SDC Weekly 125; Studio Underd0g Buys Horologium; Exclusive Ondřej Berkus Post-Auction Interview
Breitling's factory footage exposes the reality of luxury watchmaking, Coppola's F.P. Journe at $11m, Patek's mysterious double-movement pocket watches, sperm whales, and more!
🚨 Welcome back to SDC Weekly!
Don’t worry… I won’t bore you with a long story about the new Breguet Expérimentale 1 - we covered that last week 😂. But… FWIW, look at how much nicer it could have looked with a more ‘traditional’ case:
Vacheron released three new Traditionnelle Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin models, this time in a dainty 36.5mm case… but guess what? They cost $100k+, so I guess brands are indeed ‘leaning in’ to the UHNWI segment because let’s be honest, nobody with a limited budget will be buying this thing…
Admin note: The Unofficial Editor has been abducted by aliens who are demanding to know why English spelling is so inconsistent. Negotiations are ongoing, but until they return to Earth, this edition remains unchecked. Please click here to read this post online and ensure you see all corrections made after publishing.
Oh, and Miss Tweed finally wrote about Bennahmias taking control of De Bethune, but this is old news for SDC readers. As it happens, Bennahmias was trying to buy a 60% stake in DB for 100m CHF, but sources have since told me this deal has now fallen through, as they couldn’t make it work. There was also some supposed link to Greubel Forsey in these discussions (1916 was hoping to use the money from selling DB to buy into GF), but I have been unable to piece it all together in a sensible way from credible sources … so for now, there’s nothing else to say on the matter.
By the way, if you’re new to SDC, welcome! If you have extra time to kill, you’ll find older editions of SDC Weekly here, and longer posts in the archive here.
Estimated reading time: ~30 mins
👨🔧 Ondřej Berkus, Post-Auction
$137,160
That’s what someone paid for an Ondřej Berkus “Minion 2” at Phillips in New York last week. It was a stainless steel regulator tourbillon with a titanium cage and Grand Feu enamel dials. The estimate was $30,000 to $60,000, so the final hammer came in at more than double the high estimate, and more than double the original price, too.
“Fucking hell, really?” was Berkus’s response when I asked him about it1. “I couldn’t believe it. I’m happy it didn’t sell for peanuts, that’s for sure.”
He was watching the auction on his phone while Frozen played on the TV, with his wife sat next to him. The numbers kept climbing, and Berkus kept muttering “Really? Surely not!” to her as the bids rolled in. The whole thing felt surreal to him. Still does, apparently.
This wasn’t actually the first Berkus at auction, despite what Phillips claimed in their catalogue essay. Back on 9 November 2025 in Geneva, a Berkus “Remontoire Dead Beat Seconds” sold for 69,850 CHF. That’s around $50k less than the Minion 2, but it was also Phillips who auctioned it. The Geneva catalogue even stated “we are delighted to offer one of his creations for the first time in an international auction room.” So when the New York catalogue claimed “it is consigned here as the first Ondřej Berkus watch ever to be offered at auction”… well, that’s just not true!
The Geneva result probably helped to lay the groundwork for the New York result. A strong initial auction creates a reference point, and that reference point can become a ‘soft floor’ for future sales. People see 70k CHF and start thinking 100k+ is, well, reasonable?! Whether that logic holds for long is another question entirely.
Ondřej himself is well aware of this too; what I love about Berkus‘s perspective is his refusal to get carried away. The internet loves to throw around words like “genius” when results like this happen, and some of his followers have been calling him exactly that. He’s not buying it; “only those who haven’t met me make that mistake,” he joked… “Imposter syndrome hitting hard as well for sure.”
His perspective is that this is ONE result - one watch, one auction, one outcome. Until there’s a track record of this happening consistently, he reckons you can chalk it up to hype, the promotional work Phillips did, or simply the fact that it was in fact, a nice watch. He’s not about to pop champagne over a single data point. “Let’s not lose our shit over one result,” he told me.
