These include mechanical men’s watches laden with grande complications or ladies’ watches dripping with jewels from premier Swiss watchmakers such as Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin and Girard-Perregaux to name but a few.
Now when you are buying in this market, make no mistake, its going to cost you. usd$200,000 is easily spent, and much, much more if you really want to splurge. But the gift you’ll be giving is as timeless, intricate and impressive as they come, even if it ends up under lock and key, as such timepieces tend to do.
The creation of very expensive and very intricate watches is a long tradition within the relatively brief history of the industry, which really only got going in the latter half of the 19th century. During World War I, wristwatches became popular with military officers and soon watchmakers such as Cartier and Patek Philippe began marketing limited edition and steeply priced models expressly for the connoisseurs’ market.
Then as now, at the most expensive levels, wristwatches are status symbols meant for collector and any watch retailing for more than usd$100,000 will likely only be of interest to true aficionados. Some watch companies don’t make a lot of money off of their highest end watches because of the cost of research and development, but they still produce them to give their brand an ambiance of exclusivity. For people who can afford them, they’re about the pleasure of owning something extraordinary, whether or not they ever actually wear them.
If you go looking for an exorbitantly expensive wristwatch, what will you find? On the men’s side, it’s complications and plenty of ‘em, including chronograph functions for timing laps, moon phase indicators for tracking slices of the lunar pie, and perpetual calendar functions which track days, months and even years for centuries. The Grande Complication by Jean Dunand really packs them in with a mono-pusher split-second chronograph, split-second hand isolator, minute repeater, tourbillon, bi-retrograde perpetual calendar, and even a see-through sapphire back signed by its creator, Christophe Claret. Marketed as “one of the most complicated wrist watches in the world,”
The Grande Complication is certainly one of the most expensive, with a limited edition of six, three in 18K rose gold, two in 18K white gold, one in platinum ranging from usd$700,000 to upwards of usd$800,000.
Watchmakers have also begun loading their high-priced products with more useful complications, such as power reserve indicators that alert when your watch needs rewinding, or GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) functions to make it easier for travelers to keep track of multiple time zones.
One of the most prestigious and costly complications to be found is the tourbillon movement, an intricate mechanism that eliminates time-keeping errors caused by minute variations that result from shifts in gravity whenever a watch changes position. Invented in 1795 by Abraham-Louis Breguet, tourbillon movements have been so de rigueur on high-end watches of that they risk becoming pase. There various incarnations of tourbillons, and some less-exclusive watch brands have latched onto the complication to try and upgrade the brand, they’re really just making a reasonable quality product that has no soul. If the tourbillon is bordering on overproduction, “minute repeater” functions are still coming in favour. First created in the days before widespread use of electric lighting, repeater watches aid wearers in the dark by chiming or “repeating” the current time at the push of a button. Using bells of different tones, a minute repeater will ring out hours, quarter hours, and the minutes past since the last quarter hour. Like most of the complications found at the priciest levels, it’s convenient, totally unnecessary and totally cool.
Such attributes are only worthwhile if you can actually purchase a watch that has them, which at the highest-end levels is often easier desired than done. Many of the world’s most expensive watches are produced in severely limited quantities, including infinitesimal editions of one and frequently have buyers lined up long before they’re finished. Usually at rates of just a few per year.
What makes a watch expensive?
by Mark Walker on April 13, 2013
When it comes to making statements about who you are, there are few things that can demonstrate “you” better than the possession of fine timepiece. If you are thinking of buying someone something very fine that will never go out of style, there are few experience the same as when you unwrap an exceptionally good, and exceptionally expensive, watch. While many watchmakers make most of their profits from “bread-and-butte”r product lines which tend to retail in the usd$3,000 to usd$5,000 range,many of the top-end brands also offer watches that cost well into six figures.
