Catalogue entry · Lot 0038
Most Formula One boots leave the paddock in a kit bag. This pair, signed by Jenson Button, left the Basel watch fair in the arms of a watch writer whose card came second out of a Seiko raffle jar.
Background
Seiko became a partner of BAR Honda and of its driver, Jenson Button, in 2005. Every spring the watch industry gathers in Basel for its biggest fair, and in April 2006 Seiko ran a raffle there with a pair of Button’s boots among the prizes. The seller’s account is that they are Button’s boots from that first season of the partnership, the 2005 BAR Honda year.
The seller, a watch writer, had more than a raffle ticket to keep him busy that week. In his account, it was the fair at which Seiko Spring Drive won the first TZ watch of the year award, and he presented it to Seiko’s Shinji Hattori. Then his card was drawn second from the jar, and the boots went home with him. They have been with him ever since.
The lot
A pair of Alpinestars low-cut, race-pattern driving boots in grey suede and black, with red perforated panels, thin rubber soles, Velcro ankle straps and a printed Union Jack on each heel. Both boots are signed in black marker on the outer ankle. The signatures have been compared without adverse indicators.
Inside is the standard Alpinestars size and care label: USA 8 / EUR 40.5, leather upper, textile lining, rubber outsole. The seller describes them as “remarkably small”, which is what a Formula One boot looks like when it is built for a footwell rather than a high street.
Condition
These have done proper work. The toes and suede are scuffed, the soles are marked, and the heel pads and insoles are soiled. Nobody has been keeping them in tissue paper for a shop window.
Provenance
The last photograph in the gallery is the seller’s own, taken at the handover on the Seiko stand in Basel: Button’s helmet sits in a case on a white barrel, and three men in suits stand behind it, one at the microphone. In the seller’s account, Shinji Hattori and Rob Wilson of Seiko are among them.
Rob Wilson worked at Seiko’s European offices in London and Maidenhead from 1981 until 2023, and for the last 25 of those years was European Marketing Director. With the team based at Brackley, he was Seiko’s point person throughout its sponsorship of Honda and Jenson Button. In November 2026 he wrote to the seller: “I well remember the whole Jenson Button story as I was quite deeply involved in its implementation… I am happy to confirm that you won the boots at the raffle.”
There is no certificate with the boots, and there is no FIA label or driver code inside the tongues. What there is: a named event, a handover photograph, and a letter from the Seiko executive who ran the partnership.
Collection and despatch
Despatch is arranged directly between the seller and the buyer after the sale.