How to Start Collecting the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak

The early 1970s were not a good time for Swiss watchmaking. In 1969, Seiko introduced the first mass-produced quartz-powered wristwatch, the Astron, starting what is commonly called the Quartz Crisis. During this period, which dragged on for more than two decades, the Swiss watchmaking industry was under existential threat from these new high-tech timepieces that didn’t require traditional watchmakers to create. Century-old brands were shuttering, jobs were evaporating and it was a real toss-up whether or not traditional analog watches would make it to the 21st century.

But Switzerland’s watchmakers weren’t going to go quietly into the night. As Audemars Piguet approached its 100th birthday, the family-owned firm was struggling, creating just a small quantity of exceptionally made watches each year. New ideas were needed if they were going to make it to that 1975 anniversary, and they turned to an up-and-coming watch designer by the name of Gérald Genta to help.

Genta was only in his late 30s, but he had already created watches for the likes of Universal Genève and Omega, which were distinguished by their clever use of geometry and distinctive looks. Audemars Piguet’s managing director at the time, George Golay, approached Genta and requested that he create a new kind of stainless-steel sports watch worthy of the vaunted brand’s name. (Apocryphally, he asked Genta to come up with a sketch overnight, further burnishing the AP Royal Oak’s origin story.) What was delivered was a sketch of a watch with an octagonal bezel inspired by a diving helmet and a sharp bracelet with faceted links. AP would go on to make the watch almost exactly as Genta drew it – and the rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

Upon its 1972 release, the AP Royal Oak was a flop. It looked completely different from anything else on the market, which at the time was still dominated by purpose-built tool watches (think Rolex Submariner, Omega Speedmaster) and smaller, precious metal dress watches (Patek Philippe Calatravas, for example). It was also expensive. Priced above 3,000 CHF (or more than 8,000 francs today), potential customers were shocked, especially given the watch’s stainless-steel construction. Clever marketing campaigns helped customers warm up to the idea though, and, luckily for AP, the market caught on in the coming years. The AP Royal Oak would become the defining watch of the 1970s and one of Switzerland’s boldest answers to the Quartz Crisis.

Since then, the AP Royal Oak has remained in continuous production, shifting and adapting to changes in market conditions, collector tastes and pop culture influences. There have been smaller models in yellow gold, gargantuan models in carbon and titanium with complicated movements and even some with quartz movements. Throughout the years, the classic design – since christened the Jumbo because of its large-for-the-time 39mm case diameter – has remained a mainstay; it still leads the pack when it comes to collector catnip. The AP Royal Oak might have been iconoclastic when it first turned heads in 1972, but now it is so woven into the fabric of watchmaking and watch collecting that it is hard to imagine either without it.

With hundreds of AP Royal Oak references produced since 1972, it is nearly impossible to be a truly encyclopedic expert without years and years of experience. Luckily, there are a few guiding principles that will be helpful no matter which AP Royal Oak you’re hoping to acquire.

There are very few things that unify watch collectors, but most will agree that a watch’s dial is one of its most important components (if not the most important). A sharp case doesn’t matter much if the dial is junk, and restoring dials is extremely controversial if not outright discouraged by most. One of the AP Royal Oak’s defining traits since day one has been its tapisserie dial, which features an engraved grid pattern created using a special 19th-century technique. These dials are extremely beautiful and unique, but it is important to know how to properly inspect one to make sure you are getting a quality watch.

Tapisserie dials start with a solid brass plate, which is engraved with the checkerboard pattern and then coated to give it its color (navy blue is the AP Royal Oak’s signature, although certainly not its sole, hue). The first thing you want to look for is flaking of the colored surface – this is not a problem on modern AP Royal Oaks, but the 1970s and even some 1980s examples were made with less stable materials. Once a dial starts flaking, it’s unlikely to stop, so something that at first looks like patina can quickly become a problem. Likewise, look at the edges of the dial furniture – the applied hour markers and AP logo – and the center post that holds the hands. You don’t want to see any signs of corrosion or rust. This is another thing that can quickly go from interesting to awful, especially if there is a moisture problem.

Tropical dials, like the one above, are cool and desirable – but rusty or crumbling dials certainly aren’t.

