This infographic was provided from the good people over at Jamessamson.co.uk, check them out.
So if you total this up it comes out to over 75$ million, wouldn’t mind that as part of my collection if I’m honest. If I were to pick my favourite I would have to go for the 1949 Patek Philippe stainless steel perpetual calendar wristwatch for 4.1$ million. Sadly, last time I checked I still didn’t have that sort of money in my bank. Check out these other pictures of it below.
Quite the beauty isn’t it?
As I’ve known for sometime Patek Philippe tends to dominate the ultra luxury watch arena having plenty of watches sold in the millions. It’s no surprise that out of the 24 most expensive watches sold at auction they were responsible for 18 of them.
Now onto that watch at number one. The Henry Graves “Super complication” what really makes a watch this expensive, and what are these complications mentioned?
It’s actually very impressive, the watch has 24 “complications” utilizing 900 parts and remains one of the most complicated watches ever build without the use of computers. A “complication” is any extra features on a watch that isn’t just telling the time. There are 5 categories I’m going to use to list these down for you, here we go –
Timekeeping
- The hours, minutes and seconds of sidereal time (3)
- The equation of time
- The time of sunset and sunrise (2)
Calendar
- The age and phases of the moon
- The stars chart
- The months
- The days of the week
- The days of the month
- Perpetual Calendar
The Chime
- The “Grande sonnerie” (Westminster chimes) with carillon
- The alarm
- The minute-repeater
- The “Petite sonnerie” with carillon
Chronograph (Stopwatch)
- The Chronograph
- Split seconds
- The 12 hour recorder
- The 30 minute recorder
Other Functions
- The three-way setting system
- The twin barrel differential winding
- The striking train up/down indication
- The going train up-down indication
You have to admit that is a damn impressive achievement without the use of computers right? And this was commissioned back in 1925 and was finally delivered by 1933, I wouldn’t mind waiting that long for something amazing.
It’s a piece of watch making art in my eyes. You can see why it went at auction in 1999 for $11 million.
Fun little last fact about this watch for you to take away with you, it was last wound in 1969 and it’s still working.
I hope you all found this an enjoyable read, please do comment below letting me know which one you would have gone for if you could have any one you wanted.
