Stefan Osdene, of Madison, stores some of his most prized watches at a Madison-area bank. Osdene recently sold a gold Omega Speedmaster watch formerly owned by Neil Armstrong, fetching an auction price of around $2.1 million.
Stefan Osdene had some time to kill before meeting a friend on a trip to Ohio. So he stopped in a restaurant for a bowl of Cincinnati’s famous Skyline Chili, then paid a visit to a local coin shop to look around.
Stefan Osdene found astronaut Neil Armstrong's gold Omega Speedmaster by happenstance at a coin shop in Ohio.
A Hamilton wristwatch at the coin shop caught his eye, and Osdene, a vintage and contemporary watch dealer and collector who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, bought it for $300.
“Then the guy said, ‘Oh, I’ve got something cool in the safe,’” Osdene recalled.
It was a gold Omega Speedmaster watch – engraved with the name of American astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon. It also bore the words, “To mark man’s conquest of space with time, through time, on time.”
“I saw Neil Armstrong’s name on the back, but I believed at that point it was a commemorative watch” that anyone could buy as a souvenir of America’s moon mission, Osdene said. “I’d never focused on old Speedmasters. I’d never owned one."
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Osdene gave the shop owner “a very, very decent price on that watch,” thinking he could make a 25% return if he resold it, he said. Half an hour later, he texted pictures of the Omega to a friend, who asked about the serial number.
“I said it’s serial number 17,” Osdene recounted.
“He said, ‘You know – you found Neil Armstrong’s Omega Speedmaster.’ I just couldn’t believe it. I was in shock.”
It was indeed the real thing. Three years later, with the watch verified and the Armstrong family contacted, the watch sold for $2.125 million at auction.
The April 17 sale was widely reported in the press, but without revealing the seller’s name or how or where he purchased the watch. At the Wisconsin State Journal's request, Osdene supplied paperwork verifying that he was the seller and he agreed to tell his story.
Stefan Osdene unpacks some of his watch collection from lockboxes stored at a Madison-area bank. Some of his sentimental favorites include sleek wristwatches from the 1950s and '60s, soldiers' watches worn in the trenches, and those manufactured during the heyday of fine American watch-making in Illinois cities such as Rockford, Springfield and Elgin.
The auction price of the watch set a new world record for an astronaut’s timepiece, said Bobby Livingston, executive vice president of New Hampshire-based RR Auction, which handled the sale.
"This Omega Speedmaster was more than just a watch — it was a piece of the Apollo legacy,” Livingston said via email. “The global attention it received highlighted its importance, not only as a watch but as a symbol of exploration and achievement.”
Joy of the artistry
Osdene has been fascinated by watches since he was about five years old. (“I learned to read by reading watch catalogs,” he says.)
He also loves antique electric fans, which led an appearance on the popular History Channel show “American Pickers” in 2015. The hosts at the time, Frank Fritz and Mike Wolfe, purchased an Edison Electric Pen, the forerunner of the tattoo pen, from Osdene at his Madison home.
Osdene grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and came to Madison for graduate school. His most prized watch in his vast collection is the platinum A. Lange & Söhne datograph that his late father, a Holocaust survivor from the Czech Republic, gave him when he graduated from Cornell University.
Now he keeps the Lange and other personal treasures locked up at a Madison-area bank. A few of the lockboxes hold watches he’d consider selling. But many are too beloved and sentimental to give up. Among them are engraved pocket watches that belonged to Henry Uihlein, longtime president of the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, and meat industry legend Oscar Mayer (dated 1928). Other favorites of his include sleek Patek Philippe watches from the 1950s and '60s, and a wristwatch designed to be worn in the trenches in World War I.
Most of Madison watch collector Stefan Osdene's customers include other watch collectors, he said. Though he deals in fine watches every day, he is still in awe of the beauty, craftsmanship and sense of history found in vintage timepieces.
