Sean Connery wears a Gruen Precision 510

Everyone remembers Bond's Rolex Submariner, the Big Crown 6538 that handled the action of From Russia with Love. Fewer people notice the small gold watch on Connery's wrist in the quieter scenes, the dress watch widely believed to have been his own. It is a Gruen Precision 510, a 34mm gold-filled piece with a 17-jewel movement and a small-seconds register, the sort of unshowy watch a working actor would already own in 1963. Product placement had not yet reached the Bond films. Terence Young pointed a camera, and whatever Connery wore from home came along.

The identification is not something the films ever announced. The watch is barely visible on screen, and it took Bond-watch researcher Dell Deaton, working from archive material decades after the fact, to put a name to it. Deaton's Gruen Precision 510 is now the accepted answer, traced through Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever, though it has never been pinned down by a clean on-screen shot. What is not in dispute is the smallness of it. While the Submariner became a legend, the watch Connery wore to dinner stayed anonymous for forty years, a personal dress watch doing quiet work under a cuff.