Patek Philippe Calibre 89 - Up close with a legend - Sotheby's Geneva auction

Hello and today we have the privilege of bringing to you a special report on one of the most iconic watch of all time. This is the Calibre 89, the most complicated watch ever produced by Patek Philippe with no less than 33 complications and listen to this, made up of 1728 components and weighing an astounding 1.1 kg. This timepiece was secretly developed by a special team of Patek Philippe during the 1980s and the goal was to mark the brand's 150th anniversary in 1989. Four Calibre 89 were produced, a white gold version, a steel version, a platinum one and the one put on auction by Sotheby's today is the first one of the lot in yellow gold. I used the word iconic before and what I meant by that is that this timepiece has really marked the beginning of a new era for watchmaking and I also just wanted to mention that when Patek Philippe went down that development route, it was quite an entrepreneurial risk, it wasn't built for a specific customer, it was a very long and quite revolutionary way of working and Patek was not the Patek we know today. So this naturally triggered a huge interest and changed quite a lot of things for the industry. Ok, enough of my blabla and let's now listen to the story and just for info we'll also cover some other interesting lots in the second part of this video report. Enjoy! In 1979, 10 years before the 150th anniversary, Philippe Stern had a meeting with some of his directors at Patek Philippe to discuss planning for the anniversary which would be in 10 years. They talked about different models they were going to make and at that time the idea was to make a replica of the Henry Graves, super complication. They were talking about it and apparently Max Studer who was the technical director of the factory, who was quite famous, suggested that why stop there, let's go and do something even more, you know, complicated. So they started in earnest the planning and designing of it in 1980 and what remains extremely interesting about this watch is that it's a bridge between the past and the future. And in Philippe Stern's own words, at the time, when it was finished in 1989, it absolutely reinvigorated Patek Philippe. At that point, they were far more interested in tapping into the marketing side of their name and they hadn't done that before. So this was, you know, something that caught the attention of the entire world when it came out. It is essentially twice the size, well no, one and a half times the size of the Graves and it has 33 complications. It was designed by a special projects team, they were called, which consisted of engineers headed by Jean-Pierre Mussi, who had newly joined the firm, and Paul Buclan, who was a master watchmaker. He had been handed the baton by Max Berni, who was the master watchmaker before him and he had felt that he was getting on in years and this was a project that he felt was for a younger person. They weren't that collaborative in the beginning because I think the watchmakers were suspicious of the engineers and the engineers were suspicious of the watchmakers and in fact they were on two different floors in Patek Philippe. Ultimately, by the time the project was completed, there was a complete collaboration between the two sides and they ended up on the same, next to each other, working together in a collaborative way and I think that's a wonderful story. The feeling is that, you know, the technology that they availed themselves of in 1980, you But the fascinating thing is that they didn't have any drawings. They went to the archives, there were no drawings, so they had nothing to go on because watchmakers essentially, you know, they work out of their head. So naturally the watchmakers were all gone, it was 56 years earlier, or even 46 years I suppose if we count from the beginning. But luckily, then curator of the Patek Philippe collection, which would then become the museum, Alan Banbury had recently brought the Henry Graves Supercomplication from Rockford, Illinois from the Time Museum to Geneva and he had personally hand carried it, it was a stipulation of Seth Atwood's. They generated something like 2,000 drawings which then had to be put into the computer so it was the early, very early use of CAD and I think that's what's so interesting. The Graves used the technology that was available in the 20s and the Calibre 89 used the technology available at that time. In 1989, Patek Philippe would make one or two complicated models, wristwatch models at a time. You would have the 1518, retired, followed by the 2499, which was retired, then they might have had the 2497 at the same time or the 1526, but the maximum would be two models. Then those were retired, finally, the 2499, and that was when, for the anniversary in addition to this, the 3970 was introduced in honor of the anniversary as well as the 3940 