Watch Paparazzi

Footballer Paolo di Canio spotted wearing Rolex

An archival photograph from Paolo Di Canio's Sheffield Wednesday years has surfaced showing the Italian forward with one of the most coveted vintage wristwatches in existence on his wrist: a stainless steel Rolex Cosmograph Daytona reference 6265 fitted with a so-called 'Paul Newman' panda dial. The image predates the explosion in awareness around these dials, which means Di Canio was almost certainly wearing it simply because he liked it — not because he knew it would one day be worth a small fortune.

The Rolex Cosmograph Daytona ref. 6265 was produced from 1971 through to approximately 1988, representing one of the final evolutions of the manually-wound Daytona before Rolex transitioned to the calibre 4030-based ref. 16520 in 1988. The 6265 houses the Valjoux 727 movement — a robust, column-wheel chronograph calibre — inside a 37mm oyster case. The screw-down pushers, a defining feature of the reference, improved water resistance and gave the case its distinctly purposeful profile. The steel bezel version, as worn by Di Canio, is considerably rarer than its black or white gold bezel counterparts.

The 'Paul Newman' designation applies to a specific subset of exotic dials characterised by an art-deco typeface on the registers, square-tipped indices, and a contrasting outer chapter ring. On a panda configuration, the sub-dials appear in white against a white main dial with black text — clean, graphic, and immediately recognisable to any serious collector. The nickname derives from actor Paul Newman, who famously wore a ref. 6239 with such a dial; the association has only amplified the mythology around these references.

Di Canio — known to Italian football fans as a Lazio legend and to Premier League audiences for his combative, theatrical career at Sheffield Wednesday, West Ham, and Charlton — has never been publicly identified as a serious watch collector. That makes this sighting more intriguing: the ref. 6265 Paul Newman was not mainstream knowledge in the mid-1990s, suggesting either genuine connoisseurship or a fortunate early acquisition.

On the current market, a stainless steel Rolex Cosmograph Daytona ref. 6265 with a Paul Newman panda dial commands serious money. Auction results in recent years have ranged from $200,000 to well over $500,000 depending on dial condition, provenance, and case preservation. No official retail price exists for a vintage reference, but grey-market values for honest, unpolished examples with original dials start around $250,000 and rise sharply with documentation.