【F】One Man’s Quest To Uncover His Prolonged-Misplaced Rolex Submariner

For many individuals, “that individual watch” is one factor we’d have bought to mark an occasion. Perhaps it was a gift. For Tom Place, his specific Rolex Submariner is in the marketplace, someplace, on the bottom of a lake within the US. He is hell-bent on recovering it in some unspecified time in the future.

Some people like carrying their watch in highly effective circumstances and sharing all of life’s adventures with it. The upside to that’s the recollections you may also make with that watch strapped to your wrist. The draw again, as we have now now seen sooner than proper right here on Fratello with a misplaced Rolex and a watch assortment made totally of misplaced watches, is that said watch can ultimately uncover itself detached out of your wrist. For these of us who’ve had this experience, we little query preserve some shred of hope that this watch could possibly be found someday.

Someplace on this lake lies a Rolex Submariner

Tom Place has a day job that features taking all types of risks. “I’ve been blown up, hit by vehicles, and killed in plenty of gunfights over time.” Tom is a stuntman throughout the film and TV commerce with 20 years of experience. These risks embrace chasing Rami Malek as a police officer. “Rami was a terrific dude!” Tom knowledgeable Fratello. “He really said in the beginning of that day that he fully could not get injured. Rami was set to depart the next day to start out out work as the next Bond villain, which was monumental, breaking info. He proceeded to slip and tumble down a dozen steps in Central Park as I was chasing him. I take into accout watching him fall and pondering he fully jinxed points, nonetheless he was excellent. He’s a difficult little man.”

So, how did Tom get there? He knowledgeable us, “I grew up fascinated with movies and movement heroes. I wanted to be Indiana Jones and Rambo. And I wanted Indy’s leather-based jacket and Rambo’s Chronosport. I merely cherished all of it. As soon as I graduated school, I felt like I needed to current the film commerce a shot, and stunts appeared like in all probability probably the most gratifying side of film to get into. In 2007, I was on set, standing subsequent to Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones (in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), and I knew I was making my childhood objectives come true,” Tom said. You’ll see a couple of of his career highlights throughout the gallery beneath.

“I’ve been able to partake in movement sequences from all durations, be it biblical battles to get on the ark in Noah or Tommy-gun shootouts throughout the Twenties in Boardwalk Empire. I’ve been able to keep in plenty of situations and lead many lives. It is one factor I’ve liked,” Tom said.

A connection to Rolex

A self-described watch nut, Tom has been amassing watches since he was 18. This may increasingly very nicely be a story about Tom’s love of carrying attention-grabbing watches at work (he wears all types of watches all through these experiences). Nonetheless it is not. It’s a story about one specific watch that is specific for Tom. We’re proper right here to give attention to his and dearest timepiece, a Rolex Submariner ref. 16610.

In his childhood, Tom’s fascination for watches grew and grew. “I’m a long-time watch man. I started carrying a watch at 4 or 5 years earlier and haven’t stopped since. By the tip of elementary faculty, I probably had 10 watches, which grew to 20-something watches by highschool, and now I’m afraid to rely. It is probably 80 watches or additional,” he said.

Tom’s curiosity in watches has moreover unfold into assorted totally different passions. “In my spare time, yow will uncover me scuba diving, utilizing dirtbikes on wooded mountain trails and motocross tracks, mountaineering the Adirondack Extreme Peaks, and even making wallets and leather-based gadgets in my office at home,” Tom knowledgeable us.

Our story begins with a Rolex Day-Date

The Rolex Day-Date is known as the watch of US presidents. It is significantly of a cultural icon. When Tom was rising up, his father owned one, and the watch left an indelible mark on Tom’s memory. “My father wore the similar Rolex for my full childhood, a gold Day-Date ‘President’ that he bought throughout the Nineteen Seventies when his small agency lastly hit some success. It was his daily beater.

“He wore the watch swimming, painting the house, engaged on vehicles, and so forth. I knew as a toddler I’d want a Rolex as soon as I used to be older. My father swore by his, so I grew up pondering that they had been the right you presumably can get,” he said. The have an effect on from a youthful age was sturdy, so Tom knew he wanted to mark his ascent to maturity with a Rolex watch (ah, simpler situations sooner than wait lists, had been they not?).

A Rolex Submariner for his 18th birthday

It appeared pure, then, that Tom would buy a Rolex for his 18th birthday. The question was: which model? In the long term, attracted by the rugged specs and aesthetic, Tom settled on the Rolex Submariner ref. 16610. “At 18 years earlier, I spent my full life monetary financial savings on a then-brand-new 1996 Rolex Submariner. I even had them ship the watch to my mom or father’s dwelling on account of I couldn’t afford the product sales tax on the watch, and by transport it to a special state, I didn’t should pay the tax. I had the Sub for about six months. We’d journey every summer season at a lake throughout the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, and I’d take it with me,” he recollects.

One fateful day in 1996

On a sort of days throughout the mountains alongside together with his family, Tom would go on to lose the watch. “Sooner or later, via the summer season of ’96, whereas my brother and I had been out on the lake in our boat and had been having some gratifying leaping off into the water, I slipped, and as I fell backward into the water, the clasp caught on one factor, the railing presumably. As my full weight fell backward into the lake, the bracelet busted, and the watch dropped into the water. It’s been on the underside ever since. I’d prefer to know if the clasp busted, or if it was a spring bar attaching the bracelet to the case. Hopefully, I’ll uncover out in some unspecified time in the future,” he said.

