Passion Investments: Watches
The Knack of Time
Jill Newman
08/01/2005

The world’s most valuable timepiece has been missing since April 15, 1983, when thieves broke into the L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem and stole 57 watches made by Abraham-Louis Breguet. Among these was one that Breguet made for Marie-Antoinette and which was the most complicated watch of its time.

A PATEK Philippe watch made for James Ward Packard.
In Marie-Antoinette’s quest for ingenious and extravagant toys, she challenged the Swiss master watchmaker to create a self-winding watch and a perpetual repeating calendar model. While imprisoned before her execution, in fact, she ordered a quarter-repeating watch that was delivered to her cell. But it was believed to be an amorous officer in her guard who commissioned the priceless watch known as the Marie-Antoinette. The Breguet workshop spent 44 years constructing this technical marvel, which boasted a perpetual calendar that adjusts automatically for 30- and 31-day months and leap years, a chiming repeater for the hour, quarter-hour and minutes, a thermometer, a power-reserve indicator and a chronograph. The Marie-Antoinette, completed in 1827, 34 years after the queen’s death, remained with the Breguet family until 1887, when Spencer Burton purchased it for 600 pounds. It changed hands twice more before Breguet collector David Lionel Salomons acquired it. Upon his death in 1925, he left his collection to his daughter, Vera, a philanthropist and aficionado of Middle Eastern cultures, who donated the famed watch to the ill-fated museum.

Marie-Antoinette helped raise the craft of horology to new heights through her relationship with Breguet, which began in 1782 when she heard about a new watchmaker from Neufchâtel, France, who opened a shop in Paris. Breguet was more than just a mechanical genius; he was also a savvy marketer who knew that the best way to become successful in the 18th century was to serve the royal court and remain in the good graces of the extravagant Marie-Antoinette. Her precious Breguet timepieces, however, were confiscated when revolutionaries sacked the royal palace. The watches never reappeared. Today we know of them only through records in the Breguet archives.

VALUE JUDGMENT
For centuries,
the craft of fine watchmaking has been advanced
by patrons who commission bespoke timepieces. The best of these intricate models command high-six-figure values on the rare occasions that they are for sale. Today only the most elite buyers can request a custom watch; watchmakers are wary of those who intend to flip the timepiece at auction for profit.
If the 1827 Marie-Antoinette watch ever resurfaces for sale, it will most certainly surpass the highest price ever paid at auction for a timepiece. No one in the watch auction houses of the world is willing to offer a guess at its value. The current record price was paid for a watch known as the Graves Supercomplication; it sold for $11 million at Sotheby’s in 1999 to an anonymous buyer. Henry Graves Jr., the noted American banker, commissioned it from his favored watchmaker, Patek Philippe. Completed in 1933 and boasting 24 complications, the watch held the distinction of being the world’s most intricate timepiece for more than 50 years, until Patek introduced its Caliber 89 in 1989. Comprised of 900 parts, including 110 wheels, the Supercomplication features a perpetual calendar, celestial chart, moonphase, chronograph and a Westminster-style chime alarm.

Daryn Schnipper, Sotheby’s international director of watches, considers the Graves watch the most enigmatic watch ever made. “It’s hard to believe the human mind could create this watch without the use of computers,” she says. “It’s always been considered Patek’s most important watch because it served as the model for all its future complications, including the famous Sky Moon Tourbillon.”

Patronizing Appeals
Marie-Antoinette and Graves, though more than a century apart, both lived during eras when watchmakers relied on the patronage of ambitious, demanding clients. Their ingenious fantasies pushed the limits of traditional watchmakers, and they undoubtedly appreciated the challenge and desperately needed the financing to support their creative endeavors. James Ward Packard, the American industrialist who drove automobile design at the turn of the 20th century, is another notable figure among those collectors who have coerced watch innovation. The intimate union between the world’s best watchmakers and passionate collectors has proved to be an integral force in advancing watch technology. The complicated, one-of-a-kind models that are the result of these collaborations—at the rare moments when they have appeared on the auction block—have soared in value like rare works of art.

Among Packard’s demands were a Patek alarm watch that played his mother’s favorite song from Godard’s opera Jocelyn and another model with 10 complications, including sunrise and sunset with equation of time, moon phases, perpetual calendar and a celestial chart depicting more than 500 stars, as they would appear at night in Warren, Ohio, the patron’s birthplace.

“From around 1900 until the Great Depression in 1929, Americans were the richest people in the world,” Arnaud Tellier, curator of Patek Philippe’s watch museum in Geneva, says, “and they competed among each other to build the largest buildings and amass the largest collections of antiques, books and watches.” He estimates between 60 and 70 percent of all Swiss watches made in the early 20th century were acquired by Americans. Yet the Swiss watchmakers’ dependency on American money turned out to be the demise of nearly half of the watch houses, which went bankrupt during the Great Depression, Tellier adds.

