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Six of the Most Important Watches Sold by Sotheby’s
The stories of some of the world’s rarest and most collectible watches – straight from the Sotheby’s watch specialists who sold them.
I n the world of watch collecting, auctions are community events as much as opportunities for acquiring new grails. Sometimes they reflect the taste of the moment, with thematic sales and the movement of popular references, and other times they change the tone, uncovering new watches and new categories for enthusiasts to buzz about. Auctions are also where world records are set and broken, with tense bidding quickly giving way to thunderous applause when new heights are reached.
As interest in watches has exploded over the last decade, so too has interest in watch auctions. From both the consigning and bidding sides, the caliber of watches, the depth of scholarship and the prices achieved have never been more impressive. Collectors appreciate extremely high-quality examples of iconic references, historic pieces with rich provenance and previously unknown oddities with equal fervor, offering a ton of variety across the watch collecting spectrum.
With that in mind, three specialists at Sotheby’s recall six of the most exciting, compelling and important sales of the last few years.
Rolex Cosmograph Daytona with Turquoise Hard-Stone Lacquer Dial
Sold by Sotheby’s Hong Kong for HK$24.4 Million
“It was probably 10 years ago now that I remember first hearing about this watch. But it was more of a myth at the time, to be honest. You would hear experienced collectors talk about the existence of older platinum Daytonas, but we had never actually seen them and they hadn’t shown up in any catalogues or literature, either.
“But in 2018, Sotheby’s was contacted by an important watch-collecting family, asking about consigning exactly that: a unique automatic Daytona with a platinum case and a smoked mother-of-pearl dial. After landing on the catalogue cover, that watch ended up selling for around $1 million in October 2018 – a record price at the time for an automatic Daytona. This eventually enticed the family to come back to us with a second watch, this time with a dial made of lapis lazuli. It sold in July 2020 for HK$25,375,000, fetching approximately three times what the previous watch had – yet another record.
“You would hear experienced collectors talk about the existence of older platinum Daytonas, but we had never actually seen them.”
- Sam Hines, Chairman
“All of that led us to the watch that excites me the most, the platinum Daytona reference 16516 with a turquoise dial. When we originally started looking at this watch we believed it to have a lacquered dial in a turquoise color, based on photographs and the Rolex service receipt. However, upon closer inspection, we realized it was even more special than that, with a hard-stone turquoise dial with a transparent lacquer finish. The natural color variations of the stone are easiest to see in the sub-registers and are an obvious giveaway. This watch sold in Hong Kong in April 2021 for HK$24,375,000, establishing it among the top 10 results ever achieved by any Daytona at auction.
“The Rolex Daytona is arguably the most collectible watch there is, and it is exceedingly rare to find genuinely unique examples of any Rolex watch. Even very rare, very valuable Daytonas were produced serially, often for years at a time, from Paul Newmans to the more recent Le Mans. While brands like Patek Philippe, Cartier, Audemars Piguets and others do make custom commissions to varying degrees, Rolex generally does not. To find not just one unique Dayonta but a small family of them is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And this is part of what we strive to do at Sotheby’s: bring genuinely new things to auction and have the opportunity to rewrite history as we do. The fact that we’ve been able to sell all three of these unique stone-dial Daytonas is something I’m immensely proud of.
“There is speculation about there being a fourth unique Daytona with a platinum case and coral dial. Although, as with the others, we will have to wait until it comes to market to know anything for sure.”
– Sam Hines, Chairman
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Patek Philippe’s Henry Graves Jr. Supercomplication
Sold by Sotheby’s Geneva for 23.2 Million CHF
“I had known Pete Fullerton since sometime in the mid 1980s. At the time I met him, I only knew of him as the grandson of Henry Graves Jr., the famous American banker and watch collector; that first time we met he was actually wearing the Henry Graves Jr. Minute Repeater on his wrist. For me, seeing that watch was an otherworldly encounter that started a decades-long relationship with Fullerton, during which we would occasionally get together for lunch.
