From Sapphire Crystal to Out-of-this-World Complications: The Best Watches in the World

Men’s Watch of the Year: F. P. Journe Astronomic Souveraine

F. P. Journe’s knockout astronomical watch is a horological head-spin: 18 complications and 758 components. The dial comes jam-packed: a sunrise/sunset indicator; a 42-hour power-reserve marker; a moon phase; an hours subdial for two time zones; a 24-hour sub-dial for sidereal time (based on the rotation of the Earth in relation to the stars) with a seconds counter underneath and minutes on a peripheral track.

Equal attention was paid to the back, which presents a clear view of its 18-karat rose-gold movement. An equation of time indicator—the time displayed by the position of the sun, as on a sundial, and real time, as displayed on the wrist—and a full annual calendar are encircled by signs of the zodiac and a one-minute tourbillon with a remontoir d’égalité. And all of that technical prowess is squeezed into 44 x 13.8 mm.

The Astronomic Souveraine debuted as a prototype at Christie’s Only Watch charity auction last November with a tantalum case, a blue dial and an orange alligator strap, hammering for $1.8 million— second only to Patek Philippe’s record-setting Grandmaster Chime Ref. 6300A-010 (pictured, page 96). To the delight of F. P. Journe fanatics, the watchmaker later announced a limited-production version featuring a gold dial with a whitened-silver guilloche Clous de Paris in a steel case—and made available only to those already in the watchmaker’s lofty orbit. As one collector recently told Robb Report, “I have 14 Patek Philippes. I had to wait two years to get my hands on an F. P. Journe, and I’m still begging for his watches.”

Auction Star: Patek Philippe Only Watch

Patek Philippe’s one-off stainless-steel Grandmaster Chime Ref. 6300A-010 wristwatch made headlines last November when the piece sold for over $31 million, eclipsing the company’s record sale of $24 million for its Henry Graves Supercom- plication in 2014 and making it the most expensive watch in the world. For a little perspective, the same money could buy you 320 new Porsche 911s or three Embraer Phenom 300E business jets. That may sound wildly hedonistic for a collectible timepiece, but all that cash went to a great cause as part of Christie’s biannual Only Watch auction of one-of-a-kind timepieces from the world’s best watchmakers: Every cent was donated to research for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. 

Still, its anonymous buyer has one serious piece of horology in hand, a two-faced timepiece with 1,366 movement components, 214 case components, a perpetual calendar and grande sonnerie. Topping it off is a salmon dial with “The Only One” spelled out, to drive home the owner’s ultimate horological bragging rights.

Design: Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Self-Winding Perpetual Ultra-Thin

Putting watches on a diet—making them thinner, lighter and sleeker—has become as trendy as an Equinox membership, except it involves a hell of a lot more work. Audemars Piguet flexed some serious muscle to get this new ultra-thin Royal Oak’s 6.3 mm waistline: Its 5133 movement is just 2.89 mm thick, nearly as slim as a strand of spaghetti, making this watch the thinnest automatic perpetual calendar on the market. Reducing a timepiece to such Lilliputian scale is no small feat. Watchmaking is already an incredibly delicate craft, but at these dimensions it requires next-level engineering and design. The perpetual-calendar functions, normally arranged on three tiers, have been merged onto a single plane via two patented innovations, with the end-of-the-month cam integrated into the date wheel and the month cam combined with the month wheel.

Audemars went even further to shave off extra heft. While the prototype debuted in 950 platinum, a weighty material, by the time AP brought the watch to market in November of last year it had decided to tip the scales in the other direction, constructing the case in lightweight titanium to complement its already über-svelte design.

Execution: Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1

A tech company wouldn’t deign to reconstruct the beeper in the age of the smartphone, but for watchmakers, mastering ancient technological feats is considered the ultimate mark of excellence. Yet few have been able to re-create centuries-old watchmaking techniques exactly as they were done in the days when timepieces were made by candlelight. Redefining the notion of “handmade” in 21st-century watchmaking, Greubel Forsey’s Hand Made 1 is constructed using modern expertise with historic, hand-operated tools to create a timepiece from scratch, without the use of programmed machinery.

Of its 308 different components, only five—the sapphire crystal, case gaskets and spring bars (all 20th-century inventions) as well as the jewel bearings and mainspring—were created with new-age equipment. The watch requires over 6,000 man-hours to produce. The tourbillon alone takes 35 times longer than a machine-made version, and a single microscopic screw, created the old-fashioned way, can take up to eight hours. Because of that painstaking process, only two or three watches can be made per year. The magnitude of the project is a bit like climbing Mt. Everest: You don’t need to do it, but isn’t it great to prove that you can?

High-Horology One-Off: Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers Minute Repeater Tourbillon Sky Chart

Are there any pieces that come out of Vacheron Constantin’s Les Cabinotiers atelier that couldn’t be considered the best of the best? The studio has been turning out the Swiss watchmaker’s most elite watches since 1755, and for 2019 released a collection that included around 40 one-of-a-kind chiming watches—but the standout was the Minute Repeater Tourbillon Sky Chart.

