Recommended Reading: Will yet another auction record be broken this weekend? The world’s most complicated wristwatch is up for grabs…
Thor SvaboeThis might be exactly what we need to start 2021 with a BANG, and signal what we all hope is a strong year of growth for both the watch industry and consumer market in general. Auction results are a very important marker of the market temperature, and as WatchPro reminded us, this weekend sees the auction of the thoroughly mind-bending form of the Vacheron Constantin Tour de L’Ile, a vastly complex and equally dazzling micro-engineered piece of horological art. Everything is in place for a new auction record and a flying start to the year.
The Vacheron Constantin Tour de L’Ile boasts a frankly incomprehensible 834 components and took 10,000 hours to complete. With two dials – both front and back – and everything from a minute-repeating complication to a tourbillon and equation of perpetual time, this is one of Vacheron Constantin’s ventures into the absolute highest echelons of haute horlogerie.
Utterly beguiling, this 18-carat rose-gold wristwatch (if we can even call it that) sold for an original $2.1 million in 2005, and is estimated on the block for around $3 million this weekend.
Is this the kick-off we need for a fresh 2021?, I have high hopes. Have a read of the original article in WatchPro here, including quite a few other mouth-watering lots. And if you’re tempted to sell everything you own and bid, go to the Antiquorum website and get ready for an exciting Sunday auction, live from Monaco .