Auctioneer Mr Aurel Bacs talks us through the timepieces in his own collection that he could never sell.

It’s 6.00pm, 26 October 2017, the Phillips auction house, Park Avenue, New York. Seven hundred watch enthusiasts from around the world – your correspondent and his boss among them – have gathered for the most hotly anticipated vintage watch auction ever conducted. Those of us without a bidding paddle are here for one reason: to see Mr Paul Newman’s iconic “Paul Newman” Rolex Daytona potentially fetch the highest price ever for a wristwatch. Everyone is asking the same questions. How much will it sell for? And to whom?

The thrum of electricity in the room rises as we rattle through the undercard before the arrival of the heavyweight champion, lot number eight, the world’s most covetable vintage watch. Up on the rostrum, Mr Aurel Bacs, the man with the hammer, is in his element. Or so it seems. “It was the most stressful auction in my entire career,” the auctioneer later admits to MR PORTER. “I don’t think I slept more than two, three, four hours the nights before the auction. Only caffeine and adrenaline kept me going.”

Mr Bacs has not even finished opening the bidding when he is interrupted by one of his own staff, Ms Tiffany To, who is representing a registered telephone bidder. “Ten million dollars, sir.”

The room gasps as one. The usually unflappable Mr Bacs rocks on his heels, momentarily stunned. “Never ever in my life did I expect Tiffany to throw out a $10m starting bid. I was prepared for everything, everything. If you had told me that the lights were going out, yes I was prepared. But not for that,” he says later. “To me it felt an hour, but it was probably only 10 or 20 seconds to think what I’m going to say, what I’m going to do. The first thing I realised was that $10m was a new world record for any Rolex – and for any wristwatch.” With the buyer’s premium, the previous record of $11m set in 2016 for a stainless steel Patek Philippe Ref 1518 had already been eclipsed.

Within seconds, 25 of the 28 registered bidders have been wiped out. The only hands in the air belong to people filming proceedings on their phones. The anonymous three remaining bidders duke it out remotely via their representatives. Having recovered his composure, Mr Bacs conducts the rest of the auction with consummate flair, a masterclass in improv to fill the long pauses between bids, diffusing the tension with gentle humour. “How is your telephone bidder?” he asks. “What would he like to do now? Go to dinner, maybe drinks?”

Finally, Mr Bacs raises his gavel aloft and brings it down theatrically to declare the winner. “It is history now! Fifteen million, five hundred thousand.” Factoring in the buyer’s premium, the final sale price is a new world record: $17,752,500.

The market for vintage watches has rocketed in the past few years, in large part thanks to the influence of Mr Bacs. “For the past decade and a half, he has not only become the single most significant auctioneer in the watch world, but he has also crafted and shaped the entire culture of vintage watch collecting,” says Mr Wei Koh, founder of Revolution watch magazine, who was in the front row with a paddle.

Having worked for all the most prestigious auction houses, Mr Bacs and his wife, Ms Livia Russo, herself a respected watch specialist, founded their own company, Bacs & Russo, in 2014. They met at Sotheby’s, married at Phillips and had their daughter while at Christie’s. After a decade at Christie’s, during which they oversaw a growth in watch sales from $8m in 2003 to $127m in 2013, he is now working in association with Phillips once again.

For Mr Bacs, vintage watches are an obsession more than a profession. Although he makes a living from selling them, there are some pieces in his own personal collection with which he will never part. Each one marks a key moment – from the IWC Schaffhausen he bought with his father to commemorate his first communion at age 13, to the A. Lange & Söhne he received on his wedding day, to the Rolex Daytona he was wearing when he sold Mr Newman’s watch. In this short film – call it an Aurel history, perhaps a Bacs story – he talks through his life in timepieces.