Dropping the watch was devastating. “I was so proud of that watch. My life monetary financial savings and what I wanted to current for them had been gone; I couldn’t think about it. I wrote a letter to the fogeys at Rolex, explaining how I was an 18-year-old youngster who spent his life monetary financial savings on one in all their watches and it fell off whereas I was swimming in a lake. I didn’t ask them for one thing nonetheless merely knowledgeable them they could want to beef up their clasp and spring bars.

Rolex ended up getting ahold of me by phone and, after some dialogue, equipped me a discount on a model new Rolex watch. So I begged household and mates for small loans, and I was able to alternate my misplaced Submariner with a Coke-bezel GMT-Grasp II later that 12 months. Nonetheless I always held the thought behind my ideas of finding out to scuba dive and possibly on the lookout for my Submariner in some unspecified time in the future.”

The hunt for his misplaced Rolex Submariner begins

There could be a large time gap between shedding the watch in 1996 and the beginning of Tom’s hunt for it. In precise reality, Tom didn’t begin enthusiastic about a search until 2015 when he acquired his dive certification. Nonetheless planning will be necessary, and in 2018, Tom began researching all of the items he would possibly to help his dives lead to discovering the watch, along with currents, specific gear like underwater metallic detectors, and so forth.

“I knew the underside will be deep, silty muck, and it wouldn’t be easy. I talked to metal-detector nerds, rescue divers, and some old-time treasure-hunting divers, and this all helped me formulate a plan. Diving didn’t begin until spring 2020 when the COVID-19 quarantine saved me out of labor for six months. I lastly had the time to launch what I known as Expedition16610,” he said.

Grit, dedication, and a lot of underwater trash

Starting throughout the spring of 2020, Tom’s efforts intensified to the aim that he now has clocked up larger than 30 hours on the lake flooring looking with an underwater metallic detector. “Usually I scuba dive, and usually I hookah dive, which is surface-supplied air from my boat on the lake’s flooring. I sink weighted markers into the lakebed, each with just a bit yellow donut-sized float that sits merely above the underside.

“I write the date on them, and that’s how I do know what areas I’ve already coated. As quickly as I protected the marker to the underside, I can search a few six-foot-diameter circle spherical it in about an hour. I’m slowly nonetheless definitely masking flooring down there. I haven’t found one thing all that thrilling in addition to for two anchors. In every other case, it’s principally earlier beer cans from the ’70s or rusty fish hooks and bottle caps. Nonetheless I desire to say, ‘If I can uncover a fish hook, I can uncover a watch.’ I’ve extra cash invested in metallic detectors than the watch initially worth! However it certainly’s value it,” he said.

Exploring the watch pastime by his Rolex hunt, along with taking an Omega Speedmaster diving!

One different side of Tom’s hunt for his misplaced Rolex Submariner is that the search has flip into an journey. It permits him to placed on totally different instrument watches, which he gravitates in direction of. “I really desire to placed on my watches whereas diving for the misplaced Rolex, all of the items from my Pelagos LHD to Timexes to my IWC Huge Pilot. I even wore my Hesalite Speedy scuba diving, although it didn’t fare too properly, and it took on some water. Nonetheless, if a watch in my assortment has any measure of water resistance, I’ll give it a shot and take it diving,” he said. All I can say is, as any person who moreover typically dives with a mechanical watch, I share that philosophy of carrying watches in an journey setting. Nonetheless, I’ve to say it was harmful carrying a Speedmaster diving!

Tom’s philosophy is obvious in his watch-collecting journey and life. “Rising up as an adventurous youngster and in the end becoming a stuntman, I’ve had a lot of watches get ripped off my wrist. I had my Omega Planet Ocean come off my wrist as soon as I jumped off a 35-foot-high bridge. This was on account of the drive of the water popped the spring bars correct out.” Thankfully, the watch was later recovered.

Final concepts

Tom’s assortment has seen its honest proportion of scrapes, to make sure. “I’ve had a Luminox, Citizen and one different Omega ripped off my wrist at work all through fight scenes. So that pressured a shift in course of Panerai, CWC, and the Tudor FXD, watches with mounted or screwed bars I do know gained’t come off amid the entire movement. Moreover, being a watch nut all via my childhood, I’d check out every wrist in movies and gravitate in course of the watches the movement heroes wore. I’ve carried that fascination into my career the place I benefit from matching my wristwatch to the character I am collaborating in,” he said.

I can solely applaud Tom’s philosophy in taking the notion of “instrument watches” to the next stage. I hope he does uncover his long-lost Rolex in some unspecified time in the future. And if anyone has found a Submariner 16610 on the bottom of a lake throughout the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, please inform us! Nonetheless what do you assume, Fratelli? Is there a prohibit to how rather a lot punishment you could put a instrument watch by, or do you share the philosophy {{that a}} instrument watch should accompany its proprietor by all of life’s adventures, even once they include being a stuntman? Let me know throughout the suggestions, or you’ll contact me privately on Instagram.