One Man’s Ongoing Quest To Find His Long-Lost Rolex Submariner

For many of us, “that special watch” is something we may have bought to mark an occasion. Perhaps it was a gift. For Tom Place, his special Rolex Submariner is out there, somewhere, at the bottom of a lake in the United States. He is hell-bent on recovering it one day.

Some people like wearing their watch in tough conditions and sharing all of life’s adventures with it. The upside to this is the memories you can make with that watch strapped to your wrist. The downside, as we have seen before here on Fratello with a lost Rolex and a watch collection made entirely of lost watches, is that said watch can somehow find itself detached from your wrist. For those of us who have had this experience, we no doubt hold some shred of hope that this watch can be found someday.

Somewhere in this lake lies a Rolex Submariner

Tom Place has a day job that involves taking all sorts of risks. “I’ve been blown up, hit by cars, and killed in many gunfights over the years.” Tom is a stuntman in the film and TV industry with 20 years of experience. Those risks include chasing Rami Malek as a police officer. “Rami was a great dude!” Tom told Fratello. “He actually said at the beginning of that day that he absolutely could not get injured. Rami was set to leave the next day to start work as the next Bond villain, which was huge, breaking news. He proceeded to slip and tumble down a dozen steps in Central Park as I was chasing him. I remember watching him fall and thinking he totally jinxed things, but he was fine. He’s a tough little guy.”

So, how did Tom get there? He told us, “I grew up fascinated with movies and action heroes. I wanted to be Indiana Jones and Rambo. And I wanted Indy’s leather jacket and Rambo’s Chronosport. I just loved it all. When I graduated college, I felt like I needed to give the film industry a shot, and stunts seemed like the most fun aspect of film to get into. In 2007, I was on set, standing next to Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones (in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), and I knew I was making my childhood dreams come true,” Tom said. You can see some of his career highlights in the gallery below.

“I’ve been able to partake in action sequences from all periods, be it biblical battles to get on the ark in Noah or Tommy-gun shootouts in the 1920s in Boardwalk Empire. I’ve been able to live in many times and lead many lives. It is something I have enjoyed,” Tom said.

A connection to Rolex

A self-described watch nut, Tom has been collecting watches since he was 18. This could be a story about Tom’s love of wearing interesting watches at work (he wears all sorts of watches during these experiences). But it is not. This is a story about one specific watch that is special for Tom. We’re here to highlight 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 guy. I started wearing a watch at four or five years old and haven’t stopped since. By the end of elementary school, I probably had 10 watches, which grew to 20-something watches by high school, and now I’m afraid to count. It is probably 80 watches or more,” he said.

Tom’s interest in watches has also spread into various other passions. “In my spare time, you can find me scuba diving, riding dirtbikes on wooded mountain trails and motocross tracks, hiking the Adirondack High Peaks, and even making wallets and leather goods in my office at home,” Tom told us.

Our story begins with a Rolex Day-Date

The Rolex Day-Date is known as the watch of US presidents. It is somewhat of a cultural icon. When Tom was growing up, his father owned one, and the watch left an indelible mark on Tom’s memory. “My father wore the same Rolex for my entire childhood, a gold Day-Date ‘President’ that he bought in the 1970s when his small company finally hit some success. It was his daily beater.

“He wore the watch swimming, painting the house, working on cars, and so on. I knew as a kid I’d want a Rolex when I was older. My father swore by his, so I grew up thinking they were the best you could get,” he said. The influence from a young age was strong, so Tom knew he had to mark his ascent to adulthood with a Rolex watch (ah, simpler times before wait lists, were they not?).

A Rolex Submariner for his 18th birthday

It seemed natural, then, that Tom would buy a Rolex for his 18th birthday. The question was: which model? In the end, attracted by the rugged specs and aesthetic, Tom settled on the Rolex Submariner ref. 16610. “At 18 years old, I spent my entire life savings on a then-brand-new 1996 Rolex Submariner. I even had them ship the watch to my parent’s house because I couldn’t afford the sales tax on the watch, and by shipping it to another state, I didn’t have to pay the tax. I had the Sub for about six months. We’d vacation every summer at a lake in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, and I would take it with me,” he recalls.