This level-headedness is connected to his recent life changes. Berkus moved from the Czech Republic to Italy, found a place he loves, made a training facility for his horses2, and built a daily routine that gives him peace. A few years ago, he might have celebrated more visibly. These days, he’s content to leave his phone in the car when he visits the stables, because there’s zero mobile reception there, and this seems to be exactly what he needs.
“It’s doing wonders for my inner peace … Deep down I’m still the same guy though. You’ve known me for some time and although my house and the cars are nicer right now I just want to be in the workshop or around my horses and could care for little else.”
Berkus has previously described his waiting list as being “longer than his life expectancy.” Now that auction results are pushing six figures, that problem will only intensify. More people will want his watches, and there’s still only one of him.
His plan for handling this is, well… he doesn’t have one! Not in the traditional sense, anyway.
“Maybe you don’t know me as well as I thought,” he laughed when I asked. “I’m not gonna handle anything really. Just gonna go where life takes me.”
He does leave a few spots each year for watches that are too fun to postpone, regardless of whether they come from his own imagination or a client’s wild idea. This keeps the work evolving. Beyond that, he’s not interested in “capitalising” on the hype by raising prices dramatically.
“I feel like my watches have gotten ridiculously expensive already,” he admitted, “while still somewhat affordable in a world of 100k time-only watches. And I’m being paid fairly for what I’m doing. So no plans to ‘capitalise’ on the hype. I can’t be trusted with money anyway. I just do more and more stupid shit.”
The flip side is that demand filtering might happen naturally. Berkus estimates that close to half the people on his waiting list will eventually drop off, either because life happens, they get tired of waiting, or they find something else that catches their attention. This doesn’t worry him. Even if half disappear, he’ll still have more work than he can complete in a lifetime.
Some of you might remember when I covered the SJX controversy back in September. Brandon Moore wrote an article about Berkus for SJX Watches, and while the piece seemed positive, Berkus felt misrepresented. Moore had written that Berkus “intentionally leaves many components in a visually rough state” and compared him to another independent who supposedly believes “the mainstream obsession with finishing is misplaced.”
Berkus didn’t love that framing, and felt his innovations were being glossed over (but his perceived shortcomings were amplified). The wolf’s teeth gears, for instance, required him to calculate the profile, design custom tools, have them made, and figure out how to cut the wheels because the tool can’t be centred as easily as a symmetrical cutter. Yet the article mentioned some “old dude” (Derek Pratt) and moved on.
I guess the word “rough” carries some baggage; it suggests carelessness or inability to some. “Selective” or “intentional” as alternatives, might do more to suggest artistic vision. Semantics matter, but regardless… Berkus seems to have moved past all this. When I asked whether the auction result confirms that the world finally understands his aesthetic, he didn’t even care to revisit the SJX piece.
“I truly believe that the SJX writer would understand as well if he bothered to do the actual research work. But that’s ancient history now, really. I haven’t really thought about that article since.”
The market seems to have rendered its own verdict anyway. $137k speaks louder than any written review after all.
One piece of ‘news’ (to some) is that Berkus’s wife has apparently discovered her talent for finishing. She’s in training, attending a masterclass with Philippe Narbel in January, and will be helping in the workshop afterwards.
“That will cut down on our combined shop time significantly and let us actually enjoy the country we moved to,” he explained.
This is worth noting because finishing has always been the bottleneck for one-person operations. Machining is where Berkus’s passion lies. He’s said before that finishing is fine, maybe even fun, but it involves performing the same motions over and over for days at a time. Having his wife take on some of that workload could help increase his output without compromising the hands-on nature of his watches; not that he plans to do this, but I’m just saying!
The conventional wisdom says artists need struggle to fuel their creativity. Once you’ve “made it,” the edge dulls; financial security can sometimes breeds complacency. Berkus, however, doesn’t see this as a problem at all.
“It’s not struggle for me, never was,” he said. “I love what I do and while I’m making a watch, usually three or four more versions or evolutions are coming together in my head. I see them as finished pieces when I close my eyes.”
