Auctions Ten Major Trends And Takeaways From The Spring 2022 Watch Auction Season

Lead image, Aurel Bacs, Senior Consultant, Phillips Watches, at the rostrum in New York in early June 2022.

Christie's earned $21,743,070. Phillips achieved $30,332,000. Sotheby's brought in $18,964,890. It was – by far – the most successful spring watch auction season that New York has ever seen. But those numbers don't tell the whole story.

It would be incredibly easy, after all, to pick five lots that make it look like the watch-auction market is stronger than ever. It would also be easy to highlight five lots that make it look like the sky is falling. The truth is, of course, somewhere in the middle. I believe there's good reason to be confident in the inherent strength of the luxury watch market, but things have absolutely cooled off from the highs we experienced during the November and December 2021 sales.

To get a better picture of where the auction market stands after the end of the spring season, I spoke with a number of experts in the watch-auction world and the broader secondary-market space to get their opinion on the trends we saw and what areas of the market are worth watching. 

Oh, and before we dive in, I'd just like to remind everyone reading this that it's incredibly difficult to make any sort-of useful observation on broader industry or market trends based on the result of a single lot. An auction result is a singular event that represents one watch's value at one moment in time. No single lot is an unequivocal truth worth prescribing to. On that note, let's see what we learned.

"I think enthusiasm is really there for special watches, whether they're independent-maker watches, vintage timepieces, or even special modern, neo-vintage watches," Paul Boutros, Head of Americas for Phillips Watches, says. "We just see so much interest for those uncommon watches, and the results really emphasize that."

Look no further than the performance of the George Daniels and Roger Smith pieces at Phillips New York, or basically the entire Nevadian Collector sale at Sotheby's Hong Kong. Genuinely rare watches, whether vintage or modern/contemporary, are as strong as ever. But the so-called "speculative" market that has surrounded run-of-the-mill contemporary stainless steel sport watches from Patek Philippe and Rolex over the past 18 months has clearly started to show signs of weakening. That doesn't mean these specific watches are valued below their MSRP figure or have totally collapsed – the prices are just returning to reality and are more in-line with their value from one year ago instead of the highs we saw around six months ago.

"I would say I am pleasantly surprised by how well the auctions have gone," says John Reardon, the former International Head of Watches for Christie's and the founder of Collectability, a platform dedicated to Patek Philippe scholarship. "I saw this back in 2008; the auctions after a major dip were quite strong. We've become accustomed to month-on-month, week-on-week growth in the watch marketplace. And I think there will be an adjustment from that rate of ascension; but at the same time, we're going to start to see some price stabilization, which is good for all of us. We were losing a lot of people who were so frustrated that they couldn't buy a watch. There will be more availability of pieces in the [near future]. A lot of people are selling now so it's a great time to buy. When the market keeps going up, people hold. So now we're seeing some turnover in the market, which is great, because people can come in and buy the watch they've been looking for, modern or vintage. Stability is the word of the day."

To me, that's a sign of consistency and maturity. There's still a very healthy amount of money moving around, but it doesn't involve inflated sums that we all inherently knew didn't make sense.

I think there are a few ways to wrap your head around why this is happening.

• Administratively, it's far easier for auction houses to source and sell contemporary watches. They require less work on the back-end for auction houses to authenticate and (if necessary) service prior to the sale. Auction catalogs are larger than ever; ipso facto, the more contemporary watches you can include, the easier it is to expand the catalog.  
• As the watch market has grown, there are more collectors out there at any given time who are actively squirreling away the heavyweight vintage watches we used to see cycle through the market on a more frequent basis. In response to the lack of headline-worthy vintage watches coming their way, the auction houses have responded by focusing on special contemporary pieces.

"We get a lot of inquiries for watches to be considered in our New York sales, but we're quite selective," says Boutros. "There's no rhyme or reason. There's no strategy in determining whether I want this percentage to be modern; I want this percentage to be vintage. I'm just looking for great quality watches that tell a great story that I know can do well for the consignors, and that I know our buyers will be excited about. Maybe there's a greater percentage of modern watches in our sales recently, but that's just a reflection of what's coming to us. Great vintage timepieces are hard to find; it's kind of probably increasingly difficult to source exceptional quality vintage."

"It's a supply and demand issue," Reardon agrees. "As a former auction person, I can tell you that you're always pressured to make the next sale bigger than the last. We're not going to find enough 1518s, 2499s, and fresh-to-market Submariners to fill auction catalogs. So we have increasingly seen – especially as demand has exponentially grown – more [contemporary] watches show up at auction. The days of pages and pages of vintage watches in the catalogs are probably behind us, but every watch will eventually become vintage."

