Despite the fact that this particular sale contained a handful of Paul Newman Rolex Daytonas, it was the Richard Mille RM 056 Prototype No. 2 that stole the thunder at Christie’s June 21, 2017 “Watches And American Icons” sale in New York City, hammering for more than $1 million.
This Sotheby’s London auction is part four of a series celebrating the English watch and contains English watches from the mid-seventeenth century all the way up to the 1970s, However, all eyes will certainly be on the prize in this sale: the George Daniels Spring Detent Tourbillon Pocket Watch.
Rare and unusual watches continue to pop up at auction this spring, and here I’d like to highlight a few that caught my eye coming up in the June 21, 2017 “Fine Watches and Wristwatches” London sale at Bonham’s.
Sotheby’s June 2017 Important Watches sale in New York City took in $7.4 million. That’s not a sum to be sneezing at for 310 lots sold, with a sell-through rate of 84.2 percent. I was pleased to see that the top ten list of performers at this auction included Richard Mille and Greubel Forsey in addition to Patek Philippe.
One of the rarest of the rare is going under the hammer at Christie’s June 21, 2017 sale of “Rare Watches and American Icons” in New York City: lot 216 comes from a collector who commissioned this extreme rarity, a timepiece by A.H.C.I. watchmaker Christian Klings.
The Phillips Hong Kong Watch Auction: FOUR particularly interested us due to the presence of a subset of 43 watches for sale called “43 Watches & Encounters: The Laurent Picciotto Collection of Contemporary Watches.” Please enjoy our commentary of the auction results for these timepieces.
The Phillips/Bacs & Russo Hong Kong Watch Auction: FOUR takes place on May 30, 2017. While it includes a large number of Rolex and Patek Philippe models as well as a disarmingly beautiful array of bejeweled timepieces by Cartier and Piaget, most important for me is the 43-piece subset of watches belonging to Chronopassion watch retailer Laurent Picciotto.
In the 1980s you may have read perhaps a few entertaining books by Jackie Collins, who passed away on September 19, 2015 at the age of 77. She was a very wealthy woman after 47 years of publishing bestselling romance novels, and now Bonhams is set to auction her estate of 1,000 lots for an estimated total of $3 million on May 16 and 17, 2017 in Los Angeles, and there are a few interesting watches included. In fact, I’d say surprising watches.
Many watch auctions appear to be dominated by notable sales of Rolex and Patek Philippe timepieces. And I’ve nothing against those two lovely brands, but the world of big auctions is becoming ever more monotone. Here are some genuinely exotic, decidedly out-of-the-ordinary timepieces currently on offer at Christie’s Important Watches auction, which takes place in Dubai on March 19, 2017.
I have attended the odd auction. I have even gone to auctions with the intent to bid on a watch. But that hadn’t yet worked out for me. Not until I saw that Parisian auction house Artcurial was auctioning off what was left of Alain Silberstein’s inventory and put in an absentee bid on a long shot. I had little hope.