This year's auctions get underway. Is the first one always a flop like pancakes?
The first watch auction of the year was January's Le Concours de Complexité (French for "competition of complexity"), held in Hong Kong by today's largest watch auction department, Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo. To say it was a flop would be putting it lightly.
Don't get the wrong impression, the organizers had a tantalizing and rather ambitious idea: Probably their smallest auction in history with just eleven watches! And not just anybody's watches, pieces by François-Paul Journe, a highly respected watchmaker, celebrated among auctioneers and collectors the world over.
They even picked the surefire motto of "less is more" and tried to accommodate clients as much as possible. Clients weren't just given the usual couple of days, they had a full week to mull over the watches from January 13 to 20.
François-Paul Journe, an undoubted leader in contemporary artisanal watchmaking
But it didn't live up to expectations. Why not? It was clearly a case of very bad timing. Ever since the SIHH was rebranded Watch & Wonders and moved from the very beginning of the year to late March and early April, January has effectively become a "dead" month in the watch auction calendar.
Some in Europe and America weren't done celebrating Christmas and New Year's. Others in Asia were making their final preparations to ring in the Lunar New Year on January 21. No one had time to think about growing their collections or making successful investments — everyone wanted to relax over the holiday season and spend time with family.
That's why hardly anyone was even making spontaneous purchases on online auctions hosted by major platforms that operate 24/7. As a result, Le Concours de Complexité raised an underwhelming HKD 23,562,800 (CHF 1,965,331) instead of what one might expect to be closer to CHF 10,000,000.
F.P. Journe Sonnerie Souveraine, circa 2018
The most expensive lot was a famous minute repeater with a grande and petite sonnerie mechanism and power reserve indication in stainless steel called F.P. Journe Sonnerie Souveraine circa 2018. The model is made special by its custom dial coated in black lacquer.
The successful bidder paid HKD 8,720,000 (CHF 1,025,300) for the watch estimated to go for HKD 2,800,000 - 5,000,000. The watchmaking maestro chose the "non-precious" metal steel for his first commercially produced series of minute repeaters launched in 2006, as it's the best material for sound propagation, where the choice of the case material is particularly significant for a tiny wristwatch case.
The watch in second place which sold for HKD 2,772,000 (CHF 327,539) was the iconic Ruthenium Chronomètre à Résonance, which kept within its estimate of HKD 1,200,000 – 2,200,000. After all, this particular model is a very interesting and rare one.
F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance, Ruthenium Collection, circa 2001
It was made in the early days of Journe's career in 2001, numbered 2 in a limited edition of 99 pieces in a platinum case with the dial and brass movement bridges plated in ruthenium. It was the first wristwatch chronometer to implement an idea conceived by watchmakers in the 18th century: utilizing the phenomenon of resonance to make the balances oscillate in sync.
This makes watches far more resilient to positional errors to ensure greater stability and timekeeping accuracy. The result is highly interesting: the Ruthenium Collection was the last time Journe would work with simple metal for making movements. From then on, the watchmaker would only use red gold as the primary metal for all his calibers.
Nevertheless, this symbol of independent watchmaking only raised just over 300,000 Swiss francs. Third place was occupied by a fourth-generation "RQ" version of the same Chronomètre à Résonance in platinum with a salmon dial, launched in 2021 to coincide with the model's 20th anniversary: HKD 2,268,000 (CHF 268,000).
F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance, 20th Anniversary, circa 2021
The next two models in fourth and fifth place must have been bought by one the same collector for an identical sum of HKD 2,142,000 (CHF 253,000). One of them was another freshly minted Chronomètre à Résonance from 2019 in pink gold.
It's important to note here that watches from the third-generation "RT" series were produced in very small quantities for just one year before being discontinued. So this piece has every chance of becoming a true rarity over time.
The other model was the Centigraphe Souverain Anniversaire Genève — a chronograph in a case made of pink gold and titanium. Its highlight is the fact that it's the eighth piece in a series of ten dedicated to the 10th Anniversary of the F.P. Journe Geneva Boutique.
Centigraphe Souverain Anniversaire Genève, circa 2019
Had the organizers waited until May, the auction sales total would likely have been far greater. But this is only the beginning, we'll see what the rest of this year has in store.