Eric Wind, the watch dealer extraordinaire and longtime HODINKEE contributor, has a slightly different perspective. 

"People will consign watches to auction when they think they can do better there than in the private market," Wind says. "Because there has been such upward momentum with the prices of modern watches, people are essentially treating it like the casino and throwing it in there and hoping it goes big. I think a lot of these watches have recently sold for less than what some people think they could have gotten on the private market, so we will probably see a gradual shift back toward vintage."

Just think about it – there have never been so many unique Royal Oak variations available at any one time; the individuals interested in those watches have already picked up the pieces that have caught their eye, so I'd expect any Royal Oaks to come up in the latter half of 2022 and beyond to not reach the highs we just saw. However, as of right now, we are seeing a good bit of resilience after the Phillips' Royal Oak thematic sale in early May – the Zurich-based auction house Ineichen hosted a Royal Oak thematic sale at the end of last month with strong results, and one of the best results at Sotheby's this month in New York was a previously unknown unique-piece Royal Oak Grand Complication in black ceramic that broke one million USD.

"I do believe this year brought a lot of [Royal Oak] supply to the market, and maybe, you know, it will be a good opportunity to buy in the fall season, because there might still be a good amount that come to close out the 50th anniversary year," says Boutros. "But going forward, I do think it will be tough for us to get good Royal Oaks, which will probably keep the demand above supply."

At first glance, it appears that a significant majority of the 76 Journe pieces that sold at Christie's (16), Phillips (42), and Sotheby's (16) this season all performed well, with many beating their high estimate. But the exceptional performance of a few pieces – such as the Octa Calendrier "Souscription" at Phillips Geneva, the Tourbillon Souverain with a special Chinese dial created for the now-shuttered Beijing boutique at Phillips Hong Kong, the jade-dial Tourbillon Souverain at Phillips New York, and the early brass-dial Tourbillon Souverain from the model's first year of production at Phillips New York – distract from just how random the results of many of the other lots ended up.

A few oddities I noticed include the string of three Chronometre Bleu Byblos pieces that sold in April and May. A limited-edition release of 99 pieces from 2014, the Byblos is a popular watch with a rightful six-figure valuation. So it was no major surprise that an example went for HKD $2,142,000 (approximately USD $272,868)  at Sotheby's Hong Kong on April 26. What was a surprise is what happened about 10 days later at Phillips Geneva when another Byblos example, albeit with the rarer Eastern Arabic dial, went for a bewildering all-in sum of CHF 630,000. Three weeks later, at Phillips Hong Kong, in late May, the final Byblos of the season sold for the lowest total yet – HKD $1,953,000 (approximately USD $248,791). It makes no sense.

Another odd turn of events I noticed took place during Phillips Geneva. A first-generation Chronomètre à Resonance from the model's inaugural production year, 1999, sold for CHF 453,600 – a nice sum. The very next lot was another Chronomètre à Resonance, produced 22 years later. This current-generation example dated to 2021 and it ended up selling for an almost identical total – CHF 415,800. Finally, forty lots later in the sale, another Chronomètre à Resonance hits the rostrum – it's part of a limited-edition run of 10 pieces from the mid-2000s that features an attractive black mother-of-pearl dial and rose gold case. What does it end up selling for? CHF 441,000! These are three vastly different examples of the Chronomètre à Resonance series, with different degrees of rarity and each should appeal to divergent groups of collectors. How likely is it that all three would hammer within $40,000 of each other?

Ok, ok, so I am falling into the trap that I mentioned earlier – these results, in a vacuum, mean pretty much nothing. It's far more likely that each individual Chronomètre à Resonance and Byblos result had zero impact on the result that followed. It likely boiled down to the interested parties bidding on the specific watch at the specific time the watch was up for auction. But what it does signal to me is that there's a larger spectrum of uncertainty around what are the most in-demand and valuable aspects within F.P. Journe's collective body of work.

Alongside these small inconsistencies, there were a number of Journe pieces at Christie's and Sotheby's that I thought underperformed relative to expectations, and even against their provided estimates. There were a small series of three Octa Réserve de Marche pieces that sold at Sotheby's that struck me in particular. There was a 2001 Octa Réserve de Marche in platinum that barely passed its low estimate in New York, and the same story for another two platinum Réserve de Marche examples (here and here) from the following year that both sold in Hong Kong. And maybe I'm missing something, but did anyone else expect the example of Journe's super-exclusive (and now-discontinued) Sonnerie Souveraine to perform better at Christie's Hong Kong?

The prices these watches are achieving are extraordinarily high, and I'm not going to sit here and say they don't deserve it. But I think there are a few concerning trends to keep an eye on for any collector who plans to bid on an F.P. Journe watch at auction in the near future.

