Report From Geneva: ReLuxury, Auction Highlights, Best Of GPHG

The first couple of weeks of November were already a pretty busy time for the watch industry, Swiss and otherwise, as well as for watch enthusiasts as it’s when virtually every major player in the auction world holds some of their most important auctions of the entire year. Both records and hearts are sometimes broken as competition for the rarest and most desirable watches can be absolutely cutthroat and auction results are widely taken as indicators of market strength of not only pre-owned and vintage collectible watches, but also new watches as well. 

The Grand Prix Horlogerie de Genève is often referred to as “the Oscars of the watch industry,” (or, as GPHG jury president Nick Foulkes archly said, “As a reminder to our American viewers, the Oscars are the GPHG of the film industry.”) The GPHG’s Academy selects candidate watches in a wide range of categories, from Chronographs to Men’s Complication to Chronometry, and final voting is done by a smaller jury, which meets in person just before the actual ceremony to select the winners. 

While the Academy selects the first larger group of watches remotely, the final, smaller group of contenders are examined by the jury in person, on the assumption that it’s not possible to really choose among close contenders without being able to handle and examine them in person. As a three-time member of the jury, I can vouch for the wisdom of making the final selection of winners by experiencing the watches directly. Photographs can be extremely deceptive and during my three years on the jury I saw watches which looked reasonably attractive in photographs, stumble badly in hand and under a loupe and conversely, watches which looked unassuming to the point of stupor in photos sometimes came alive in surprising ways when examined in person.

Finally, and taking place alongside the auctions, this was the year that ReLuxury held its first major event. ReLuxury is dedicated to supporting something that has a somewhat boring name but which has become increasingly important in every aspect of modern luxury: the so-called “circular economy” in which high value and durable goods, from vintage jewelry, bags, and haute couture to, of course, collectible pre-owned watches, have lives which only begin when they’re sold at retail and which continue to enjoy sometimes enormous longevity as they pass from original owner, to other collectors and enthusiasts.

Geneva Auction Week

The auctions during Geneva Auction week did not hold any major surprises and overall, results from Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips reflected the correction taking place in the prices of some of the most liquid models over the last six months. That said there was continuing evidence that while the market may not be quite as overheated as it was, pre-owned watches in many cases continue to perform well above retail for existing models and well within expectations for a market in which demand for fine watchmaking will exceed the available supply of watches for the foreseeable future, with hot, high-end models like the Rainbow Daytona still a comfortable number of multiples above retail (or uncomfortable number of multiples, depending on whether you are buying or selling). 

Several lots stood out thanks to the very high results they achieved even if those results were, at least for some folks, lower than they might have expected. For serious connoisseurs of chronometric excellence in general, and provenance and rarity in particular, the George Daniels Spring Case Tourbillon. 

The watch is most unusual even by the standards of George Daniels’ other timepieces – it is a tourbillon wristwatch with a hinged inner case, with the time and power reserve shown on the front, and the date, day, and tourbillon visible on the back. It pretty much had everything going for it, including rarity (you can’t get any more rare than one of one) genuine horological content (any co-axial escapement tourbillon by the man who invented the escapement in the first place is catnip to serious collectors) and an unusual design that gives it a unique place in Daniels’ overall body of work. 

The watch sold at Phillips for CHF 4,083,500 including buyer’s premium. It’s a very strong result but there were some long-time observers of the market who expressed some surprise that the result wasn’t even stronger – WatchesbySJX observed, “Prior to the sale, I expected a result in the CHF3-4 million range, but several insiders who had in mind CHF5-8 million, which was not my opinion but within reason. If there is an explanation for that beyond the wider economy, it is probably because the Spring Case, while historically significant and technically interesting, is not that attractive in a tangible sense when on the wrist.” I actually saw the watch in person some years ago and I think it’s one of the most tangibly attractive watches I’ve ever seen but I have a very strong and probably irrational love of anything Daniels ever made, partly because his work was such an enormous part of my own horological education.

On the other end of the spectrum in terms of horological content, we had the sale of a Tiffany-dial Patek 5711 … again. The watch was on the block at Christie’s and hammered for CHF 3,174,000, including buyer’s premium. 

Now absolutely nobody is wrong for wanting what they want and when it comes to collecting, all so-called rational rules of a relationship between cost and inherent value go out the window – you could make a reasonable argument that taken in absolute terms there is no particular reason why the Daniels Spring Case Tourbillon should have gone for four million either. But the disparity in horological content between the two makes me want to gouge my own eyes out with a grapefruit spoon … which as they say in the Army, sounds like a personal problem, sir.

Overall results for the auction houses were still superlative, corrections in some categories be damned – Christie’s raked in CHF 55.5 million driven strongly (to make a weak joke) by the collection of former Ferrari boss Jean Todt, with Phillips following close behind with a total of CHF 45 million.

The Grand Prix Horlogerie de Genève 2022 Edition

The GPHG has been held every year since its inception in 2001. The 2001 prize list is very modest in comparison with 2022 – in 2021 there were only six prize categories and the grand prize – the Aiguille D’Or, or “Golden Hand” was won by a high jewelry watch, the Vacheron Constantin Lady Kalla. Twenty years on, the GPHG has gotten very big – fifteen categories, not including a special jury prize for the most promising student watchmaker and of course, the Aiguille d’Or. 

Personally I thought the competition was very strong this year – one category with especially strong competition was the Chronographs category. All six watches were interesting in themselves but the two that really stuck out were the MB&F LM EVO Sequential chronograph, with its dual independent chronograph trains and unique, virtually frictionless vertical clutch mechanism, and the Grönefeld 1941 Grönograaf Tantalum. The Grönefeld walked away with the Chronograph award but MB&F didn’t leave empty handed. The MB&F MAD 1 Red took the prize in the Challenge category, which is for best watch priced at under CHF 4000 (and it says something, maybe, about watch culture today that producing a great watch that retails for under four thousand Swiss is considered a challenge, but that’s the world we live in, I suppose). 

The Tudor FXD won in the Dive Watch category, which elicited some sotto voce grumbling from Grand Seiko fans in the audience as it beat out the Grand Seiko Spring Drive 5 Day Caliber 9RA5, but what the GPHG taketh away, it also giveth, at least some of the time – Grand Seiko ended up taking the prize for Chronometry, with its Kodo Constant Force Tourbillon.

Hermès managed to raise a few eyebrows – the company’s Arceau Le Temps Voyageur won in the Ladies’ Complication category in 38mm, but the same watch, albeit at 41mm and with a presumably more masculine slate-black finish than the blue finish on the 38mm model, won in the Men’s Complication category as well. (Audemars Piguet’s 37mm Royal Oak Selfwinding Tourbillon Ultra-Thin RD#3 was, inexplicably, if you ask me, in the Ladies’ Complication category as well. Odd for a watch that does not really show any design cues traditionally considered indicative of a so-called Ladies’ Watch. Maybe it was the purple dial but I can’t imagine a purple dial would make a watch any more a Ladies’ Watch than a Men’s Watch.)

If you’ve been wondering why the gross injustice of no prize was visited on the MB&F LM EVO Sequential, wonder no more – the watch won the grand prize, the Aiguille D’Or, and the acceptance speech, by founder Max Büsser, was an emotional homage to watchmaker Stephen McDonnell, who conceived, designed, and executed the watch. McDonnell wasn’t present but thanks to Büsser’s outpouring of gratitude to him, he was as present in spirit as can be and while you can’t really say “there wasn’t a dry eye in the house” about a roomful of watch industry pundits, journalists and executives – we’re a cynical, hard-bitten crowd sometimes – I don’t think I’m the only one who got a little misty at the end.

ReLuxury And The Future Of The Circular Economy

Finally, The 1916 Company was there as part of the very first edition of ReLuxury, which is a new trade show and a new kind of trade show designed to showcase what we rather blandly call “the circular economy” (as much as the business of watch writing is the art of bland euphemism I feel like we could come up with something a little less bloodless than that). 

The idea behind ReLuxury is both simple and rather revolutionary: It is simply the notion, by now long-honored in the observance, that real luxury goods should not and in fact do not, fade into obscurity once they are sold by their first retailer to their first client. As a watch writer I’ve spent a great deal of my professional life obsessively covering the latest new releases, for a number of reasons – for one thing, that’s what everyone seems to want to read about and for another, it’s hard to write about an industry that lives and dies by the yearly so-called “novelties” without starting to fall into the same habits. If I’m honest, I haven’t made things any better by adopting a melancholic, elegiac, the-Golden-Age-is-past-and-like-the-springtime-of-youth-will-never-come-again tone when I write about things like the Lange Cabaret (“lost art,” forsooth).

In fact, a pre-owned watch is not some motionless effigy sitting in the darkness of a silent sepulcher, but rather something living a rich and full life of its own and The 1916 Company’s exhibit at ReLuxury was a perfect case in point. 

As the new guy I get to say this: I have never seen such an incredible group of collectible F.P. Journe watches in one place in my entire life and the same goes for the De Bethune watches my colleagues brought along, which included the very first De Bethune watch ever made – a DB1, No. 0. 

ReLuxury was also home to an exhibit from Origyn, a company developing a biometric scanning technology for verifying chain of custody for vintage watches based on the blockchain (I say “biometric” advisedly as watches are not, of course, alive although it sure feels that way to those of us who love them) and eBay, which is making major inroads into the true luxury market, and watch market, with all of the weight of its $25 billion market cap behind it, was a major presence as well. There were a number of uncharacteristically interesting panel discussions as well, including one with myself, Tim Mosso, and Revolution’s Wei Koh on the pros and cons of collecting from small independent brands versus large, established companies and group brands. 

All three events – Auction Week, the GPHG, and ReLuxury – are scheduled to run concurrently again next year which means that November is well on its way to becoming the single most important month of the year in the pre-owned watch world.