“None of these are for sale. I sell a lot of watches, but this is my own personal collection,” he said. “It’s not about the money — it’s about the enjoyment of the artistry. I just love these things. They’re just gorgeous, beautiful objects, and they have a story to tell.”
As for finding Armstrong's watch, “It was so random," he said. "I was in the right place at the right time.”
Where Armstrong got his watch
Armstrong was presented with his 18-karat gold Omega Speedmaster Professional at a gala dinner in Houston shortly after his moon mission. More than two dozen astronauts in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs also received gold Speedmasters, as well as then-President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew .
The Omega Speedmaster made for astronaut Neil Armstrong is engraved with his name as well as the words "Gemini 8," his first spaceflight, and "Apollo 11," his moonwalk mission.
The watches were modeled after the Speedmasters made from stainless steel that U.S. astronauts actually wore into space. Those watches belong to the U.S. Government and, according to Smithsonian Magazine, Armstrong’s stainless steel Speedmaster is housed at the National Air and Space Museum.
Armstrong, who died in 2012, reportedly wore his honorary gold Speedmaster frequently for special events. It can be seen in a number of photos of the astronaut dressed in street clothes. But Osdene still doesn’t know how it ended up in a coin shop in Ohio, Armstrong’s home state.
In an agreement with Armstrong’s son Mark, part of the proceeds from the sale of the watch went to the Armstrong family foundation to support causes that Neil Armstrong cared about. Proceeds from the sale also benefited the Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation, which provides college scholarships for students in northeastern Wisconsin and elsewhere. The auction house also took its cut.
“And I did very well. I’m very lucky to have found it,” he said. Osdene doesn’t know the identity of the buyer, but was told the watch stayed in the U.S.
Though he didn't want to discuss specific numbers, Osdene said he decided to sell the Speedmaster because “it made a huge financial difference for quite a few people. Over half a million dollars went to charity, so a lot of goodness came from it, not just benefiting me but benefiting other people,” he said.
American astronaut Neil Armstrong takes a boat trip on the River Seine in Paris in July 1979 during production of a TV show celebrating the 10th anniversary of his historic first walk on the moon. The watch he is wearing in the photo was found in an Ohio coin shop by a Madison collector and recently sold at auction for more than $2.1 million.
Back on that day in 2021, when he first discovered he owned a piece of world — and lunar — history, “I was bewildered," he said.
"I didn’t know anything about it,” he said of Armstrong’s watch. “It hadn’t been seen in many years.”
‘The stuff finds me’
Osdene, the father of two, lives on Madison’s Near West Side. He has a shop in nearby Cambridge, Wisconsin, that caters to other serious collectors and dealers but is not open to the general public.
Osdene earned a bachelor's degree with three majors: history, American studies and the College Scholar Program, where he had a concentration in material culture studies.
Stefan Osdene tries on Vacheron Constantin watches from his collection that are stored at a bank in the Madison area. Osdene has been fascinated with watches since he was 5 years old. "I learned to read by reading watch catalogs," he said.
He earned a master’s degree and PhD in art history from UW-Madison, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation about the cultural, social and technological history of neon signs in America. But after a year teaching art history at UW-Oshkosh, he changed course and decided to turn his passion for collecting and selling antiques into a full-time career.
Today Osdene, 43, relies on a vast network of other collectors and dealers for many of his valuable finds.
“The stuff finds me more than I find it at this point,” he said.
Osdene is also setting up his own watchmaking company after buying the rights to the names of Albert H. Potter and Charles Fasoldt, two ground-breaking 19th-century American watchmakers. He’s partnered with Matthew Fasoldt, a direct descendant of Charles Fasoldt, and hired a team of engineers and craftspeople in Madison and upstate New York.
“We’ve almost got our prototype finished” and hope to start manufacturing five to 10 handmade, high-end watches annually starting in 2026 or 2027, he said.
“There’s a resurgence in American watchmaking, and that’s the idea, to be a part of that.”
We all know Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to set foot on the moon in 1969, but how many people have walked on the lunar surface in total?