"Given Aquanauts and Nautiluses were hitting an all-time high, I think people are now appreciating the actual complications and what makes the value of a watch," says Leigh Zagoory, a Vice President and Watch Specialist at Sotheby's.

This goes back to what I mentioned in my first bullet point – buyers are beginning to come back to earth and understand the inherent value of a complicated calendar cased in precious metal. 

"I think ref. 3970 and ref. 5970 perpetual calendar chronographs are particularly strong right now," says Eric Ku, Talking Watches alumnus and proprietor of the online auction platform, Loupe This. "There was a really great buying opportunity on these types of watches over the past several years that I think might be escaping us now. People want these types of watches because they're enduring classics that really straddle [the line between] vintage and modern."

But it's not just your complicated calendars and chronographs that are seeing a growth in interest, indicates Sam Hines, the former International Head of Watches at Sotheby's who recently announced he'd be joining forces with Ku at Loupe This. Hines points out the recent million-dollar sale of a unique Patek Philippe ref. 5016 – famously one of the most complex and divisive modern references from the company – at Sotheby's Hong Kong as an example.

"I remember when I started in this business, this was the hottest watch on the market. And then, for many years, it sort of hovered around 400, 500 thousand," he says. "Now it's up to a million. I think collectors are sort of realizing the value that exists in these watches. If a 5711 with diamonds is selling for one or 1.3 million, you'd take a 5016 any day, right?"

Other vintage Patek highlights from the season include the pair of pink-on-pink 1518s (one in the Nevadian Collection that sold for HKD $22,760,000/ USD $2.9 million; another at Phillips Geneva that hit CHF 3,297,000); the Wiesenthal at Phillips Geneva which broke one million, the black-dial, yellow-gold ref. 3974 at Phillips Hong Kong that hit HKD $19,610,000 (nearly USD $2.5 million), and the unexpectedly high results for the World Time ref. 1415, Tasti Tondi, and Asprey-signed 565 at Phillips New York.

"I find it quite interesting and refreshing to see vintage Patek Philippe prices stable if not upward," says Reardon. "I'm seeing a real strength in the marketplace because people are looking for a safer place to put money. With modern commodity pieces, prices are stable; in some cases a bit upward, but in most cases stable or a bit downward. What was surprising to see at Phillips [New York] was that the vintage prices were just stellar. New York sales are usually a bit more subdued than Geneva, but we still saw some fireworks."

The Nevadian, as I detailed in my previous bullet point, was solely dedicated to vintage Patek Philippe. The collection was gradually put together by a single individual who purchased the watches, often at auction, over multiple decades. "[The Nevadian was] probably the biggest collector in the early-to-mid 2000s," says Ku. "A few of the watches from the collection have come up for sale previously, but having the opportunity to see the vast majority of it as a single-owner sale was really interesting."

The Kairos collection at Christie's, on the other hand, was almost entirely dedicated to contemporary Patek Philippe pieces and came from the original owner – the sheer rarity and magnitude of certain pieces (such as the ref. 5531-012 and the ref. 5950⁄1A-010) almost guarantee that whoever is behind the Kairos collection was one of Patek Philippe's top clients for the past two decades. The extensiveness of the collection is outstanding; practically every notable Patek Philippe release this century is included.

For myself and a number of collectors that I spoke with, the Nevadian collector and his watches represent curation, enthusiasm, and discernment. The Kairos collection, on the other hand, is primarily a feat of exhaustive comprehension. Two completely separate philosophies and approaches to watch collecting, but both collections ended up performing exceptionally well at auction. The Nevadian sale totaled HKD $162,378,100 (approximately USD $20,684,972), while the Kairos collection totaled USD $21,885,101 across all three evenings.

His final point is best represented this season by the yellow-gold 6264 Paul Newman Daytona, the "El Limoncito," that sold at Phillips New York. Every in-the-know collector I spoke with in New York over the past few weeks was unanimous – this was the best vintage Rolex of the season. So it's no surprise it ended up selling for over $2 million USD. On a broader note, solid-gold Paul Newmans performed quite strongly across the board this season – Christie's Geneva sold a pair back-to-back (here and here) at the end of their sale with each ending up over one million Swiss francs.

Steel Paul Newman Daytonas, on the other hand, have been on a bit of a downward trajectory recently. 

"Paul Newman [Daytonas] are the blue-chip of the vintage Rolex world today," says Ku. "They trade almost like blue-chip stocks, in that they tend to have a set price that they trade at. These were trading at like $275, $300 grand [for a long time], and now the new ballpark for a Paul Newman – a pump-pusher Paul Newman – is about $200 thousand. You can look at the prices now, across the board at the auctions this season, and pretty much all of the Paul Newmans basically sold right over or under $200,000."