The height of discreet luxury, the watch has forward-facing features, encased in 18-karat 5N pink gold, that include a stunning 18-karat gold sunray-finished guilloche dial with 18-karat white-gold applied markers, as well as a one-minute tourbillon carriage accented with a seconds hand in 18-karat 5N pink gold.

On the flip side is a striking view of the Milky Way on a celestial tableau, which performs a complete rotation in 23 hours and 56 minutes, according to sidereal time; the day, month and cardinal points are indicated with an ellipse highlighting the position of the constellations in accordance with the time. 

But the sky was not the limit for this spe- cial watch: The unique sound of its minute repeater function comes with its very own recording and certification from London’s famous Abbey Road Studios. The sound print will forever reside alongside hits from the Beatles, Adele and Elton John, so that Vacheron Constantin’s watchmakers can service the watch to its exact tone, even well beyond the original owner’s lifetime.

Vintage Expert: Eric Wind Founder, Wind Vintage

When it comes to vintage-watch collecting, knowing which way the wind will blow is an invaluable skill. Enter Eric Wind, founder of e-tail site Wind Vintage and the go-to guy for collectors on the prowl for elusive timepieces, with a client list that includes Hollywood producers, athletes, celebrities and big-name entrepreneurs.

While Wind’s visible inventory remains accessible—from a $9,000 Heuer reference 2447 chronograph from the 1950s to a circa-1971 gold Rolex Submariner reference 1680, for $32,000—most of the watches he sells are never seen by the public.

“I know what collectors are looking for, so if I can find something either to buy or broker into their collection, that makes it much easier,” Wind says. Tracking down the right pieces requires insider connections, near-encyclopedic knowledge of watch history and expertise on condition and provenance—all of which he has in spades.

You can still find Wind, who cut his teeth in the watch business as a vice president and senior specialist of watches at Christie’s, strolling the floors at the world’s top auction houses. He acts as consultant to about 30 private collectors, a service for which he charges a hefty fee, but when you’re collecting pieces well above six figures, it’s a small price to pay for expert insurance against costly mistakes. (Wind has been known to find doctored or misrepresented timepieces—sometimes purchased for north of $500,000—among collections he’s overhauled.) 

For him, the joy is in the find. “I like tracking down great watches from their original owners or families, learning about their stories and then placing them in loving collections,” he says. Wind is always on the lookout for ultra-rare grail timepieces, including a Patek Philippe reference 1518, a Rolex 8171 and a Philippe Dufour Simplicity, but insists there’s “nothing crazy expensive” involved in his next big hunt.

“I’m looking for watches with dial signatures from Asprey or Dunhill,” he says. Oh, and “any George Daniels or a Philippe Dufour Duality,” of course.

Material Improvement: Girard-Perregaux Quasar Light

It’s not easy to create new plot lines for a 136-year- old story, but since 2014 Girard-Perregaux has been radically building on the legacy of its famous Three Gold Bridges design, in which the watch’s barrel, center wheel and tourbillon are aligned and held together with, yes, three gold bridges. While GP introduced titanium bridges six years ago, this year the brand went several steps further, not only upping the number to five but also crafting them from sapphire crystal. The case is also made from sapphire and requires over 200 hours of work in itself. Creating the tiny, curved bridges from the ultra-hard material adds an extra layer of difficulty, but the effect is worth the effort.

The clear material offers a 360-degree view of the 46 mm watch, including its tourbillon (anchored by a sand-blasted rhodium mainplate) and the barrel at 12 o’clock, decorated in ruthenium, an alloy that’s part of the platinum family, with an annual production one-hundredth that of gold and one-tenth that of platinum, according to Clémence Dubois, Girard-Perregaux’s chief product and marketing director. “It gives this sparkling effect to the watch and highlights the sapphire bridges,” she says. It could be mistaken for diamonds, but precious stones would be just too easy.

Innovation: MB&F Thunderdome

Max Büsser has made a name for himself with outside-the-box creations that look more like spaceships or sci-fi gadgets than the type of practical timekeepers we’ve been wearing for centuries. For his most recent feat, Büsser brought in two friends, Kari Voutilainen and Eric Coudray (both watchmaking legends in their own rights), to take his latest creation to new heights. Based on the Legacy Machine FlyingT, MB&F’s first women’s watch (and Robb Report’s 2019 Best of the Best Women’s Timepiece of the Year), the new platinum Thunderdome takes that inventive design—a tilted dial with an exposed vertical movement—and ups the ante with Voutilainen’s blue guilloche plate sitting just beneath the dial and expertly finished bridges and ratchet wheels visible through the caseback. Drop in a dose of theater from Coudray’s mesmerizing and complex triple-axis tourbillon, the fastest on the market, and you have yourself a watch that will make your neighbor’s Nautilus look tame by comparison. 

