Roger Smith Series 3

The very first Roger Smith (RWS) Series 3 is heading to auction. Introduced in 2015, the Series 3 was the start of the date complication with the established aesethic of the collection. It nods to the commissioned rectangular-cased Series 1 which also featured a retrograde date, but that Lange Arkade-like shape lacks the classicism of the 2015 Series 3. It’s a bit of an early days of the manufacture shaking hands with the contemporary. RWS manufacture roughly 15-20 watches per year these days, across a small team. Creating nearly every component in-house, each watch takes over a year to make with a minimum of 6,000 man hours per watch. That’s several multiples of a Simplicity. There are probably something like 25 Series 3 out there, this is 1 of 5 in pink to date.

Photography for this Find comes via a prior sale by A Collected Man. The example at auction is coming to Phillips. 

We say 2015 debut, but that was the prototype. It wasn’t fully there until 2018 and delivered until 2019. Things this great take time. The Series 3 drew direct lineage from a mirrored pair of bespoke commissions completed in 2012, each bearing a retrograde calendar complication that Smith found so technically rewarding and aesthetically satisfying that he resolved to develop it into a proper series.

The co-axial escapement was developed by Daniels through the 1970s, first demonstrated in the Atwood pocket watch of 1976 and patented in 1980; it is a mechanism designed to eliminate the destructive sliding friction that has been the central weakness of the lever escapement since the mid-eighteenth century. When Smith refined the calibre around 2012, he produced the Mark 2 by lightening the escape wheel substantially—reducing its inertia, increasing its responsiveness, and allowing the full efficiency of the co-axial principle to manifest in a wristwatch of practical size. Roger humbly admits ‘George gave us this astonishing escapement and put it in our hands—in my hands—and we've improved it slightly.’

The secondary market for the Series 3 remains as thin as one would expect. Pink metals have appeared in the range of 800K-1M USD. This is a notable premium to the lesser complicated pieces. This being the first to auction will be an important market-defining watch.