In October, Audemars Piguet unexpectedly announced it would be launching six new watches in the Royal Oak Concept collection all in one go.
This is the same collection that includes the company's most expensive watch to date: the Royal Oak Concept "Black Panther" Flying Tourbillon created in partnership with Marvel. The watch featured a rendition of the Black Panther superhero on the dial above the tourbillon.
A special one-off version of the model to raise funds for charity was sold at Christie’s for USD 5.2 million, although it was only estimated to go for USD 380,000 — 650,000. The superhero seemed to appear out of the blue on a watch by Audemars Piguet, but no other collection could have been chosen for this striking debut.
Royal Oak Concept was launched in 2002 by the brand's creative director Claude Emmenegger in honor the 30th anniversary of Audemars Piguet's most famous model — the Royal Oak. The new series was meant to showcase innovations and future aspirations. The right tone was set by the very first model Concept Watch 1 — a tourbillon watch developed by Renaud & Papi.
The tourbillon became a key component in almost all of the collection's subsequent models, and the new richly decorated Royal Oak Concept Flying Tourbillon is no exception. The series features models in white-gold and pink-gold cases measuring 38.5 mm in diameter.
Blue sapphires have been used on four of them (three of which are in white gold), a fifth has a bezel with an encircling rainbow effect produced by multicolored baguette-cut stones with pavé-set diamonds on its dial and case, while the sixth watch is blanketed in a rainbow of precious stones which extend over all its elements.
The latest version of the Royal Oak Concept Flying Tourbillon boasts some impressive figures: 397 brilliant-cut multicolored gemstones for the case, bezel, movement decoration and buckles, with 62 stones on the dial and 9 dazzling sapphires to decorate the tourbillon. The jewelers selected twelve different types of stones for the rainbow models.
These include rubies, tsavorites, emeralds, topazes, tanzanites, amethysts and sapphires in various different hues. It was no easy task to achieve the perfect progressive transition between the different colors, one reason being that the stones had to be arranged according to both their shade and size.
The company's masters worked with stones cut into 144 different sizes to fit the intricate geometry envisaged for the models set with blue sapphires. Invisibly setting the stones took 150 hours of work for each piece.
The novelties are equipped with the hand-wound Caliber 2951, a skeletonized movement which can be viewed through a frame of precious stones. The mainspring barrel positioned at 11 o'clock can store enough energy to power the watch for 77 hours. The movement is comprised of 225 parts and beats at a frequency of 3 Hz.