Sean Connery wears a Gruen Precision

Neither watch in Dr. No (1962) was purchased by the production. The budget was tight enough that producer Cubby Broccoli loaned his own Rolex Submariner 6538 for the action scenes, and Connery wore what is believed to be his personal Gruen Precision 510 for the casino and indoor sequences. Terence Young directed the first Bond film, set in Jamaica, with Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman as the title villain, and Jack Lord as Felix Leiter. Ian Fleming's novel had established Bond as a Rolex man, but for the dressed-up scenes at the gaming table, Connery reached for this instead.

The Gruen Precision 510 is a small gold manual-wind dress watch from the 1950s. Gruen was an American company founded in Cincinnati in 1894 by Dietrich Gruen, and by the time Dr. No was filming, the brand was already in decline. The watch is modest: gold case, simple dial, no complications. It is not the kind of watch you associate with Bond, which is precisely why it worked for the scenes where Bond needs to look like money without looking like he is trying. A Rolex Submariner at a baccarat table in 1962 would have been too sporty. The Gruen kept things right.

Connery wore this Gruen across six Bond films: Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, and Diamonds Are Forever. It shows up in tuxedo scenes and hotel rooms while the Submariner handles the diving and the fighting. Nobody involved in the production documented which watch Connery wore in which scene, but Bond-watch historian Dell Deaton traced the gold dress watch to the Gruen Precision 510, and that identification is now the accepted one.