Dubbed "The Unicorn" because of the singular rarity of existence, the 1971 Rolex Daytona Reference 6265 crafted in 18-karat white gold has just been sold at a Phillips auction for 5,937,500 CHF.

It is now the second most expensive Rolex ever sold publicly, after Paul Newman's own Paul Newman Daytona, which sold for $17.75 million last year, at Phillips in New York.

Made in 1970 and then sold to an important German retailer the following year, Phillips explained the watch was probably the most extravagant model of the Daytona series ever created by Rolex itself. The Unicorn's existence was legendary and few people in the industry had even known about it until it was revealed in 2013 that famed collector John Goldberger had acquired the watch.