Leonardo DiCaprio wears a Seiko SNE057

On his first day as a Wall Street broker, a 22-year-old Jordan Belfort is taken to lunch by his new boss, a senior salesman played by Matthew McConaughey, who wears the watch of the 1980s, a two-tone Rolex Datejust. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Belfort, and the watch on his own wrist could not be further from his boss's. It is a Seiko Solar, a cheap solar-powered quartz on a stretch band, the SNE057. You can read its day-date window in the lunch scene. And there is one more thing, easy to miss: he is wearing it on his right wrist, the only time in the whole film he does.

The Seiko is so forgettable that it almost went unrecorded. The film's prop master, Robert R. Griffon Jr., had to point it out before anyone tallying the movie's watches noticed it was there. Belfort at the start has next to nothing, and the Seiko is the kind of watch a 22-year-old on his first day could actually afford.

Something shinier arrives. As Belfort gets rich, the Seiko gives way to gold: first a TAG Heuer 1000 Professional that reads at a glance like a yellow-gold Rolex GMT-Master but is only gold-plated, then a real 18-karat gold TAG Heuer 2000 with diamonds set into the bezel, a watch that cost around 40,000 dollars. DiCaprio was a TAG Heuer ambassador, which is how the brand got onto Belfort's wrist in the first place. The Seiko is the watch from before the money.