Patek Philippe wristwatch sets new auction record

If you’ve got the cash, then clearly there’s no time like the present to snap up a rare multi-million dollar watch. This was clearly the thinking at the recent Geneva auction of a rare Patek Philippe stainless steel timepiece, with the final bid offering up a mammoth sum of nearly US$11 million.

The value of this particular timepiece is down to both its rarity – with only three examples known to still exist – and its historical significance. When the watchmaker introduced the 1518 series in the early 1940s, it was believed to be the first perpetual calendar watch – that is, the first to have both a stop-watch function and calendar designed to keep track of the dates for centuries to come, even taking into account leap years.

This particular watch – a 1943 model from the Swiss company’s 1518 series – sold recently for 11,002,000 Swiss francs (HK$84.3 million) following a lively 13-minute bidding war, with would-be owners jostling to snap up the piece as a timely addition to their watch collections. According to Phillips, the undoubtedly delighted auction house, the eventual price was triple the pre-sale estimate and a “world record for any wristwatch at auction.” The identity of neither the buyer nor the seller has been revealed.