Mel Gibson wears a Rado Chronograph (prop replica)

Conrad Stonebanks wears two watches in The Expendables 3 (2014), and this is the one with paperwork. When Heritage auctioned the production's wardrobe in October 2014, the lot tagged Conrad Hero 1 held the villain's entire kit: a blue Gap t-shirt, a John Varvatos goat suede sport coat, a rubber Colt .45 with engraved detailing, a plastic medallion distressed to look like old silver and stamped with the Colombian coat of arms, and a replica Rado Chronograph in high tech ceramic. The arms dealer who terrorizes the film was dressed off the rack, with a fake gun, a fake medal and a fake watch.

Mel Gibson plays Stonebanks as the Expendables' disgraced co-founder, presumed dead and very much in business, and the watch with the paper trail is the one in the revolver still: chrome pistol up by his shoulder, maroon shirt, and on his left wrist a dark cased chronograph on a bracelet of black links with polished centers, the high tech ceramic look the auction description points to and not the steel Breitling the watch press spotted on him elsewhere in the film. The production carried at least two fake watches for the character; a later prop sale catalogued a polished steel replica Breitling Navitimer as Stonebanks' timepiece, mechanicals untested.

A replica built for a costume has no genuine reference to name. What joins the auctioned watch to the wrist in the frame is visual consistency rather than a document: the lot says ceramic Rado, the still shows a dark chronograph with the right bracelet, and nothing in writing connects them more tightly than that.