Feature: Impossible To Buy: Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin

We’ve all seen the meteoric rise of a trio of luxury watches that share one thing in common: fifty-odd years ago, when they first came out, they were critically lambasted. So why on Earth are they impossible to get now? Here’s the true story behind the wild ride of these three incredible watches.

Audemars Piguet Royal Oak 15400ST.OO.1220ST.03

It all began in 1968, at the Concours de Genéve, an annual event where watchmakers competed against each other to make the most accurate watch. And that year, like many, many previous years, Seiko, a Japanese brand trying to take on the Swiss, didn’t win. It didn’t come first, second or third, instead occupying the remaining places to tenth.

But the big difference wasn’t that the podium was dominated by the Swiss—that had always been the case—but dominated by Swiss quartz. A compendium of Swiss watchmakers, fearing the worst of a technological leap, had come together to take a pre-emptive strike and build a quartz movement of its very own. That Beta 21 quartz movement may have won the battle—the war, on the other hand, went a very different way.

In 1969, Seiko announced its first commercially available quartz watch, the Astron. It was very expensive, but as technology does, it quickly became more affordable, swiping the Swiss industry’s feet out from underneath it. Like the death of VHS, the mechanical watch was no longer needed, replaced by technology that was cheaper, more accurate and easier to produce.

It was all hands to battle stations for the Swiss. A three-pronged attack was needed. Some watchmakers followed suit and dabbled in the newer technologies, whilst still trying to maintain the quality and prestige they were known for, brands like Rolex and Omega, but these proved too expensive compared to the competition. Others went in an entirely different direction and explored the avenue of affordable quartz watches, like Swatch—a venture that, in the end, proved very successful, but lost the spirit in which Swiss watchmaking was founded.

There was a third option, but it was all or nothing. If it failed, it would mean joining the 1,000 other watchmakers whose businesses had also failed. The idea was this: now Swiss watchmaking was no longer the pinnacle of practicality and accuracy, there was only one hand left to play: luxury. You see, half a century before, the best watchmakers were known not just for their lavishly finished movements, but exquisite watches as well. Pocket watches, that is.

A pocket watch was a beacon of wealth and culture for its owner, large and impressive and very much a spectacle not just for its owner, but everyone its owner associated with as well. Wealthy collectors competed to have the biggest and most complex as social displays of prominence, leading to the pinnacle of the 1927 Patek Philippe Supercomplication. The Great Depression of the 1930s, however, had sent the wealthy into hiding for fear of their lives, and luxury watchmaking followed suit, disappearing under cuffs as small, reserved wristwatches.

And so, at 4pm on April 6th, 1971, the eve of the Basel watch fair, Audemars Piguet CEO Georges Golay, picked up the phone and made a call. His business had been struggling since the Great Depression, and the introduction of the Seiko Astron had been the last nail in the coffin. Young watch designer Gérald Genta answered. The brief was given: a watch design like no other to be sent to Golay to present the very next morning. Golay hung up. His fate was now sealed.

Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711/1A-010

The rest, as they say, is history. The AP Royal Oak, initially called the Safari, as it happens, was priced at a whopping ten times that of a Rolex Submariner, and even more than a gold complicated watch from Audemars Piguet itself. Critics mocked the watch, but customers took a different tack. They bought it in droves.

Like the difference between the critic score and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes for films such as the 2019 version of The Lion King and The Rise of Skywalker, the artificial reprieve of the luxurious golden years of Swiss watchmaking split opinions. There was no need for the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak to be so expensive—it was simple and made from steel—but the fact that it was became incredibly appealing.

Not for the first time, a struggling Patek Philippe took note. Four years on from the Royal Oak, as it had done in the 1930s with the Calatrava wristwatch, Patek Philippe avoided bankruptcy by recruiting a fresh designer to copy a new trend. Only this time, Patek Philippe went straight to the source and employed the talents of the same Gérald Genta who’d designed the Royal Oak. Once again, faced with a speedy turnaround—some five minutes or so—Genta fashioned a watch based on the same themes, in the same materials, for the same reason.

Then, a year later and rather begrudgingly, the oldest watchmaker of the trio followed suit. In a rather hasty celebration of its 222nd birthday, and under the cover of secrecy, Project 222 was created. Vacheron Constantin was so keen not to be seen resorting to the same tactics as its stablemates that designer Jörg Hysek was enlisted instead of Genta, with his participation kept under wraps for many decades after.

