructed entirely in 18k gold, combining white, rose, and yellow gold in a tri-color composition that was deeply fashionable during the disco and post-disco eras. Bueche Girod, the London-based Swiss-movement house founded in the early twentieth century and later absorbed into the Graff Diamonds orbit, was particularly skilled at producing high-jewelry timepieces that blurred the line between watchmaking and goldsmithing. The Y9624 exemplifies that approach: the gold treatment is the statement, not the movement.

For collectors, the Bueche Girod Y9624 occupies an interesting position. It is not a complication watch, and it does not trade on mechanical prestige. What it offers is an artifact of a very specific cultural moment — the age of conspicuous luxury, when quartz was cutting-edge and tri-color gold was the language of success. The Casino connection has elevated its profile considerably among film memorabilia enthusiasts and 1970s–80s luxury watch collectors alike.

De Niro's portrayal of Ace Rothstein — based on real-life Las Vegas figure Frank Rosenthal — demanded authenticity in every detail, and the Y9624 delivered it. The watch appears throughout the film as a quiet but persistent signal of Rothstein's power and taste, entirely consistent with the character's obsessive attention to his own image.

On the secondary market, the Bueche Girod Y9624 commands serious attention precisely because of the Casino association. The original retail price was cited at $12,500 USD, reflecting the intrinsic value of the 18k tri-color gold case. Grey-market examples tied to the film's cultural legacy can trade at a meaningful premium, making this one of the more compelling pop-culture watch investments of the 1990s Hollywood era.