There's no doubt that the sale of the Bleu Royal – a perfect 17.61-carat blue diamond that fetched almost CHF 40 million including premiums under the hammer of the Christie's auctioneer – stole the show at Geneva’s fall watch auctions. And with good reason: this session, which ran from 3 and 7 November 2023 at Antiquorum, Christie's, Phillips and Sotheby's, definitely didn't stir passions. As Roy Davidoff, collector's watch specialist and co-founder of Geneva-based Davidoff Brothers, points out: "The atmosphere in the various auction rooms was rather dull, with very few real fights over the most remarkable lots. One almost got the impression of a certain weariness among collectors, who were reluctant to position themselves on outstanding timepieces. Perhaps the signal is that the current craze is for less prestigious watches that nonetheless have ‘bargain’ potential?”
Watch auction results for the first half of the year had already shown a certain slowdown. As noted in the Mercury Project's Hammertrack report for the first six months of the year, the results recorded by the six main houses active in this market (Antiquorum, Bonhams, Christie's, Phillips, Poly Auction and Sotheby's) fell by 18% to CHF 312 million compared to the first half of 2022. This decline contrasts sharply with jewelry sales, which rose by 43% to CHF 696 million over the same period. "Fears of a slowdown in the second-hand watch market, as predicted by declining auction sales in the last quarter of 2022, have now been definitively confirmed by these results”, note the authors of the report. “However, the watch market remains at a high level, outperforming its H121 levels." This is borne out by the average price per lot sold, which remained almost stable at CHF 50,000.
Geneva in pole position
During the first six months of 2023, Geneva nonetheless came out on top, with spring sales totaling CHF 110 million and notably including several world records. Would this result – which consolidated Geneva's leading position in the watch auction market ahead of Hong Kong since 2019 – be confirmed at the fall session? Phillips got the show rolling with its "The Geneva Watch Auction: XVIII". With 184 lots, of which 183 found buyers, the sale totaled CHF 39 million (CHF 213,000 on average per lot), with the platinum Patek Philippe Nautilus Ref. 3700/1 representing the star attraction. It sold under Aurel Bacs’ hammer for CHF 2.5 million, a record for this reference.
Another record was the CHF 2.1 million obtained for an extremely rare triple-calendar steel Rolex, Ref. 6062. With this sale, Phillips achieved a result more than twice the low estimates of the watches offered at auction, totaling CHF 19 million.
Antiquorum, which auctioned 588 lots over two days, also able to set two records with a 1969 Rolex Cosmograph Daytona in yellow gold with a champagne-toned dial Ref. 6241, which fetched CHF 350,000, and the white gold Rolex Day-Date with aventurine dial Ref. 18239, a gift from the Maison to artist Dominique Appia in 1995, which sold for CHF 262,500. With 86% of lots sold, Antiquorum ended its session with a total of CHF 9 million.
Then came Christie's turn, with two sales announced. The first was "The Passion of Time", including 113 lots from the Mohammed Zaman collection, one of the most prestigious personal collections to appear on the market recently; followed by "Rare Watches" featuring 137 watches by independent watchmakers.
Although the two sales totaled CHF 55.5 million, the collectors present at the first session were not expecting the surprise Christie's had in store for them. Even before the auction began, all the watches in the Zaman collection had been "pre-sold". According to one market observer, the explanation given by Christie's concerned the Garanties de Tiers (third party guarantees) enabling the auction house to share the financial risk incurred on timepieces with a minimum price when the watches are not sold. The third party in question, whose identity was not revealed, "agrees prior to the auction to place an irrevocable written bid on the lot", according to Christie's terms of sale. If there are no higher bids, the third party must purchase the lot at the set price. In other words, this morning "surprise" did little to stir the enthusiasm of collectors gathered for the afternoon session, where better results were expected, notably for the unique Philippe Dufour Simplicity in platinum, which sold for CHF 945,000, below its high estimate of CHF 1.2 million.
Sotheby's wrapped up the fall session with two sales offering a total of 366 lots. The highlights were the two watches created by the tandem of British watchmaking geniuses, the late George Daniels and Roger Smith: the Anniversary 01 watch from a series of 35 made by the latter in honor of the former; and the last of the 50 Millennium watches co-created by the two watchmakers. Both timepieces were acquired in a matter of minutes by an Emirati collector for CHF 2.9 million. Sotheby's achieved a total of CHF 15.2 million from the two sales.
For the four leading watch auction houses, the fall session thus ended with a cumulative result of CHF 118.6 million, a level quite comparable to the first half of the year, not particularly spectacular yet remarkably consistent.
