7 Levels of Old Money Watches: Cartier Tank to $24M Patek

These are the 7 levels of old money watches, and the part of each one you are really paying for. A prince's engraving on the back of Jackie Kennedy's Cartier Tank. A Patek Philippe archive extract that proves a stranger got there first. The Sultan of Oman's Khanjar Daytona, where Rolex moved its own name up the dial to make room for his dagger. Audemars Piguet, the only holy trinity house still owned by its founding families, and why the Royal Oak Jumbo never grew. A. Lange & Söhne, the name that outlived the family's hold on it.

Then the two levels nobody can buy back. A Breguet made for Marie Antoinette that she never touched. And the Henry Graves Supercomplication, the Patek Philippe built under one family's night sky over Fifth Avenue, which sold at auction for $24 million.

Along the way: what a provenance premium really buys at auction, and the one rule for paying for a watch's past without taking home a used watch at a collector's price.