Collectors today love to throw around the phrase “in-house movement” as if it’s a purity test or a measure of whether a watch is worth collecting. That is a narrow view of things. For much of the history of watchmaking, movement components were made by small producers and specialists, who then sold them to the watch brands, which would in turn assemble and decorate the movements before casing them and creating finished watches. Audemars Piguet was no exception.

The original AP Royal Oak utilized a movement that Audemars Piguet co-developed alongside Jaeger-LeCoultre, Patek Philippe and others. The Caliber 2021 was the first high-end, ultra-thin movement with automatic winding, and it is as legendary as the AP Royal Oak itself. In fact, the dimensions of this movement helped shape the Royal Oak’s profile, as it could be much slimmer than other sports watches but with a larger diameter.

Audemars Piguet continued using the Caliber 2021 in Royal Oak watches for decades. In fact, AP didn’t have any movements we would call in-house by today’s standards until 1999, and the AP Royal Oak didn’t receive an in-house movement until a few years later in 2003, with the introduction of the Caliber 3120. And even then, AP continued using the Caliber 2021 until the year 2021, when it was fittingly retired to celebrate the AP Royal Oak’s 50th anniversary in favor of a new in-house analog, the Caliber 7121.

Another bit of orthodoxy among vintage watch collectors is the desire for unpolished watches, or those whose cases and bracelets haven’t been altered from their original states. It’s easy to forget that adding a bit of shine to a watch isn’t a benign thing – getting a metal case or bracelet to sparkle requires stripping away the murky surface material, revealing the untouched metal underneath. When you’re talking about something a small as a wristwatch with so many minute details, losing even a fraction of a millimeter can be a problem.

With many watches, this is just a matter of collecting the “most original” or “most honest” watch possible, as well as unpolished watches simply being rarer, since many owners had their pieces polished over their decades of stewardship without thinking twice. But with the AP Royal Oak in particular, polishing can quickly turn a fantastic watch into a forgettable one. Every surface of the distinctive case and bracelet is clearly delineated with a contrasting finish, either satin brushed or brightly polished. Edges are sharp and crisp, and the watch’s character comes from that factory-original finish. Once it’s hit a polishing wheel, an AP Royal Oak’s case can start to look soft or ill-defined, and its bracelet can look dull and conventional. So, whether you’re looking at a contemporary AP Royal Oak or an original A-Series, keep an eye on the edges, looking for the cleanest, crispest example you can find.

With more than 50 years of history behind it, the AP Royal Oak has grown into one of the most established archetypes in all of watchmaking. However, within the basic boundaries of the original design, there is a massive diversity of models available, at all levels of complexity and collectability.

The Jumbos are the OG AP Royal Oaks and their descendants. In 1972, Audemars Piguet released the first Royal Oak, the reference 5402ST. That first batch of watches is today called the A Series because of the sequential serial numbers starting with the letter A that were engraved on the casebacks. The original idea was that only 1,000 pieces would be produced in total, but the lettering opened up the possibility of future runs if needed. It turns out that that was a smart move. Ultimately, almost 2,000 of these A-Series watches were made, with B Series, C Series and D Series all produced over the subsequent decades, culminating in a total of 4,288 total examples of the 5402ST, according to Audemars Piguet’s own archives. The final watches were produced in the early 1990s, when new references were added to the catalogue.

Beginning in 1977, Audemars Piguet started experimenting with the Royal Oak formula, adding two-tone steel and yellow gold (5402SA), solid yellow gold (5204BA), and white gold with diamond dial markers (5204BC) to the collection. These were produced up until 2002, but in much smaller quantities than their steel counterparts. In total there are fewer than 2,000 examples of the 5402 in any metal configuration other than the original all-steel set-up.

As collectors began to venerate these original 39mm Royal Oaks in the 1990s, Audemars Piguet took notice and started creating modern analogs to these now-vintage pieces, including the reference 14802 and the reference 15002. More recently, the reference 15202 was one of the hottest watches of the 2000s and 2010s, with AP often quoting multiyear waits to buy one (even for established customers). Limited-edition 15202s pushed things to a whole other level entirely, with watches like the salmon-dialed reference 15202BC, the platinum-and-titanium reference 15202IP and the all-platinum reference 15202PT all becoming cult classics.