THE FRONT and back of the Patek Philippe watch that was commissioned by Henry Graves Jr. in 1925. The watch, which boasts 24 complications, went for $11 million at a 1999 auction at Sotheby’s.
With a much wider audience for luxury timepieces today, watchmakers are no longer financially dependent on patrons such as Graves, whose extravagant request took eight years to complete. Furthermore, with the growing demand for complicated watches, houses such as Breguet and Patek Philippe can no longer forgo their day-to-day business by devoting their best watchmakers to elaborate special commissions.

“There are probably 100 collectors today who would be equivalent to Graves or Packard,” Hank Edelman, president of Patek Philippe USA, says. “Our problem is that if we make just one model of a particular watch, how do we decide whom to sell it to?” Instead, the watchmaker continues to create innovative new watch technology in limited series.

Indeed, this dilemma is complicated by the presence of so-called collectors who acquire limited series timepieces simply to turn them around at auction for a profit. This is exactly what happened a few years ago when one of Patek Philippe’s 10 Sky Moon Tourbillons was sold to a collector and months later appeared on the cover of a Sotheby’s catalog with an estimated value of nearly double its $750,000 price.

Packard and Graves bought their watches to cherish, not with resale in mind. Patek Philippe’s owner, Philippe Stern, was furious to learn that one of his company’s masterworks was flipped for a quick profit. Now he is so suspicious of clients who want his Sky Moon Tourbillon that he has been known to personally interview prospective buyers to ensure they are true collectors, not profiteers. Only a few models of this incredibly complicated watch can be manufactured each year, and the waiting list is several years long.

Altered States
Another commission that changed the course of watch technology occurred in 1943, when Cartier created the iconic Pasha for the pasha of Marrakech. He requested a waterproof wristwatch that he could wear in the pool and bath, an appeal that inspired Cartier’s first water-resistant watch, deemed a great technical accomplishment for the era. “The pasha not only influenced Cartier, but the entire watch industry,” Stanislas de Quercize, Cartier North America president and CEO, says. “At the time, only explorers and soldiers wore water-resistant watches.”

Some of Cartier’s most recognizable watches were created at the request of a collector or a high-profile friend of Louis Cartier. One of the best examples, de Quercize recalls, is the Santos, created in 1904 for famed Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos Dumont, a close friend of Cartier, who requested a watch that would allow him to check his flight times while operating his aircraft. “Louis Cartier designed a watch that he could wear on his wrist, and it became the world’s first modern wristwatch,” de Quercize explains. It remains one of Cartier’s most celebrated models.

Some luxury watch houses still strive to accommodate loyal clients who simply must have a one-of-a-kind timepiece, although as a stealthy transaction. “We are very close to our clients, and that is why, occasionally, collectors contact us for a custom-made piece,” Audemars Piguet’s North America president Francois-Henry Bennahmias says. “We always keep it very discreet, as custom orders like this come at a substantial price.” Clients typically request special combinations of complicated functions. The process often starts with a visit to Audemars Piguet’s factory in Le Brassus, Switzerland, where, Bennahmias says, “clients have direct contact with the watchmakers at every level of the fabrication, from the cut of raw material to the decoration, polishing, assembling, etc.”

The notion of a bespoke watch becomes even more attractive when one considers that an increasing number of off-the-shelf timepieces now have intricate complications. The demand for these watches from mass market segments has reached new heights, prompting watchmakers to design more multifunction timepieces, the type of watches that a few decades ago were reserved only for the elite. Sotheby’s Schnipper explains that mass demand for complicated watches began in the late 1980s. By the early 1990s, the leading watch companies were devoting substantial sums of money and resources into developing complicated watches.

Auction results indicate complicated watches are the most valuable timepieces, particularly in the past eight to 10 years, Schnipper notes. A 1980 Patek Philippe perpetual calendar chronograph wristwatch, for example, would rarely resell for more than $50,000 during the 1980s, yet it brought $250,000 at auction in April 2004. “Any limited series watches that have been discontinued are commanding top dollar,” she says. The most desirable marques, Schnipper adds, are Audemars Piguet, Breguet, Patek Philippe and certain Franck Muller, FP Journe and Rolex timepieces. Cartier has also seen its limited series complicated watch skyrocket in value. Recent sales include a rare 1920s Tortue Minute Repeater that sold for $640,500 at New York’s Antiquorum auction house in March 2004.

Not everyone, however, seeks to reap the profits of these unusual models. Emmanuel Breguet, the great-great-grandson and last surviving descendant of A.L. Breguet, and curator of the Breguet Museum in Paris explains: “Typically, watches like a Breguet hold sentimental value more than their great monetary value—they become heirloom pieces.”

Jill Newman is a frequent contributor to Worth. jillnew@earthlink.net

Additional Information
 Neither Love Nor Money