11 Timepieces to Follow at Phillips’s Hong Kong Watch Auction: XXIII
Phillips is preparing its most valuable Hong Kong watch auction to date by presale estimate, led by rare Patek Philippe wristwatches spanning more than eight decades of watchmaking. The Hong Kong Watch Auction: XXIII will take place on November 21 and 22 at the house’s Asia headquarters in the West Kowloon Cultural District, with early highlights ranging from a 1940 split-seconds chronograph to a possibly unique diamond-set complication with a salmon dial.
The sale comes two weeks after Phillips‘ Geneva auction and ahead of its December auction in New York, placing Hong Kong squarely in the middle of the fall season. It also follows a significant spring result, when Phillips sold a pink-gold Patek Philippe Ref. 2499 for $10.2 million in Hong Kong—the highest price ever paid for a watch at auction in Asia. That two-day sale brought in $51.5 million, giving the November offering a considerable result to follow.
This time around, a yellow-gold Patek Philippe Ref. 2499 and a pink-gold Ref. 1518 return to the market after decades out of public view. They represent two of the manufacturer’s defining perpetual calendar chronographs, combining a stopwatch with a calendar that accounts for leap years and different month lengths. Alongside them is a platinum Patek Philippe Ref. 3990 with a salmon dial, possibly the only example of its kind, according to Phillips. Other highlights include a Patek Philippe with a tropical landscape rendered in enamel and a black-and-gold Rolex Daytona on a lavish gold mesh bracelet. A one-of-a-kind Cartier Crash rounds out the group, adding a luminous pine-green dial to one of watchmaking’s most eccentric designs. Here are 11 watches in the upcoming sale to follow:
