Tom Hanks wears an Elgin Pocket Watch

Cast Away is a film about a man and a clock. Chuck Noland, played by Tom Hanks, is a FedEx engineer who lives by the stopwatch until his plane goes down in the Pacific and strands him on an island where time stops meaning anything. The one timepiece he keeps is not a watch he wears but one he carries: an Elgin pocket watch, a Christmas gift from Kelly, the woman he means to come home to.

The watch holds her photograph inside the case, and that picture, more than the gold or the floral engraving, is the reason he keeps it through everything that follows. The piece Propstore sold was built by the production to look the part, a faux-gold Elgin labeled as such, tarnished and water-damaged on purpose so it would read as years lost at sea. It is the rare movie watch that matters for what is inside it rather than what is on the dial.