![]() Phillips’s competitors also had their best years ever, with Christie’s reporting $205 million and Sotheby’s $148 million, a 50 percent increase over the previous year and well ahead of pre-pandemic annual sales.Īfter growing rapidly for the last 20 years or so, interest in luxury watches-as in many other collectibles, from sneakers to trading cards to wine-exploded during the pandemic, as people around the world all of a sudden had extra time to scroll through product shots on social media and eBay, and extra savings to spend. The sale capped a triumphant year for Phillips, which in 2021 boasted the highest total watch sales of any auction house in history, at $209.3 million. Tiffany’s and Patek Philippe ended up deciding to sell the watch to Taiwanese actor and watch collector Zach Lu-the underbidder in the camel hair coat-for his final bid (plus fees): $6.2 million. In late January, Phillips executive Paul Boutros told the watch site Hodinkee that the item was “unable to go to the original winning bidder,” providing no further explanation. In a dramatic twist, the transaction never went through. I think it was only when the final two bidders were going at it that we saw the real auction.” “It was masterful in the way it was orchestrated. “That was auction theater at its finest,” says a top watch-industry insider. The watch would have sold high no matter what, but Bacs’s performance had turned it into a moment. Patek made just 170 of them, so unless you were one of Tiffany’s 169 best customers, your only chance to buy one new was to bid on it this morning at Phillips. The Tiffany’s iteration would be among the last ever produced. Earlier in the year, Patek Philippe (perhaps the ne plus ultra of luxury watchmakers) had sent the watch world into hysterics when it announced that it would discontinue the 5711, perhaps its most iconic model. The watch’s retail price was $52,635-spare change for the kind of big-game collector auction houses typically target. Just a few days before the sale, well after catalogs had been printed and shipped to collectors around the world, Phillips had announced a surprise first lot: a new Patek Philippe reference 5711 Nautilus sports watch, made in partnership with Tiffany’s, complete with a robin’s egg dial. The auctiongoers took their seats in the brightly lit white-walled room, iPhones at the ready to document what promised to be a momentous event. ![]() This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
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