HAMMER PRICES AT AUCTION – Three of the most expensive watches in world history

In the past five years, the prices of watches with a very special collector's value have exploded. Here are three of the wildest hammer prices in watch history.

By Kåre Peitersen

Patek Philippe Nautilus: DKK 43 million

In December 2021, the Phillips auction house in New York sold a brand new Patek Philippe Nautilus ref. 5711 with Tiffany Blue® dial for almost DKK 43 million. The auction estimate was 'just' $50,000, so why was it so expensive? There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the estimate was based on the list price at Patek Philippe for a new watch of the same type. The problem is just that the demand was – and is – so much greater than the supply. And this model is very special because of the Tiffany blue dial with the Tiffany logo on it. Only 170 such watches were made to mark 170 years of uninterrupted collaboration between Tiffany's and Patek Philippe. Of them, 169 were put up for sale at Tiffany's in New York, Beverly Hills, and San Franciscobut the first model was offered for sale at Phillips. It was a charity auction, with the proceeds going to The Nature Conservancy – an international organization that has worked to protect nature around much of

Tiffany Blue®

the world for the past 70 years. The new owner was (by detours, but that’s another story), the American watch collector Zach Lu, who thus not only got a beautiful watch, but also donated money to a good cause. Of the other 169 watches, people like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jay-Z, and LeBron James also got one.

Philippe Nautilus 5711/1A-018

Tiffany Blue®. Auction estimate $52,000. Sold for $6,503 million (approx. DKK 43 million)

Paul Newman's private Rolex Daytona: DKK 130 million

Everybody loved Paul Newman. The cool but popular actor, racing driver, and food creator was the epitome of a good guy. His ice blue eyes and warm smile melted women's hearts, while his raw but fiercely charming attitude in films such as Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid and The Color of Money made many men wish they were in his shoes. And then he had his heart in the right place and donated fortunes away to charity - $550 million alone from the profits of the food company Newman's Own, which he started with a homemade salad dressing in 1982. Therefore, it was not much of a surprise that there were great expectations when his personal Rolex Daytona came up for auction at Phillips in 2017 – because everyone wanted a little piece of Paul. He had been given the watch by his wife, Joanne

Woodward, in 1968. It has gradually emerged that it was a bit of a coincidence. His wife wanted to give him a watch and went to a Rolex dealer in New York. Here a good salesman saw his chance to get rid of one of the models that sold really badly, namely the sports watch Daytona. The watch had flopped after its launch a few years earlier and Mrs Newman reportedly paid approx. $300 for the watch, which was subsequently engraved with a small greeting: ‘Drive carefully – Me’. When the watch came up for auction in the autumn of 2017, there was a sea of interested parties, and after a 12-minute bidding round, the hammer dropped at the staggering price of $17.8 million, which not only set a new world record – it also catapulted the entire watch industry into a new age.

DKK 230 million

The most expensive men's watch ever sold is Patek Philippe's one-of-a-kind steel version of their already rare and insanely expensive Grandmaster Chime (there are a few exorbitantly expensive ladies' watches from Graff, but they are gem-encrusted quartz watches – we do not count them here). At the Only Watch auction in November 2019, the happy buyer had to pay almost DKK 230 million for the 47.7 mm watch, which is the most complicated watch from Patek ever. Its interior is a micromechanical masterpiece and contains 20 complications, including a perpetual calendar and as many as five different types of chimes and an acoustic alarm. The Grandmaster Chime was first created in 2014 to celebrate Patek Philippe's 175th anniversary and very few of its kind (less than 10) have been produced. One of them is in Patek Philippe's own museum in Geneva, while the rest are distributed among an exclusive group of collectors and connoisseurs. According to

Patek, the development, production, and assembly of the model took more than 100,000 hours of work, which with a little math gives a price of DKK 2,300 per hour - so the price is almost okay, we suppose ...

6300A-010 estimated at CHF 2.5-3 million Sold for CHF 31.2 million (approx. DKK 230 million)