Philippe Dufour Simplicity, 37mm, White Gold

The Simplicity is Philippe Dufour’s third and final model: hand-wound, time-only, introduced in 2000 at 34mm, its movement redesigned rather than spaced out for the 37mm case that followed. Dufour made roughly 15 a year; 205 originals. This is number 60, in 37mm white gold with a hand-guilloché dial, petite seconds, and calibre 11, a deeply reworked Valjoux VZSS. In a world where many independents of the last five years are now many hundreds of thousands, how does the old guard, respected by all, sit in the brave new world?

This photo is of the example being auctioned, all other photography comes via a prior sale courtesy of A Collected Man.

Born in 1948 in Le Sentier to two watchmakers, Dufour is the old guard in the literal sense. He trained at the valley’s école, joined Jaeger-LeCoultre in 1967, passed through Gérald Genta and Audemars Piguet, then restored antiques before opening his own workshop in 1978. He delivered five grande et petite sonnerie pocket watches to AP between 1982 and 1988, showed the first such wristwatch in 1992, and in 1996 the Duality, the first wristwatch with two escapements, made just nine times.

His standing amongst watchmakers rests less on those firsts than on what he gave away. A founding member of Time Aeon, he steered Naissance d’une Montre with Greubel Forsey, in which Michel Boulanger built 12 watches by hand; Dufour’s name is on the dial. He coached Seiko’s Micro Artist Studio on finishing, advised TAG Heuer on the Monaco V4 and spent an afternoon answering every question Oscillon put to him. In his words, there are ‘graveyards full of secrets.’ Even Phillips Geneva catalogue this month calls him the first to make extreme hand finishing the point, a creed his successors now trade on.

This makes the arithmetic strange. Phillips estimates this one at 300–600K USD. Simon Brette’s titanium Chronomètre Artisans is well north of 500K regardless of metal now, Rexhep Rexhepi’s platinum Chronomètre Contemporain made CHF 1.16M in 2024, and Théo Auffret’s first watch goes to Hong Kong this month estimated up to 231K USD—likely to well outperform. At estimate, the premium for the source over his heirs is thin. Rooms disagree: platinum No. 57 made CHF 756,000 in 2021 and, per reported results, CHF 1,968,500 in Geneva on 7 November. The estimate is unlikely to survive the room.