One fateful day in 1996

On one of those days in the mountains with his family, Tom would go on to lose the watch. “One day, during the summer of ’96, while my brother and I were out on the lake in our boat and were having some fun jumping off into the water, I slipped, and as I fell backward into the water, the clasp caught on something, the railing maybe. As my full weight fell backward into the lake, the bracelet busted, and the watch dropped into the water. It’s been on the bottom ever since. I’d love to know if the clasp busted, or if it was a spring bar attaching the bracelet to the case. Hopefully, I’ll find out one day,” he said.

Losing the watch was devastating. “I was so proud of that watch. My life savings and what I had to show for them were gone; I couldn’t believe it. I wrote a letter to the folks at Rolex, explaining how I was an 18-year-old kid who spent his life savings on one of their watches and it fell off while I was swimming in a lake. I didn’t ask them for anything but just told them they might want to beef up their clasp and spring bars.

Rolex ended up getting ahold of me by phone and, after some discussion, offered me a discount on a new Rolex watch. So I begged friends and family for small loans, and I was able to replace my lost Submariner with a Coke-bezel GMT-Master II later that year. But I always held the idea in the back of my mind of learning to scuba dive and perhaps trying to find my Submariner one day.”

The hunt for his lost Rolex Submariner begins

There would be a significant time gap between losing the watch in 1996 and the beginning of Tom’s hunt for it. In fact, Tom didn’t start considering a search until 2015 when he got his dive certification. But planning would be necessary, and in 2018, Tom began researching everything he could to help his dives lead to finding the watch, including currents, specific gear like underwater metal detectors, and so on.

“I knew the bottom would 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 commence until spring 2020 when the COVID-19 quarantine kept me out of work for six months. I finally had the time to launch what I called Expedition16610,” he said.

Grit, determination, and a lot of underwater trash

Starting in the spring of 2020, Tom’s efforts intensified to the point that he now has clocked up more than 30 hours on the lake floor searching with an underwater metal detector. “Sometimes I scuba dive, and sometimes I hookah dive, which is surface-supplied air from my boat on the lake’s surface. I sink weighted markers into the lakebed, each with a little yellow donut-sized float that sits just above the bottom.

“I write the date on them, and that’s how I know what areas I’ve already covered. Once I secure the marker to the bottom, I can search about a six-foot-diameter circle around it in about an hour. I’m slowly but surely covering ground down there. I haven’t found anything all that exciting except for two anchors. Otherwise, it’s mostly old beer cans from the ’70s or rusty fish hooks and bottle caps. But I like to say, ‘If I can find a fish hook, I can find a watch.’ I have more money invested in metal detectors than the watch originally cost! But it’s worth it,” he said.

Exploring the watch hobby through his Rolex hunt, including taking an Omega Speedmaster diving!

Another aspect of Tom’s hunt for his lost Rolex Submariner is that the search has become an adventure. It allows him to wear other tool watches, which he gravitates toward. “I certainly like to wear my watches while diving for the lost Rolex, everything from my Pelagos LHD to Timexes to my IWC Big Pilot. I even wore my Hesalite Speedy scuba diving, although it didn’t fare too well, and it took on some water. But, if a watch in my collection has any measure of water resistance, I’ll give it a shot and take it diving,” he said. All I can say is, as someone who also regularly dives with a mechanical watch, I share that philosophy of wearing watches in an adventure setting. Still, I must say it was risky wearing a Speedmaster diving!

Tom’s philosophy is evident in his watch-collecting journey and life. “Growing up as an adventurous kid and eventually 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 when I jumped off a 35-foot-high bridge. This was because the force of the water popped the spring bars right out.” Thankfully, the watch was later recovered.

Final thoughts

Tom’s collection has seen its fair share of scrapes, to be sure. “I’ve had a Luminox, Citizen and another Omega ripped off my wrist at work during fight scenes. So that forced a shift towards Panerai, CWC, and the Tudor FXD, watches with fixed or screwed bars I know won’t come off amid all the action. Also, being a watch nut throughout my childhood, I would look at every wrist in movies and gravitate towards the watches the action heroes wore. I’ve carried that fascination into my career where I enjoy matching my wristwatch to the character I am playing,” he said.

I can only applaud Tom’s philosophy in taking the notion of “tool watches” to the next level. I hope he does find his long-lost Rolex one day. And if anyone has found a Submariner 16610 at the bottom of a lake in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, please let us know! But what do you think, Fratelli? Is there a limit to how much punishment you should put a tool watch through, or do you share the philosophy that a tool watch should accompany its owner through all of life’s adventures, even if they involve being a stuntman? Let me know in the comments, or you can contact me privately on Instagram.