20 Lots from the Geneva Auctions, Spring 2026
Antiquorum, Phillips, Christie's and Sotheby's bring their best, with one 5+ million-franc Patek leading the week
You’ve gotta to admire the cognitive dissonance of the auction calendar…
In late April, Sotheby’s Hong Kong hammered through HK$414m (~US$53m) worth of watches in 13 hours, marking the biggest watch sale ever held in Asia. 97% of lots sold, with more than half of those above the high estimate - this all resulted in six world records set by over 800 active bidders from 50-plus countries.
The headline sale was a 1987 yellow gold Cartier London Crash (pictured below) at HK$15.6m (~£1.5m) to a private Japanese collector after only nine minutes of bidding. The first 82 lots from a single-owner Cartier collection were estimated at HK$15–23m and closed out at HK$108m... and no, that’s not a typo.
And yeah, this is the same Sotheby’s whose junk-rated parent is, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, offering its own consignors 7% per annum to wait six months for their cash, while it refinances three-quarters-of-a-billion dollars worth of bonds at 7.375% plus underwriting fees. But yeah, the market does not seem to care.1
Phillips, for its part, set the pre-game tone last November when its Decade One sale hammered a steel Patek 1518 at CHF 14.2m, making it the most valuable watch sold at auction in 2025.
The houses now turn up to Geneva carrying that backdrop of momentum, plus, in Sotheby’s case, a record-breaking quarter and the confidence that comes with having recently sold a watch for seven times its high estimate.
So today’s post is about this weekend’s auction sales… maybe you don’t give a damn, in which case you should stop reading now and have a great weekend!
Estimated reading time: ~15 mins
🔨 Antiquorum, 9–10 May
These chaps have the largest catalogue of the week with 672 lots; Antiquorum’s Geneva sale is broad by design (they’re even selling Rolex standalone dials etc), but the ‘top’ of the catalogue seems pretty narrow. Let’s go through the top 5…
Patek Philippe Nautilus Ref. 3700/13, ‘Jumbo’, Lot 285
The big daddy of this auction has to be this piece…
This piece was ordered through Somazzi in Lugano in 1984 and delivered with a certificate of origin explicitly listing the dial as ‘special or rose, index brillants’, and consigned by the original owner’s grandson.
To me, this is the sort of thing which the market has been lapping up in recent times; not the Nautilus per se, but these sorts of unlikely-to-be-repeated factory anomalies inside an otherwise commodified reference. Not to say the 3700 is a commodity relative to what else is out there, but I just checked and there’s 99 of them on Chrono24 right now, so this one is ultra-special for the people who tend to collect in this stratosphere.
Patek Philippe Ref. 5004P, first-generation platinum, Lot 668
The 5004 is Patek’s perpetual calendar split-seconds chronograph, produced from 1995 to 2011, with the platinum first-gen examples being the rarest of all. There aren’t many of these, and most live in safes anyway.
Rolex Cosmograph ‘Jean-Claude Killy’ Ref. 6036, Lot 655
Of the three Rolex triple calendar chronograph references (4767, 6036, 6236), the 6036 is the one Killy is associated with (named after the French Olympic skier who wore one). Steel examples are vanishingly rare and most surviving 6036s are in gold. Rolex effectively abandoned this kind of complicated wristwatch after the 1950s and never went back. Vintage Rolex is heavily mature as a market, but the 6036 in steel sits in a small museum-grade pocket of it that doesn’t really track the broader Daytona-PN cycle.
Urban Jürgensen Ref. 11C, unique steel prototype No. 10, Lot 263
This is a Baumberger–Pratt era prototype in stainless steel and it takes us back to UJ’s revival under Peter Baumberger, with none other than the late Derek Pratt as his co-pilot. This has to be one of the more interesting independent stories of the late 20th century, and I’d say prototypes from this period are breadcrumbs of how that story continues to be told. If you happen to care about the academic side of independents and their origin stories, this is a pretty compelling piece to hoover up.
Rolex Cosmograph Daytona Ref. 6239 ‘Paul Newman’, Lot 211
I mean, sure… you might roll your eyes at this one, but hear me out. The Paul Newman market is the deepest, most studied secondary market in the entire watch world… this is arguably the watch which started the modern auction-gaming saga. So the point of including this here is to say that this lot is a great market “barometer” (or themometer if you prefer that). The estimate is CHF110,000 - CHF150,000, so if this clean 6239 PN clears the high estimate easily, I think it’s fair to conclude that the vintage Rolex base is doing just fine... and if not, that tells you something too.
Honourable mentions
There’s a green-dial steel Patek 5711/1300A-001 which you may recall as the diamond-bezel hype-era 5711 - to me, how it performs is its own data point to watch, as it speaks to whether the 2021 mania has fully dissipated. There’s also a platinum Journe Résonance, which I’d call obvious if Phillips and Christie’s weren’t also offering Resonances the same week. There is, this season, a slight Journe oversupply at the institutional end of the market, so watching how three of these clear in five days will be more interesting than seeing how one clears in isolation.
🔨 Phillips Geneva XXIII, 9–10 May
The Phillips catalogue is, as usual, carefully assembled. They’ve got just over 200 lots, heavy on cloisonné, mid-century classical, and the early canon of independents.
Patek Philippe Ref. 2523 ‘South America’ polychrome cloisonné, 1953, Lot 27
Many have said this is the lot of the year so far, and maybe of the next several to come - here’s one of many quotes I’ve read about this watch: “one of the most visually captivating and historically significant wristwatches ever made.”
The 2523 is the second-generation Cottier world-time (the heures universelles mechanism, 36mm, with a second crown at nine to spin the city ring), and only roughly 29–36 examples were made across all metals and dial variations - of which this version is said to be the rarest. I guess trophy hunting at the absolute apex of vintage Patek is still a thing; how big a thing, is what we will find out on Saturday.
Rolex Ref. 6085 ‘The Dragon’, cloisonné enamel by Nelly Richard, 1952, Lot 119
This is a 33mm yellow gold Oyster with a cloisonné dragon dial by Nelly Richard, the mid-century enamellist who worked closely with Stern Frères. The interesting thing here is the implicit signal collectors would be sending by buying this for between CHF 500k and 1m. At this price, you are not really buying a Rolex as much as you are buying a Nelly Richard, in a Rolex case, branded as a Rolex. In this case I’d say the artisan supersedes the maison. The fact that this sort of premium can be paid on a 33mm time-only watch from the brand most associated with rugged tool watches is, on its own, worth a second thought.
For what it’s worth, Perezcope disputes Phillips’ claim:
Scholarship indicates that only six Dragon dial models are known to date, each housed in a different reference, making this example — reference 6085 — most likely unique.
He said on his Instagram stories that there are at least two known examples of this watch. I have no idea either way, just letting you know what I heard.
Audemars Piguet Ref. 5503, two-tone steel and pink gold, 1942, Lot 26
To me, this watch is fkn epic… one of five made, 36mm (which btw was large for the period), and it’s got circular calendar and chronograph displays instead of the twin apertures used by Patek and Vacheron at the time. The two-tone case just takes it to the next level, and even the legendary 1518 was never made in two-tone, so this is its own little pedestal if you can call it that.
F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance, ‘Souscription’ no. 18, Lot 6
Given the previous lot, this will come as no surprise - another two-tone. This one is no. 18 of 20 from Journe’s original 1999 Souscription series, with the brass movement and platinum case - but this time with gold midcase, lugs, and crown.