It didn’t take long for AP to realize that the Royal Oak had potential beyond its original 39mm stainless-steel case. Around the same time that the brand began producing precious-metal variations, AP also introduced a ladies’ Royal Oak with a 29mm case (designed by Jacqueline Dimier) and the men’s reference 4100 Royal Oak, which had a smaller 35mm case.

Over the next decade and a half, AP would release a number of different Royal Oak models with cases of all different sizes, eventually introducing the reference 14790 in 1992.

As the reference 5402ST was being phased out, the 14790 took over as the standard Royal Oak in the collection, and it would remain the flagship throughout the 1990s and into the mid 2000s. It has a 36mm diameter, which sounds small by today’s standards but wears much larger than most similarly sized watches because of the case proportions and bracelet.

When it was eventually replaced, circa 2005, tastes had changed and Audemars Piguet shifted to producing Royal Oaks larger than the Jumbo instead of smaller options. The 15000 series of references are today’s standard AP Royal Oak, with the reference 15510 carrying the torch now.

You need not look any further than the popularity of the Rolex Daytona and Omega Speedmaster to understand the allure that chronographs have for watch collectors. In 1997, Audemars Piguet decided to get the Royal Oak in on that action, introducing the references 25860 (stainless steel) and 25960 (yellow, rose or white gold). These new AP Royal Oak chronographs maintained the classic 39mm Jumbo case style, albeit a little thicker to accommodate the F. Piguet movement inside.

The watch caught on as expected, and several limited editions were produced over the subsequent years. Eventually the reference received its own replacement, in 2008, in the form of the reference 26300 chronograph, which features a redesign of the case, bracelet and dial, while keeping the old form-factor.

The bigger change came a few years later, when AP upsized the Royal Oak Chronograph to 41mm with the reference 26320. There have been a few iterations since, but today’s collection includes both 38mm models (reference 26715) and 41mm models (reference 26240) available in a variety of metals, dial colors, and hard-to-get limited editions.

Long before chronographs entered the picture, there were plenty of complicated Royal Oaks. The most famous and desirable of these is the AP Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar, which was first introduced way back in 1984 as the reference 5554, rechristened the 25554 shortly after. Miraculously, AP was able to engineer this original QP to fit in a case almost exactly the same dimensions as that of the time-and-date reference 5402ST. It still measured 39mm across and less than half a millimeter thicker, at just 7.5mm. In fact, the 25554ST, which was made in just 46 examples, utilized case components originally made for the 5402ST, which were then modified to accommodate the perpetual-calendar movement.

This watch was followed by the reference 25654, first shown in 1987, and the open-worked reference 25636, which together cemented the AP Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar as one of Audemars Piguet’s flagship watches. Audemars Piguet continued to innovate on these complicated AP Royal Oaks alongside the rest of the collection, rolling out the references 25810, 25820 and 25829 over the next two-and-a-half decades.

Today’s AP Royal Oak Perpetual Calendars are a bit larger than those Jumbo-inspired pieces from the 1980s and ’90s, measuring in at 41mm across. The reference 26574 is considered the standard, including the striking limited-edition reference 26574BC created in partnership with musician and watch collector John Mayer. The reference 26585 is the openworked model, with the Travis Scott “Cactus Jack” collaboration reference 26585CM and the black-ceramic reference 26585CE being the two most collectible.

It might seem hard to believe, but the watches discussed here barely scratch the surface of the myriad AP Royal Oak models available. Many of the references mentioned were produced in multiple configurations, with special dials, commemorative engravings and the like, and countless other references introduced additional complications and aesthetic flourishes into the Royal Oak lineup over the years, too.

On the more conservative side of things are watches like the AP Royal Oak Day-Date reference 5572, with its two large sub-dials and 36mm case. This was in fact the first AP Royal Oak to contain any complication, and after years of being under appreciated it has finally come into its own over the last decade. At the opposite end of the spectrum are the AP Royal Oak Concept watches, which utilized experimental movements and oversized cases made of cutting-edge materials, taking the idea of the Royal Oak and giving it something of a sci-fi treatment.