“When Pete sadly passed away in 2012, I got a call from the estate’s lawyer telling me that it was written in Fullerton’s will that he wanted me to be the one to sell the watches. I was shocked. When he asked if I could come up to the house to look things over, I was even more shocked – it turned out that Fullerton liked to wind the watches each night, so they were mostly kept at home. I hopped in the car with one of my colleagues and a security escort, and we returned to New York with the watches in tow.
“It is hard to overstate the shockwaves that this sent through the collecting community at the time. People who didn’t buy pocket watches were suddenly very interested in pocket watches, for example. This collection and many of the watches in it were extremely famous, and everyone wanted to own their own little piece of The Henry Graves & Pete Fullerton Collection.
“However, while nearly every watch in that sale was special in some way (and some extremely special), the crown jewel of that collection, the Henry Graves Jr. Supercomplication, was not part of the June 2012 auction. Sotheby’s had sold it as part of the Masterpieces from the Time Museum sale back in 1999, when it fetched $11 million, making it the most expensive watch in the world. For context, it would be more than a decade and a half before any other watch would sell for more than half that price. It seemed like a truly once-in-a-career opportunity. But then, in 2014, we had the opportunity to sell the Supercomplication again.
“The real question was, ‘Wow, can we top the first sale?’ We pulled out all the stops and created a special standalone catalogue, pushed the scholarship on the watch even further than before, shared the story through the media and hosted an evening sale in Geneva with the Supercomplication at the center.
“The energy steadily built as the sale approached, and once the bidding started I found myself holding my breath as the price went up and up. When the hammer fell and it was sold for $24 million, I believe I was moved to tears. I had first seen that watch back in 1986, and now, almost three decades later, we have sold it twice, setting and then breaking a world record in the process.”
– Daryn Schnipper, Senior Vice President & Chairman
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Patek Philippe’s “Pink-on-Pink” Ref. 1518
Sold by Sotheby’s New York for $9.6 Million
“On a hot afternoon in Palm Desert, California, I had invited a colleague of mine, Daryn Schnipper, to the basement of a local bank to sift through the contents of a few safe-deposit boxes with a member of the family who had inherited them. We had already seen some very impressive watches, but when this Patek Philippe reference 1518 appeared, it sent a cold shiver down my spine.
“My invitation had come from the stepchildren of a gentleman named Prince Mohammed Tewfik A. Toussoun, the first cousin of King Farouk of Egypt, the country’s last monarch. The Prince had left Egypt a few years before the 1952 revolution and ended up spending his life mostly in the United States, working as an academic at various universities. He ordered the watch in question during his time as a student in Paris and took delivery in 1952, when he was already living in the United States and studying agriculture. According to family members, he only wore the watch a few times before tucking it away for safekeeping, although he would visit this watch (and a few others) every few months to give them a wind and to check in on them.
“When the bidding hit $5 million, we still had more than 10 bidders in the fray, and at $9 million we still had three bidders in the mix.”
- Jonathon Burford, Senior Vice President and Senior Specialist
“A pink-gold reference 1518 with a pink-colored dial – a so-called ‘pink-on-pink 1518’ – is already a rare bird, with only 14 examples known, including this one. And, because it was stored in a dry, clean environment for decades, this particular watch is as well-preserved a vintage Patek Philippe watch as you’ll find anywhere. When we showed it to someone at the Patek Philippe Museum, they even said it was as close to how the watch left the factory as anything they’d seen. I hate using words like ‘unpolished’ and ‘new old stock,’ but we could find no evidence of polishing on the case and no scratches to the movement that would betray a previous service, and the deep, rich color of the dial was unlike any of the other pink 1518 dials I’d seen before. Everything on the watch was original, down to the original 18k gold spring bars holding on the strap.
