An extremely rare Patek Philippe perpetual calendar chronograph will be put up for auction by Sotheby’s in June, in a sale that could reach $4.5 million and test the market strength for pricey vintage timepieces.
(Bloomberg) — An extremely rare Patek Philippe perpetual calendar chronograph will be put up for auction by Sotheby’s in June, in a sale that could reach $4.5 million and test the market strength for pricey vintage timepieces.
The watch is a ‘Pink on Pink’ Patek Philippe 1518, with a salmon dial and rose gold case.
Less than 300 of the perpetual calendar chronographs with a moon phase display were ever made, and the recently discovered piece represents the latest of only 15 ‘Pink on Pink’ versions known.
With an estimate of $2.5 million to $4.5 million, the sale will serve as a bellwether for the strength of the overall watch auction market.
Another ‘Pink on Pink’ 1518, previously owned by Prince Tewfik Adil Toussoun of Egypt, with full documentation, was sold by Sotheby’s for $9.57 million including fees, against an estimate of $1.2 million to $2.2 million in December 2021.
(That watch’s royal provenance, pristine condition and complete paperwork, unusual for a Patek this old, made it particularly valuable.)
A 1518 cased in steel — a less valuable but rarer metal for the reference (only a handful are known to exist) — was sold by Phillips for more than $11 million in 2016.
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After surging in 2021 and into the first part of 2022, demand for some vintage timepieces has been slowing with prices for the most sought after Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet watches falling sharply on the secondary market.
Buyers have become more cautious amid slowing economic growth, higher interest rates and the crash in cryptocurrencies.
The Patek watch being auctioned in June was produced in 1946 and sold to its original owner in 1947.
In the possession of that owner’s family ever since, Sotheby’s says the watch had been sitting, untouched, in a drawer for 30 years.
“This is very much the genesis of complicated Patek wristwatches and this is one of the rarest versions of it,” said Jonathon Burford, Sotheby’s senior vice president and senior specialist for watches.
The watch will be auctioned off in New York.
The watch is sure to fetch at least the minimum $2.5 million estimate as there is a third-party guarantor who has offered to buy at that price, Sotheby’s confirmed.
That third party may receive part of the auction house’s fees if the auction price goes above the minimum estimate.
“If you are in the market for this sort of rarity, these opportunities only come along very, very irregularly.
So that’s why you can ascribe an over-sized valuation,” Burford said.
The watch features the ‘long’ manufacturer signature of ‘Patek Philippe & Co.’ on the dial. The brand shortened the signature on its timepieces to ‘Patek Philippe’ during 1948.
Just seven of the 15 ‘Pink on Pink’ 1518s known to exist have the long signature.
Eric Wind, the head of Wind Vintage, a dealer based in Palm Beach Florida, who previously worked for the auction house Christie’s, said the market for collectors attracted to such rare pieces has grown significantly.
“There’s definitely a larger segment of collectors that are interested in the 1518,” said Wind, who deals in rare Pateks among other vintage timepieces.
“So these are much more hotly contested than in the past.”
Wind said he previously knew of this particular watch and had even tried to acquire it from another dealer.
Pink on Pink 1518s only come up for sale every few years, and Wind said the ultimate sale price at auction will come down to how bidders judge the watch’s condition amid a less frothy auction environment than last year.
“The general feeling with the economy right now is people are a little less willing to write seven figure checks compared to 15 months ago,” Wind said.
Still, a much more modern but also rare Patek recently fetched $5.8 million in Hong Kong, the highest price ever paid for a timepiece in an online auction.
Marc Montagne, the Geneva-based author of the book Invest in Watches, The Art of Watch Collecting, said while the overall secondary watch market has been going down, truly scarce timepieces, like this example of the 1518, have still been outperforming at auctions.
“Those extremely rare vintage watches have been, I believe, slightly preserved,” he said.
“Now we will see if that’s still the case and those watches operate in a separate market.”
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