The popular story was that Sir Stirling Moss didn’t like wearing a leather or linked strap on a watch because it invariably got soiled by grime, either when he was at the wheel in a race or mucking about in the pits.
His watch strap of choice was a solid-gold, twin-bar bracelet (pictured here and below on his wrist) that was easy to clean. It was interchangeable, too, so it fitted the various watches he wore throughout his career.
The bracelet was a key part of Moss’ watch-wearing history, worn in numerous races and at important social events for 38 years.
Now, six months after Moss’ death in England at age 90, the bracelet, engraved with the initial ‘SM’, is being auctioned in England as part of the ‘Sir Stirling Moss OBE Collection.’
It comes with a handwritten letter from the vendor, Peter Ratcliffe, a longtime friend of Moss, detailing how the bracelet and attached Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox alarm watch were given to him by Moss in 1996.
Ratcliffe writes that Moss told him the alarm on the watch “came in handy if I was jet-lagged or I fancied a nap in between races. Problem was I couldn’t hear it because of all the noise of the other cars, but it’s a bloody nice watch.”
The Moss collection is being auctioned on November 14 by Warwickshire house Silverstone Auctions.