“Sometimes you need a bit of luck in the auction world, and as if we hadn’t had enough already, this watch came along at just the right moment. Vintage watch collecting was thriving in 2021, and we were able to get a broad group of collectors of different ages, levels of experience and interests all engaged with this watch. We had over two dozen registered bidders for this watch the morning of the sale, not counting those bidding online, and the vast majority of those were collectors, not institutions or dealers. When the bidding hit $5 million, we still had more than 10 bidders in the fray, and at $8 million we still had three bidders in the mix – miraculous for something that started with a low estimate of $1.2 million.
“Ultimately, the watch ended up going into one of the more important and impressive domestic collections, and the proceeds from the sale changed the lives of the consignors, too.”
– Jonathon Burford, Senior Vice President and Senior Specialist
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The Nevadian Collector
Sold by Sotheby’s Hong Kong for HK$162.4 Million
“There is no way for me to choose a single favorite lot from The Nevadian Collector auction we did in April 2022. The assembly of watches is a masterclass in collecting, with many of the rarest, most impressive examples of iconic watches sitting side by side, both enhancing scholarship and pushing the market forward.
“The collector himself was an intensely private man living in Nevada, in the United States, who had been possibly the largest collector of Patek Philippe watches for more than a decade in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He had a particular love of complicated references, like the 1518 and 2499, as well as more straightforward watches like the 2526. As he got older and it came time for him to start selling pieces, he trusted us to guide him through the process. Rather than put everything for sale immediately, all at once, we would offer up individual lots or small groups of watches over the years, when the market and timing were right.
“Slowly earning this deep trust allowed us to finally offer this focused single-owner sale in 2022, with 38 exceptional watches covering different categories, from complicated pocket watches to shaped wristwatches to iconic references. We had all been patient, but the time was finally right to do something big, and we took great care not to select watches only because we thought they would fetch particular prices, but also for their interest and how they fit together in the sale. Everything needed to be cohesive and thought-through. From my perspective, the sale is a bit of a tribute to this collector and everything he did for watch collecting over decades.
“Any of these watches would likely be the cover lot in a typical sale.”
- Sam Hines, Chairman
“We started by thinking thematically about what he was most interested in, so we looked at complicated pocket watches; perpetual calendar chronographs, including the reference 1518 and 2499 in multiple examples across multiple generations (including a pink-on-pink reference 1518, a reference 2499 signed by Gobbi Milano and a unique, luminous-dial reference 2499 in yellow gold); iconic chronograph references, such as the reference 130 and reference 530; and the much-loved reference 2526 in rare configurations, such as yellow gold with a black dial and pink gold with a luminous dial and matching bracelet. Any of these watches would likely be the cover lot in a typical sale.
“It was both a privilege and an opportunity to bring these watches to market together like this. It’s a rare chance to go all-in and to really dig into the history of each watch, how each watch fits into the broader picture, the impact of Patek Philippe, etc. We can present new information to the community, unveil watches that haven’t been seen for years, and generally advance the pursuit of watch collecting in a serious way. It’s tremendously meaningful to us, but it also matters to the collecting community and the people passionate about these things – and we take that very seriously.
“I hope one day to publish a book about this collection, as it’s truly one of the finest ever assembled and a testament to decades of passion and dedication.”
– Sam Hines, Chairman
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The George Daniels “Space Traveler I” Pocket Watch
Sold by Sotheby’s London for £3.6 Million
“Sometimes the history of a watch is so closely tied to Sotheby’s that it feels even more special when a record-setting result is achieved. That was definitely the case with the George Daniels Space Traveller I when it fetched £3.6 million as part of the Masterworks of Time auction in London in 2019, setting the high water mark for any British watch at auction. George Daniels himself worked as a consultant for Sotheby’s Watches Department for nearly four decades, and we have been fortunate enough to sell a number of his incredible watches over the years.
“The Space Traveller started as a thought experiment in the late 1970s, as Daniels started wondering how he could make a watch inspired by science fiction that could track both mean-solar time and sidereal time (sometimes called “star time”). He completed the watch in 1982 and sold it to a collector, and eventually the watch came up for sale at Sotheby’s in 1988, when it entered the collection where it would remain until we sold it again in 2019.
“George Daniels himself worked as a consultant for Sotheby’s Watches Department for nearly four decades.”
- Daryn Schnipper, Senior Vice President & Chairman
“This watch has obvious technical and historical interest, but it also has a more personal story too. The Space Traveller was an expression of Daniels’ own idiosyncratic approach to watchmaking and his personal passions. As soon as he sold the watch, Daniels was disappointed by his decision, so he fashioned a second version, the Space Traveller II, in the early 1980s. For this second watch, he added a chronograph mechanism and a transparent case back, setting it apart from the original. This would go on to be the watch that Daniels carried in his pocket almost daily until his passing in 2011. We sold that watch as well, in both 2012 and 2017.
“Daniels was a very charismatic, engaging person, and his personal story is deeply fascinating. He grew up in a very poor family and started to see what the outside world was like when he joined the army. From there he taught himself watchmaking and had the goal to make nearly every component of a watch himself, encompassing more than 30 different trades. The scope is truly astounding.
“You really see this approach with the Space Traveller I as the final watch offered in the 143-lot Masterworks of Time. The other 142 lots encompass centuries of history and watchmaking, all building to this person who in the 1970s had the bold idea to make a truly great watch. The Space Traveller I pulls together this entire story of time.”
– Daryn Schnipper, Senior Vice President & Chairman
Patek Philippe’s Ref. 5970G “Late Delivery” with Salmon Dial
Sold by Sotheby’s New York for $1.3 Million
“For a certain kind of collector, Patek Philippe’s reference 5970 is the archetypal modern, complicated Patek, bridging the gap between vintage watches and the current era, going back to the origins of the perpetual calendar chronograph complication first established with the reference 1518 and reference 2499. The design language established by the reference 1518 is replicated here almost to a T, though with a modern interpretation. The 5970 is also the last of these watches to utilize a Lemania movement – the Lemania 2310, called the caliber CH 27 by Patek – so it truly is the end of an era. The size, design and relative simplicity combine to make it a kind of perfect modern watch.
“Patek Philippe also only made the 5970 from 2004-2010, and relatively few were made during those six or seven years. Before this watch appeared, there was only one known exception to these rules: a limited run of five reference 5970 watches with white-gold cases and salmon-colored dials made to commemorate Patek Philippe’s Grand Exhibition at London’s Saatchi Gallery in 2015. When a reference 5970G-019 first landed on our radar as part of a single-owner sale, we assumed from pictures that it must be one of those watches, none of which had yet come up for public sale. But it turned out it was even more special than that.
“Patek Philippe’s reference 5970 is the archetypal modern, complicated Patek, bridging the gap between vintage watches and the current era.”
- Jonathon Burford, Senior Vice President and Senior Specialist
“According to the certificate that accompanied it, this white-gold and salmon reference 5970 was delivered to the Geneva Boutique in the middle of 2014. That is four years too late for it to be a standard production watch but two years too early for it to be one of the so-called Saatchi watches (which were announced in 2015, but not produced and delivered until the following year). We believe it to be the result of a custom request from a longtime customer, produced as just a lone unique piece almost half a decade after the 5970’s retirement. However, because Patek Philippe does not confirm these kinds of things, we can only speculate.
“Given that the Grand Exhibition was also still two years away, it seems logical that this watch eventually served as the inspiration for the Saatchi watches as well, with their nearly identical configuration of a white-gold case and a salmon-colored dial with white-gold hands and markers. It’s an absolutely breathtaking watch, so that wouldn’t surprise me at all.
“Either way, we weren’t really sure what the market interest would be on this watch. It was previously unknown, and none of the Saatchi watches had come to auction. We offered it with a low estimate of $120,000, with the idea that we would let the market set the price. As it turned out, there was considerable interest – ultimately the watch fetched $1.3 million. If anything, this unique piece has only made the five Saatchi watches all the more collectible as a result.”
– Jonathon Burford, Senior Vice President and Senior Specialist
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Photo of Henry Graves Jr. Supercomplication in case by Fabrice Coffrini via Getty Images
