In 1996, the Royal Oak QP became a lot more usable. Leap year indication was born, in ref. 25820PT. Collectors divide true vintage from neo-vintage Royal Oak QP around this mark. And while vintage RO QP is genesis and hugely sexy, it’s worth remembering that a leap year is actually...

Everyone is wondering what history will make of the 5970. You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again, this is the last of the Lemania ébauches; 5270 that followed axed that tradition. Further, the 1mm case different is not insignificant either. The 5970 was only in production for about...

This is a Pre-Daytona, the father of Cosmograph, but it’s way more interesting than it appears at first glance. This is the Pre-Daytona equivalent of a perfect Paul Newman: finding any 6238 with a black dial. For standard dials, the 6238 might hold the Rolex record for having the largest...

In a word, this Chopard is bananas. You won’t see ref. 36/2249 often, the in-period retail price of 147K meant very few sold to begin with. Today, they’ll only trouble you for a third of retail. And what a man watch it is, like a Patek 5213 with a personality....

Stare for more than a millisecond at this 5513 and you’ll notice something is different . . .like really, really different. Call it an LHD, Destro, Southpaw, or just plain wrong, it is a 5513 Submariner with the crown on the left. It’s also an Underline and PCG, but that...

It appears the 3970 is going the way of the 2499. But is that the whole range or simply the first two series? That’s the question that remains unclear. First and Second Series have recently exploded to become 400K or even 500K USD propositions, depending on the watch in question....

The Rolex chronograph as we know it extends far earlier than the Daytona name. It extends earlier even than Oyster Cases and WWII, to the mid 1930s. This is the ref. 2508, a steel two-register chronograph with a silver gilt, black dial. It’s the very first two-register, two-button Rolex Chronograph....

Far before the Cubitus took a legend and messed about with its proportions, Vacheron Constantin took their integrated poster child and injected some of David Coulthard’s chin. It didn’t work back then either. In fact, the Square 222 was a total flop. It is unconventional, still shrouded in mystery, and...

Normally when talking about Datejusts, adjectives like humble and simple get thrown in. There’s nothing humble about this 1600 though, it’s downright nobility. 1600 is a bit of an unusual flavor, as it ditches the fluting for a sterile, smooth bezel. Some adore this, some hate it. Regardless of preference,...

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...

More normal Day-Dates are the value of the decade at the moment. There is no watch as significant in vintage Rolex that also remains somewhat accessible. That said, this isn’t exactly a normal Day-Date, only normal-ish. It's white gold with Arabic discs and, more importantly, cigarette hands. It’s an 1803/9,...

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...

This is peak Philippe-Stern-era Patek Philippe. The 5004 is the watch that built so much reputation and rapport under the brand that Patek could afford to erode it for a generation or two. It is the modern classic, Ed Sheeran gets it (read Time lately?). To bring the brand onto...

Stone dial Datejusts, particularly in white gold as this example is, took a very particular type of buyer in the mid-70s. This wasn’t the top of the Rolex catalogue in period, the Day-Date had already emerged. For both a stone dial and precious metal, you were adding a very significant...