Patek Philippe Ref. 5100 Watch Review

Patek Philippe Ref. 5100 Watch Review

Patek Philippe Ref. 5100 Watch Review

Getting lately expressed some fascination 

Patek Philippe Ref. 5100 Watch Review

With why cosmetics and brands appear to rule the roost with regards to quality value in vintage watch auctions, I felt it incumbent on me to go searching and find out things i may find approaching in Geneva a few days ago that is representative of, in some way, high interest from the more strictly horological perspective. The outcomes were really quite heartening (now, again, I must highlight, people collect for every type of reasons and if you discover your individual sun increases and sets on PNDs, there's forget about to become stated than god bless and use peace, the sermon is ended). At Christie's, for example, the catalog is chockablock filled with some good examples in the usual suspects, but there's also many lots that may fly a little individually distinct, but which aren't, as the saying goes, without interest. Listed here are five lots, in no particular order, that every represent a specific part of the bigger realm of fine and precision watchmaking.

This really is, to place it in watchnerd vernacular, a sweet, sweet watch. Based on the lot notes, it had been produced in 1986, which otherwise a complete low-tide year for mechanical horology, was certainly one that continued to be not even close to obvious that top finish mechanical watchmaking had any kind of future. However, there have been already developments that demonstrated things weren't all lost at all. The Piece of fabric have been introduced in Zurich 3 years earlier, and 1986 was exactly the same year that Nicolas G. Hayek grew to become Chairman from the Piece of fabric Group and, among other interesting developments, a elevated Ulysse Nardin launched the very first of their Trilogy Of Your Time watches in 1985.

This specific watch - ref. 43032, lot 12 - is operated by a movement in line with the Vacheron Constantin caliber 1120, which as students of ultra thin watchmaking will doubtless remember, can also be the JLC 920, Patek Philippe 28-255, and AP caliber 2120. At launch in 1967 it had been the thinnest full-rotor automatic movement on the planet, and amazingly enough, today, over 4 decades later, its claim that they can that crown remains uncontested. The bottom caliber was mated having a perpetual calendar mechanism and also the whole factor finished bottom and top, not just with ferociously exacting conventional movement finishing techniques, but additionally probably the most minutely detailed engraving I have seen inside a watch. It's the type of watch I have always imagined may be worn with a certain type of genteelly debauched, slightly past-his-prime European aristocrat, plus a smoking jacket, while shouting with an open chateau window in the gardener. If you have arrived at a place where accumulating steel sports watches is feeling just a little foreseeable, just a little stale, and perhaps just a little juvenile, this a person's for you personally.

The Patek Philippe Ref. 5100 

Maybe my personal favorite kinda-sorta-modern Patek. They were modeled, based on the lot notes, following the mid-twentieth century reference 2554, which in fact had an identical situation shape (and that has been known as the "Manta Ray" lest you are concerned that PNDs come with an exclusive on cutesy nicknames). The ref. 5100 is made in fairly small figures - about 3,000 all in all, also it was the very first rectangular movement that Patek had created in decades that one posseses an extract in the Patek archives, and it was produced in 2001.

In 2000, creating a watch having a ten-day power reserve wasn't the a little bit more common event that it's today, and Patek's Jean-Pierre Musy brought out all of the stops to create a watch which was notable not only because of its lengthy power reserve, however for its devotion in each and every detail to as elevated as you possibly can an horological experience. The movement is completed towards the Geneva Seal standards and more, and incorporates little touches just like a strap made to offer the watch inside a table-clock like upright position when focused on your nightstand.

This watch seemed to be the topic of that which was, in 2000, certainly one of my personal favorite bits of watch writing, even today, that was created by Timezone's Watchbore. The storyline is within a double edged sword (Part 1, Part 2) and Part 1 contains most likely the only most wonderfully digressive opening to some watch review within the good reputation for watch reviews (it is a little blue, however, same with James Joyce's Ulysses). An excellent gentleman's watch that really should be known as an excellent gentleman's watch.

