This is an edition of the newsletter Box + Papers, Cam Wolf’s weekly deep dive into the world of watches. Sign up here.
As far as table-setting events go in the watch industry, few hold more weight and importance than the Geneva auction season. If Watches and Wonders sets the tone for modern pieces, the big sales at houses like Christie’s, Phillips, Sotheby’s, and Antiquorum help crystallize what is happening in the vintage world. As Sacha Davidoff, one half of the beloved Geneva-based vintage watch shop Roy & Sacha Davidoff, once told me that, compared to Watches and Wonders, “The Geneva auctions are much, much, much, much, much, much, much bigger because there’s vintage being sold. We probably do 10 to 20, maybe even 30 times more business.” Earlier this week, the watch world convened in Geneva for this fall’s big auctions.
I was keeping an even more watchful eye than usual on these events. because, falling sales have everyone involved in the business sounding alarm bells. So I was interested to see what’s selling, why, and how pieces beyond the big-dollar headliners were faring. There was even some optimism: “It was an encouraging weekend for everyone involved,” Adam Golden, of Menta Watches, told me.
But first a word on those headliners. No two watches were bigger than a unique Breguet and F.P. Journe. The FPJ was the second Journe ever made, and the first he put to market, that went for more than $8 million. The Breguet perpetual calendar that sold for over $2 million is especially cool because of its importance to watch history: it’s probably the first-ever watch with a perpetual calendar and retrograde date display (which arcs across the dial before springing back to its starting point rather than making a full rotation). Coco Chanel’s lover Paul Iribe originally owned this Breguet in the ‘30s!
Both the Journe and Breguet came up plenty as I touched base with a half-dozen dealers this week about this week’s auctions. But rather than get these experts to gush about their diamond of the season, I asked which piece was the most important or revealing result about the current shape of the watch world. Here are their answers.