With the strong results of the Roger Smith Series 1 and the George Daniels Edward Hornby Tourbillon Pocket Watch fresh in my mind from December, I turned to Phillips New York June 2022, where George Daniels and Roger Smith once again made up a few of the sale highlights. The results didn't disappoint. The Roger Smith Series 2 ended up setting a record for a Roger Smith timepiece at auction, while the platinum-cased George Daniels Anniversary 00 soared to an astounding $2,389,500 USD. The latter is surprisingly over half a million more than the all-in price achieved by the George Daniels Edward Hornby Tourbillon Pocket Watch ($1,663,500) in December. Although it's natural to expect a wristwatch to outperform a pocket watch to a certain degree, the disparity in the result between the Anniversary 00 – which, I should note, was completed by Roger Smith in circa 2019, nearly a decade after Daniels' death – and the historically important Edward Hornby Tourbillon Pocket Watch was still a bit staggering in my book.

Another surprising result came from the F.P. Journe Chronomètre Souverain that was gifted to George Daniels by Journe himself, outfitted with a movement bridge engraving that reads "FP to George Daniels my Mentor 2010." This is the third time this watch has come to auction in less than a decade. After Daniels passed away in 2010, the unique Chronomètre Souverain went to auction for the first time in 2012 in a sale of the Daniels estate at Sotheby's in London, where it sold for 44,450 GBP, or approximately $71,101 USD. It then came back to market a little over a year ago, in May 2021, at Christie's Hong Kong, where it sold for HKD 3,250,000, or approximately $414,602 USD. The result at Phillips New York this month? A cool $1,482,000, won by an in-the-room bidder.

Just take a look at what we saw in Geneva, where previously unheralded pieces from Christian Klings and Beat Haldimann exploded alongside exceptionally high prices achieved by Urwerk and Kari Voutilainen. Or explore the Hong Kong catalog, where one of the very first contemporary Ferdinand Berthoud wristwatches to come to auction beat expectations and where Phillips decided to shine a spotlight on the underrated Dresden-based watchmaker Lang & Heyne with three lots (here, here, and here). An award-winning Kari Voutilainen unique piece was also publicly sold here for the very first time. Oh, and does that Ressence look familiar at all?

Sotheby's Hong Kong, it's worth mentioning, had a nice result for the mid-2010s independent watchmaking darling, the Naissance d'Une Montre Project "Montre École," which was handcrafted by Michel Boulanger, Philippe Dufour, and Greubel Forsey. One of the 11 pieces, it landed within its estimate; not quite reaching the $1.6 million USD high set by the prototype example that sold for in 2016 at Christie's Hong Kong.

Vintage Heuer Is As Unpredictable As Ever: The Vintage Heuer market had a banner day at Phillips New York, after the James Garner unique 3647N set a record for a manual wind Carrera at auction, and a squeaky clean Skipperera almost cracked six figures. While on a slight upswing – which is something we observed in the December New York sales – vintage Heuers as a whole are fairly unpredictable, as demonstrated by the disappointing performance at Christie's New York of the Siffert Autavia gifted by Steve McQueen to a costume designer on the set of Le Mans.

Lange Softens – With A Few Exceptions: Outside of the extra-special and ultra-rare pieces produced under its Handwerkunst banner, A. Lange & Söhne saw a consistent softness across this season after experiencing a tentative spike in interest at auction over the past two years. It's disappointing to see a sudden lack of resilience in prices for Zeitwerks and Lumens, especially after Phillips hosted a special A. Lange & Söhne exhibit in London earlier this year dedicated to expanding scholarship around the German watchmaker.

Interesting Pocket Watches Are Rising Steadily: As seen most apparently at the Nevadian Collector sale, it's clear that interesting Patek Philippe pocket watches continue to grow in interest and value. "I think the secret is out and this season showed it," says Reardon, a known pocket-watch aficionado. "I'm thrilled to see more robust interest and new blood in pocket watch collecting."

Vintage Cartier Doesn't Crash: Did I expect it to? Not really. I thought that it might join other popular pieces in seeing a slight contraction, similar to the sophomore slump A. Lange & Söhne is experiencing, but it just didn't happen. The truth is that mid-century vintage Cartier watches are incredibly difficult to find, especially high-quality examples fit for a high-profile auction block. And it's not just Cartier's oddball-shaped watches like the Crash, the Parallélogramme, and the Tank à Guichets that are performing these days – even Cartier's complicated CPCP pieces from the 2000s and early 2010s have started to pick up steam (as seen here).

Stay tuned for a second mid-year auction report that will run early next week and that will focus less on the completed spring season sales and more on what a general auction market forecast could look like for the rest of 2022.