The 14790 is one of the longest-lived Royal Oak references made. Debuting in 1992, it ran until 2006. In that time we saw the transition from petite to grande tapisserie, Gay Frères single pin bracelets to AP dual screw bracelets, the expansion of possible dials, calibre 2125 to 2225, tritium...

Up until 2022, the final boss of the Overseas range was either the QP Skeleton or Dual Time Everest, inarguably. The true genius of the QP was not just complication, but complication with more thinness. Normally, the greater a component count in a calibre, the larger the height. Here, that...

Never has the phrase good things come in small packages been more appropriate than to describe the ref. 5959R. The 5959 is equal parts serious weapons-grade watchmaking with serious whimsy. Released in 2005, this was actually the very first fully in-house Patek Philippe chronograph of any sort. And they chose...

Where you see feuille hands on a 3970, you know you’re talking early series and immensely collected watches today. But this isn’t a 3970. It’s a 3971, a reference created before the standardization of selling both a solid and sapphire caseback with each 3970. The 3971 was a screwdown, sapphire-backed,...

Universal Genève’s great early chronographs very rarely went above 36mm. This is a 1940s Compur with a seriously uncommon black gilt dial, and it’s 37mm—far oversized for its time. On top of all that, it has big eyes, or equally oversized subdials. It’s known as a Compur, and it’s in...

Finds. There are just a handful of über-Lange 1s, ref. 112.046 is one of them. It is a direct descendent of the 112.021 Lange 1A, the very first guilloché dial Lange of any model line. Except this later iteration, the ‘Floral’ (as this 112.046 has come to be known, for...