You can understand why. Here was a watchmaker whose unmatched history was to be found in the halls of greatness, lowering itself to cheap—well, rather expensive—parlour tricks. Only 500 were produced—a stark contrast to the thousands made by the other two—and it wasn’t even given a proper name, simply known thereafter as “Deux cent vingt-deux de Vacheron Constantin”—222 years of Vacheron Constantin.

Of course, all three manufacturers survived, and all are famous for their respective watches of the period—but has it all been plain sailing since? Not even close. The rise of luxury in the 70s gave way to the excess of the 80s, a decade that sparked a new generation of wealth for the first time in centuries. This was a time when ordinary people could make their fortune in stocks and shares, when banking no longer meant safe and stoic, but excessive and greedy.

It wasn’t to last. The 1987 stock market crash was even bigger than its 1929 counterpart, which had caused the Great Depression. The days of excess were over. The outlandish grilles of a Ferrari Testarossa no longer looked imposing … but silly and garish. Power suits were gone. A new era dawned on Swiss watchmaking. Wristwatches once again became reserved, but this time the continuing appreciation of mechanical watchmaking that had been revived in the 70s and 80s carried more influence. A Patek Philippe watch may have only been 36mm across, but it was packed with complication.

So, if the angular 70s designs had fallen out of favour, how have they ended up so popular today?

Vacheron Constantin Overseas 4500V/110A-B128

In amongst all this global turmoil lies a small subset of people who have quietly been dictating the direction this industry takes. It all started in 1978 when pocket watch collectors, people who embraced the history of mechanical watchmaking to its very core, turned their attention to wristwatches.

Why did this happen? Collectability and the documentation of history runs in phases. Things that are new that may not be at all desirable become increasingly desirable—and rare—as time passes. And so, the more time goes by, the more desirable collectibles become, until it becomes so desirable that’s its value goes through the roof, every example disappears into collections and everyone moves on to the next thing. It’s basically an offset timeline that runs alongside history as it happens. At some point, every part of history passes under the scrutiny of collectors, and when it does, interesting things begin to happen.

In 1969, that Patek Philippe 1927 Supercomplication sold at auction for $200,000, an equivalent today of $1.5m. Being the last great pocket watch of the pocket watch era, it stands to reason then that the next big collector item on the block would be a wristwatch—and it was. The appearance of a wristwatch at auction, however, was considered a travesty, reportedly sullying the fine establishment and the pocket watches it sold.

That wristwatch, a Patek Philippe Perpetual calendar, sold for a record price. Vintage wristwatch collecting had begun. Auctions exclusively for wristwatches became popular, and all the other auction houses followed suit. Now, here’s where things get really interesting.

The cycle of time between something being new to being collectible is about half a century, well on the way towards becoming an antique. When the Supercomplication sold at auction, it was 42 years old. The first notable wristwatch sold at auction came 46 years after Patek Philippe’s first wristwatch. Vintage Rolex collecting really kicked off in the late 80s, early 90s, 45 years after the launch of the iconic Rolex Datejust.

And so, in the last decade, that cycle has arrived at the 1970s. Collectors started showing interest in early Royal Oaks, Nautilus and 222s. Prices began to rise. Only this time, for the first time, something very different was at play: the internet. A decade ago, the only places you’d really find people talking about watches on the internet was collector and enthusiast forums. Now luxury watches are very much in the public favour, and so what started as a trend for collectors has bled out into the wider world.

To cope with this demand, this means that not only are vintage Royal Oaks, Patek Philippe Nautilus and 222s extremely desirable, but modern ones too. And with that collector mentality comes rising prices as desirability challenges availability, prospective owners competing with one another over scarcer and scarcer supply. People who, ten years prior, had no idea about mechanical wristwatches, are very much aware that these three are good investments. The watches that were once the domain of the collector-sphere are now being fought over by the entire world.

I hope you enjoyed that look into the history of watch collecting and why these three watches are so very much in the limelight today. What could be coming next? If history were to repeat itself, then perhaps we’ll start to see some collectability in gold, and even perhaps quartz.

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