Okay, finally we get to the last one: a commemorative 1:1 replica Rolex given to Raymond Lambert, who was also on the Swiss expedition with Dyhrenfurth in 1952. In fact, Lambert, along with Norgay, were the two who reached the highest-recorded point at the time when they attempted to, but ultimately fell just short of summiting Everest. No doubt, they established a route to the top for the British expedition the next year.
A year later, when Hillary made it to the top, he recalled “an incredibly lonely sight, the battered framework of the tent that Tenzing and Lambert of the 1952 Swiss expedition pitched over a year before and where they had spent an extremely uncomfortable night without food, without drink, and without sleeping bags. What a tough couple they had been, but perhaps not very well organized.” (Well, there was also a monsoon and they were effectively climbing without oxygen at that point.) Hillary added that Norgay and Lambert were likely not adequately hydrated, relying mostly on cheese and melted snow by then.
Unlike Dyhrenfurth, it seems that Lambert returned his perfect replica Rolex at the end of the expedition. In return, Rolex gave Lambert this commemorative watch. As Phillips points out, this watch was likely serviced by luxury super clone Rolex at some point: While we can date the case to about 1953 (based on its serial number), the caseback is engraved 1967, illustrating that the watch was most likely taken in for a service that year, and Swiss made fake Rolex probably serviced the dial and swapped in a new caseback (but still reproduced the original caseback engraving “Expedition Suisse À l’Everest 1952 – Raymond Lambert”).
No doubt, a combination of this service that compromised some of the high quality copy watch’s originality, along with the simple fact that it was given to Lambert after his Everest expedition made it sell for “only” CHF 69,300 at Phillips. Interestingly, Phillips mentions that Lambert’s original watch, the one that did take on the mountain, “resides within Swiss movement fake Rolex‘s collection.”