Skeleton Watch: Breguet Classique Tourbillon Extra-Plat Squelette 5395

Reducing a timepiece to its bare bones requires a painstaking, almost surgical procedure to shave away as much of the movement as possible without compromising the vitals. Most “skeleton” watches are designed as open movements from the get-go and use machined parts made for the purpose, but in Breguet’s stunning reference 5395, half the bulk of its 581SQ movement is reduced by hand, flattening the movement inside the 7.7- by-41 mm model to a height of just 3 mm.

Slimming the watch took more than chiseling. The skeletonized escapement is angled to save space and, rather than using a pinion at its base, the 18-karat gold tourbillon incorporates a titanium carriage that engages with the wheel train. A peripheral winding system, which powers the watch by spinning on the circumference, takes the place of a traditional rotor, which can obscure the view of the movement.

Breguet spared no detail in its finishing, either, with the plates and bridges decorated with Clous de Paris guilloche and hand-chamfering used to achieve perfectly smooth, 45-degree beveling. What’s left is a stunning architectural structure of 18-karat red gold framed in a fluted platinum case.

Sports Watch: H. Moser & Cie Streamliner Flyback Chronograph Automatic

At Moser, less is more. Since the 192-year-old brand’s reinvention under the Meylan family starting in 2012, the company has become known for mastering minimalism; its most recognizable timepieces are two-hand, time-only watches with zero branding, zero numerals and zero markings to distract from the richly hued fumé dials. It’s not the kind of look that lends itself to a chronograph. But in its first foray into the genre, Moser managed to flex its signature streamlined aesthetic by forgoing sub-dial counters: The dial’s only flourishes are a two-tiered track, one indicating seconds and one for minutes, plus two extra hands for the chronograph function. That still leaves a pretty big canvas for its black fumé dial, but flip it over and you discover the real show: the stunning HMC 902 movement, which rivals those from even the most elite watchmakers. Its retro ’60s vibe and integrated bracelet are just the icing on the cake.

Unisex Timepiece of the Year: Chanel J12 X-Ray

It’s a rare feat indeed to introduce a watchmaking idea that has never been done before in the profession’s several-hundred-year history. Even more notable is when one of 2020’s most inventive designs comes courtesy of a company best known for quilted leather handbags and conservative tweed jackets. The new Chanel J12 X-Ray, named for its crystal-clear casing and skeleton movement, is the first watch to be constructed entirely in sapphire crystal, right down to its spine—even the bracelet is constructed from the material. While high-horology brands such as Richard Mille, Hublot, Bovet, Greubel Forsey, Girard-Perregaux and more have used sapphire crystal in their casework, none has achieved a sapphire-crystal bracelet.

The substance is notoriously hard to work with. It’s the second-hardest mineral on earth, behind diamond, and therefore requires diamond-tipped tools to machine—a costly endeavor that can keep price tags at six figures (or much more) just for watches with crystal cases. So consider the work that goes into a watch like the J12 X-Ray, which, with the exception of the hands, diamond accents, train wheels, mainspring and a few other technical components, is made entirely from sapphire crystal.

Since its release in 2000, Chanel’s J12 has proved instantly identifiable, and earlier iterations were recognized for their groundbreaking ceramic casing, proving the French luxury house could flex its design muscles beyond its directional fashion collections. The new X-Ray is the haute couture version of its J12—a cut above the rest, meant only for an elite few.

High-Jewelry Timepiece: Van Cleef & Arpels Pâquerette Watch

The daisy may be nature’s daintiest blossom, but this piece is anything but a wallflower. Time seems to disappear among the 744 diamonds, 129 yellow sapphires and 620 tsavorite garnets surrounding the dial of Van Cleef’s extraordinary high-jewelry watch. In

a very precious game of hide-and-seek, the bracelet, when laid flat, looks like a bouquet of wildflowers but when it articulates around the wrist, a meadow of green tsavorite garnets is revealed. It took 1,500 hours to create the one-of-a-kind piece, set in white and yellow gold, and the watch is a testament to the exemplary savoir faire and poetry the French house has been incorporating into its timepieces for nearly a century.

Best Reinvention: Bulgari Serpenti Seduttori Tourbillon

A pillar of the Roman luxury house since the 1940s, Bulgari’s Serpenti is one of the most recognizable and coveted watches on the women’s market. Until recently it’s been known mostly for expressing the jeweler’s irreverent take on timepiece design, with less attention paid to the brand’s mechanical know-how. That all changed this year when Bulgari equipped its iconic snake-head-shaped dial with the all-new BVL150 caliber, setting a world record for the smallest tourbillon on the market.

The pavé-diamond dial, in a case of rose or white gold, is complemented by a sap- phire crystal on the caseback that reveals the rhodium-plated movement, hand-finished with Côtes de Genève, perlage and beveling. Bulgari took a bite out of its competition by releasing its new women’s piece in early January. The watch will be available for sale at the end of the month.