Audemars Piguet has worked difficult on experimental and semi-experimental updates to minute repeater design for a while now, which culminated in 2016 with the development of the AP Concept Supersonnerie. With this project, AP spent a lot of time analyzing pocket and watch repeaters from the own museum collection, covering a length of more than a century, which watch is made in 1929, when AP was one of the couple of makers on the planet able to make an ultra-thin repeater, and also the Vallée de Joux was prominent among the most critical centers of complicated watchmaking on the planet.

The situation, hands, and dial design are lovely but inside is how the experience is - behold the svelte and seductive caliber 18? SMV "extra quality" hands-wound movement, addressing the acme (well, an acme, anyway) of high craft Swiss watchmaking prior to the Depression started to kill the marketplace for this sort of leisurely quest for perfection. It might be most fascinating to listen to that one because platinum isn't generally considered the very best situation material for repeaters - additionally to being a lot more hard to work than gold, its density tends to make a duller seem, even though this watch develops from a time when knowledge of making chiming watches by conventional methods really was at its peak, and I wouldn't be amazed when the seem was a lot better than you'd expect from hearing many modern platinum repeaters. 

Captured, before the SIHH, we'd an opportunity to take a look at something really outstanding: an observatory pocket watch produced by Girard-Perregaux, in 1889. It's a good example of something invented making famous by GP, the tourbillon under three golden bridges. It's probably the most beautiful mechanisms I have seen, also it represents the greatest degree of time keeping technology of their day. This is among its siblings - another top-grade observatory timepiece, meant to both strike awe in to the heart of their (both lucky and wealthy) owner, and also to capture accolades within the observatory chronometry competitions, that have been the Olympic games of watchmaking throughout the decades these were held.

This watch is another sister to a different, very famous Girard-Perregaux timepiece, nicknamed "La Esmeralda," that was once of obama of Mexico, and that is now in GP's museum collection (because it the tourbillon we'd in The month of january). "La Esmeralda" is really known as since it was offered through GP's store in Mexico, La Esmeralda Hauser Zivy & Cie - as was this watch. The situation, dial and hands would be best-of-breed types of high standard work of the era, however, the majority of the curiosity about this piece is incorporated in the 19? movement, that is an remarkable monument towards the talent and dedication from the craftsmen who managed to get - in addition to being a hands-portable museum from the epitome of precision watchmaking within the late 1800s. Though not really a tourbillon, it represents people exactly the same degree of persistence for craft because the  GP pocket tourbillon we checked out last The month of january, and learn more about this lot.

Albert Potter was created in Albany

New You are able to, in 1836, although he gone to live in Geneva in 1875, where nearly all his watches were created. The caliber of his jobs are high and he's known not just for getting stuck for an very top quality standard generally, but in addition for the bizarre layout from the bridges in the watches, and for numerous inventions, including an inclined axis tourbillon created a while around 1860. His work's not generally well-known within the wider collector community, but it is of enormous historic interest as well as, his watches radiate the unshakeable self-confidence of machines produced by someone to whom the thought of compromising in almost any qualitative respect, would not have happened whatsoever.

When the adage that intolerance may be the handmaiden of perfection holds true, Potter would have been a deeply intolerant man. Lot 51 comes from Potter's Geneva period, however it does not seem like anything other people was making in Geneva at that time - for instance, it does not seem like anyone's work from the time Potter's bridge design (that he was awarded a patent) is quickly recognizable. The timepiece isn't any. 24 and it has a helical balance spring (a bit of horological exotica generally only present in marine chronometers) in addition to Potter's own form of a pivoted chronometer detent escapement. The estimate is hilariously low for that interest and quality, and because of the lassitude that the greatest grade pocket watches still appear to induce in bidders, it appears likely that someone's likely to pay a family member pittance for any classic example of the highest quality watchmaking from among the masters of 1800s horology. Still, inside a world where the initial known perpetual calendar watch maybe we should not be amazed ... and perhaps we ought to count our benefits too.