and what was also interesting was that they introduced the 3974, which is the perpetual minute repeater, and the 3939, which is the minute repeater with tourbillon and then one minute repeater, so that in and of itself was just staggering that Patek Philippe would present such a wealth of complicated things, watches, and I think it generated a new interest. The collector's market of wristwatches was, you know, in its infancy, it really started around 1979 and 1980 and then by 1986 it had come into its own and we started to see prices in the five-figure range for 1518s, 2499s. Then you have the Calibre 89 and the 150th anniversary and all of a sudden there was a groundswell of enthusiasm. The special models that they were creating were just immediately oversubscribed. Everybody was talking about Patek Philippe at that point. It's kind of from the Calibre 89 is this renaissance of watchmaking in Switzerland, not just for Patek Philippe, as I said, but for Audemars, for Vacheron, for every brand that gave birth to the independent makers such as François-Paul Journe, Frank Muller, but you know, they were all sort of out there alone and as a result, the business has grown, you know, tremendously, needless to say. It just is a magnificent, you know, piece of machinery without question and it really, it has a presence, it has a definite, it makes a statement and to this day, it is one of Patek Philippe's or if not the preeminent mechanical ambassador for the brand. I feel very honored for Sotheby's that we are offering this now and you know, it's just historically, mechanically, it's just the right time and it's such a special piece. Yep, quite an inspiring and incredible timepiece and I can promise that when you hold it in your hands, well this timepiece feels really dense, it's quite something and naturally if you're interested in going a bit crazy, well the estimates is set around 6.5 to 10 million dollars, so best of luck to you. So anyhow, there are some other interesting lots put on auction, so let's slightly change categories and get our feet smoothly back down to earth, well kind of. We shall talk about this very exceptional Cartier Tank. The Cartier Tank was designed by Louis Cartier in 1917, so we celebrate this year the 100th anniversary of the Cartier Tank. This Cartier Tank is very special because it's all in platinum and we do have a certificate that certifies the authenticity and also the platinum bracelet. We have a beautiful creme colored dial and the typical safari cabochon. It is from 1930s. Excellent and now we're going to talk about something a bit unusual in the world of Rolex because not everybody is accustomed to the fact that Rolex did other watches prior to the Oyster. Yes, exactly. So we have this beautiful Rolex Imperial, which is a pocket watch that Rolex manufactured in 1930 and it has this very special two-tone dial and it has actually an enamel minute track, so this was very unusual and you can see that when Rolex decided to do this, they put everything top quality in there. The dial is beautifully finished, the movement is a manual movement, so it's really beautifully finished and it's very, as you said, unusual for Rolex to see a pocket watch and we are in 1930s and you can see the look was quite avant-garde for this time. Let's go another few years up the ladder with also something very special and unusual. Exactly. So we have this beautiful chronograph done by Rolex. It is surnamed Gabou. Why Gabou? Because the case was manufactured in Le Locle and the manufacturer was Gabou Frères and it still holds up to today the nickname Gabou and on this watch what is special is this special dial called Argenté Grené and you can see that it is not white, it's a bit off-white and it's not grey, so it's really special and also obviously the rectangular shape is unusual for Rolex. We're used to the round shape and also the quantities are believed that there were only fewer than 50 pieces made of the Rolex Gabou, so a rare beautiful piece by Rolex. But now we're going to talk about something a bit more, not necessarily traditional, but something again we're a bit more accustomed to, but this is a very fine example of an original GMT. Exactly. So we have the Rolex GMT Master reference 6542, which was the first reference, GMT Master reference, which we all know that was produced in collaboration with the Pan Am pilots to show simultaneously two time zones and what is special about this particular model is that it has this beautifully aged tropical dial, which is basically what we see is it has aged in a particular way that what we see is the red colour from the brass plate of the dial coming through and the black colour particulars have faded, so that's why we have this very nice tropical look to the dial. Thanks for your time, all the best and we'll naturally keep you posted on the actual results of the auction. See you real soon.