Haldimann H11

Beat Haldimann works from Villa Nussbühl, a 1907 house in Thun, with no CNC machinery and a family watchmaking line he traces back to 1642. He made his name in 2002 with the H1, a flying tourbillon spinning at the centre of the dial. This H11, shown at Baselworld 2013, was his first watch without a tourbillon, but it keeps the same idea: the balance sits on the axis of the hands. In the H11 it is a plain balance, mounted at the center of the movement directly beneath the hour and minute pivots, billed as a first.

Photography of this H11 is of a prior example sold by A Collected Man. H11 appearing at auction linked below, which lacks subsidiary seconds. 

From the front you would never know. Two hollow spade hands, modelled on a 1790 Haldimann Frères pocket watch, sweep a hand-frosted grey dial with small Roman numerals in a 39mm platinum case. Turn it over and the hand-frosted gilt plate is nearly bare: balance and cock in the middle, crown and ratchet wheels, little else. The spheres of Haldimann’s logo are applied and raised. The 14-ligne calibre H11 runs at 21,600 vph with 38 hours of reserve and 161 parts, using Haldimann’s modified lever and his own cross-shaped Haldibloc shock protection. Launch price in platinum was CHF 56,000.

How many exist is unknowable from the outside. Haldimann has never published H11 figures, and even total output is fuzzy: somewhere around 20 annually. That covers tourbillons, clocks and the H11 family in gold, platinum and (from 2017) steel. Phillips calls this one of only two platinum H11s to appear publicly at auction. Even the name is unsettled: the two-hand H11 and small-seconds H12 were later merged under one, now both sitting under the H11 name.

The watch heading to auction now, circa 2021, has been seen before. Its certificate date (19 June 2021) and movement number (2013A) match lot 886 at Phillips HK in November 2021, consigned by its original owner five months after certification, which sold for about 92K USD against a 35K–76K USD estimate. It returns as lot 1017 on 21–22 November at 64K–128K, after a rose gold H11/12 just made about $252,000 at Phillips in May. Not bad for a watch SJX was lukewarm on at launch. Haldimann still services any watch bearing his name, free of charge.