In , a wild fire called the Sand Fire swept through Janes's Los Angeles neighborhood, destroying his home. He lost all of his possessions, including his collection of memorabilia from his time in Hollywood. According to this Forbes article , collector Michael Eisenberg read about the fire and the destruction of Janes's home in the L.

Times and then reached out Janes's family, urging them to look for the watch in the rubble he likely heard about it in this story in the Wall Street Journal.

Eisenberg is a well-known Hollywood memorabilia collector and is constantly on the hunt. At his behest, Janes's daughter Erika did go back to the site of the fire to search for the watch in the ashes. By this account, she was successful. The watch was in rough shape to put it lightly and was promptly sent to Geary's in Los Angeles and then on to Rolex for repair. There are two letters that accompany the watch at Phillips.

Janes passed away from complications related to Alzheimer's Disease just a few months later on June 24, The second letter is from Rolex, addressed to the Janes family, thanking them for submitting their father's watch for restoration and expressing what an honor it was to service it. A photograph of the watch after the Janes house fire. As the watch exists today, it has a matte, four-line dial, despite being a from the mids. Clearly this is a replacement, but that's only natural given the condition of the watch after the fire.

The watch also has a new bezel with the pearl intact , new hands, and a new bracelet, and it also received a thorough polishing. The watch is being sold with a period-correct dial and hand set that are not original so any future owner could switch them back should they so desire.

This is where things end, according to Phillips. But, as we mentioned, some people have raised concerns that this might not be the full story.

So, what is? A look at the watch's caseback after the fire. The two biggest questions seem to be: 1 Is the watch currently in the same state it was in when Rolex finished restoring it or has it been tampered with since? The letters from Janes and Rolex are used as two critical supporting documents for the provenance of the watch. However, neither seems fully reliable for confirming the full story. Rolex's letter does not contain enough detail about the state of the watch to give us a true sense of what was done to it, and Janes's letter was written only four months before he passed away due to Alzheimer's complications.

He parlayed an early fascination with cars and motorcycles into a career as a champion racer, and later as perhaps the most famous collector of vintage automotive machines in the world. Throughout his public life, McQueen exhibited a cool demeanor and style that made him a cultural icon, admired by men, loved by famous and beautiful women, and captured for eternity by the world's top photographers.

At age 16, McQueen left Chino, traveling first to New York City and then across the country, working various jobs as a merchant marine, a lumberjack, a trinket salesman in a carnival, and an oil rigger. In , he joined the Marines.

After some early rebelliousness, he served with distinction until when he was honorably discharged. With financial assistance provided to him by the G. Bill, McQueen began taking acting lessons in New York. He began his acting career with small roles on the stage and on live TV, and made his Broadway debut in in the play A Hatful of Rain.

Later that year, at the age of 25, McQueen left New York and headed to Hollywood to further his acting career. After nabbing bit parts in several films, he landed his first starring role in the horror cult classic The Blob.

Steve McQueen became a star on TV and would soon replicate that stardom on the big screen. His next starring role, in 's The Great Escape, firmly established McQueen's box-office clout and secured his status as a superstar. The images from The Great Escape of Steve McQueen bouncing the baseball off the wall of his cell and riding his motorcycle across the countryside are etched indelibly into the annals of Hollywood history. Following this in quick succession, he starred in Love with the Proper Stranger with Natalie Wood, in the huge western hit Nevada Smith, as a poker player in The Cincinnati Kid, and as a sailor in The Sand Pebbles, a role for which he earned an Academy Award nomination.

The film was a huge box-office success featuring Steve's cool, fashionable persona and the most famous car chase scene in film history. McQueen himself did a good portion of the stunt driving at least until the insurance agents showed up on set , and the green Ford Mustang in Bullitt became one of the many vehicles made famous by association with Steve McQueen. He then starred in The Thomas Crown Affair with Faye Dunaway, in which his role as the wealthy, debonair art thief helped to cement his status as a sex-symbol and fashion-icon.

After the successes of Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair, McQueen pursued his dream of creating a film about his passion: auto-racing. The result, Le Mans, was not a box-office hit, but has grown into a cult classic and is considered the most authentic film ever made about auto-racing. By this time, he was the world's highest paid actor, and he agreed to star in The Towering Inferno with Paul Newman. The Towering Inferno was a smash success and one of the highest-grossing films of all time.

He appeared in three more films, An Enemy of the People, Tom Horn, and The Hunter, but after The Towering Inferno, he retreated from the public eye to focus on more personal pursuits, chief among them collecting vintage cars and motorcycles.

As any true fan knows, McQueen was an avid motorcycle and racecar enthusiast. When his films involved cars and motorcycles, he would often perform his own stunts it was difficult to find drivers and riders as skilled as McQueen! Although the legendary jump over the fence shown in the film The Great Escape was done by friend Bud Ekins again, for insurance purposes , legend has it that McQueen did in fact complete the jump himself the morning of filming, and McQueen did log considerable screen time on his cc Triumph TR6 motorcycle.

At one point, through the magic of editing, McQueen is actually seen in a German uniform on another bike chasing himself! At one time in his life, McQueen considered being a professional race car driver, and there is no doubt he would have been successful. In fact, he was quite successful in the limited opportunities he did have to participate in top events. McQueen's first off-road motorcycle was a Triumph that Bud Ekins built for him in his shop in Southern California.

In , McQueen and Bud Ekins were part of the first official American team that competed in the renowned off-road race, the International Six Days Trials, the most challenging motorcycle event in the world. Unfortunately, McQueen didn't finish due to an accident, but his teammate Cliff Coleman finished and went home with a gold medal. The same year, he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine riding a Husqvarna dirt bike.

And in , he was inducted in the Off-road Motorsports Hall of Fame. Steve McQueen died in at the age of But he remains a cultural icon to this day. A large part of his allure was the element of danger that surrounded him, and that his coolness always shone through whatever role he was playing on screen, whether a cowboy, gambler, millionaire, detective, fireman, etc.

And that same coolness was always evident in his real life, during interviews, while racing the hills of Hollywood or the Mojave Desert, and certainly in the many photographs of him that exist taken by some of the top photographers of the time. He was always effortlessly at the forefront of fashion, be it in a tuxedo, jeans and a tee shirt, racing coveralls, or shorts and nothing else.

The simple clothes and other items he wore continue to sell today as "McQueen" genuine articles, such as Barbour jackets, Persol sunglasses, and TAG Heuer watches. He is frequently cited by today's celebrities as the inspiration for their fashion choices and he still graces the covers of top magazines. Documentaries about his life continue to be produced, and he has been the subject of several popular songs. The King of Cool lives on. A television-turned-movie star, McQueen was the sexiest and toughest leading man of his day.

McQueen was nominated for an Oscar and four Golden Globe awards, and received a star on the Hollywood walk of fame. Although he died in , McQueen continues to be a cultural icon.

Spreading 4, square feet, the home welcomes with two-story-high doors that open to a soaring foyer with a floating staircase, terrazzo flooring, and pecky cypress paneling. Home to four bedrooms and four bathrooms, the residence elegantly sits at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains. The well-designed home also features a large family room, an eat-in kitchen, and a living room framed by glass walls that render panoramic views of the San Jacinto Mountains to the west and the city below.

While the glass doors of the sunlit living room open onto a terrace, the grounds of the paradise feature a swimming pool and surrounding patio.