The workshop is where he moves watches from his imagination to his hands. And once they’re finished, he doesn’t seem to suffer from any sentimental attachment. He’s already thinking about the next one.
“Which is kinda liberating cause I’m saved from the emotional strain of ‘letting them go’.”
This emotional detachment might be what allows him to see his watches in the auction market without feeling like he’s losing something precious. For many independents, seeing their work flipped at auction within months of delivery is painful. Berkus seems totally unbothered, which tracks with the man I know.
One image from Berkus I can’t get out of my head is him sitting in a busy airport, tuned out from everything around him, doodling in a notebook. He mentioned that getting paid to do the thing that annoyed all his teachers throughout school is hilarious when you think about it. I’d agree 😂!
Also, he actually doesn’t have some impossible dream watch he’s been too scared to attempt. When an idea arrives, he sketches it immediately, even if it’s just on a post-it note. These post-its accumulate around the workshop, and sometimes he’ll glance at one and see how to improve or develop the concept. He adds a note and keeps going.
“This is where having to do commissioned work actually comes in handy cause otherwise I’d just be messing with ideas on paper or computer and not getting any work done,” he admitted. The specific commissions keep him grounded. Without them, he’d probably spiral into endless concept development and never deliver anything… the client work forces him to work, and to ship.
What the auction tells us
So what does $137k for a Berkus actually mean? On one hand, it validates the independent watchmaking space broadly. A self-taught knife maker from the Czech Republic, now living in Italy, with no formal website and a business run entirely through Instagram, has produced watches that command six-figure prices at major auction houses. Yes, it’s just one watch, but hey, it happened! The pipeline for independent success clearly doesn’t require a Swiss finishing school or decades of restoration work at a major maison. It requires vision, stubbornness, and apparently a willingness to live on the fringes until the market catches up.
On the other hand, again, one result is still one result. Simon Brette’s titanium piece sold for 203k CHF at a recent Geneva auction, and I wrote at the time that as he delivers more pieces, prices might settle lower. The same logic applies to Berkus. More watches at auction will produce more data points, and eventually, we’ll have a clearer picture of where the market actually values his work versus where a single excited bidder was willing to go.
The Geneva result at 70k CHF and the New York result at $137k aren’t directly comparable either - different watches, different complications, different audiences. The Minion 2 had the tourbillon and the Grand Feu enamel dials, and the Geneva piece was titanium with a deadbeat seconds display and remontoire. Both are impressive, but they’re not really the same thing.
There’s an old post on Monochrome Watches; a friend of mine visited Berkus in his workshop and wrote about something called the “Berkus touch.” He described it as intangible but undeniable. Despite the varying case shapes, hand styles, and complications across different watches, something connected them all.
“You’re like a mad scientist,” the author muttered during the visit.
“No, I consider myself more of an alchemist,” Berkus replied.
That framing feels apt, I think. Berkus takes metals and materials we think we understand (damascus steel, mammoth tusk, meteorite) and transforms them into something that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else. The word “impossible” doesn’t seem to exist in his vocabulary.
If there’s a house style, it’s probably sub-40mm watches in cushion cases with minimalist bezels, laser-etched subdials, some kind of retrograde, and a remontoire because… why not? But even that description feels too constraining. Each watch exists in dialogue with its client, and no two are entirely alike.
Final thoughts
Berkus has now appeared at Phillips twice in quick succession, and the results have been strong both times. His waiting list stretches into the next decades, and his wife is training to help with finishing. He’s found peace in Italy with his horses and his workshop. But really, he’s still the same guy, by his own account; still unfazed by external validation, and still mostly interested in the next watch than the last one.
“On a global scale, even on the scale of the watchmaking industry, it means close to nothing,” he said of the auction result. Maybe he’s right, or maybe it hasn’t hit him properly yet - might be a bit of both, too… He did mention he tends to be slow sometimes 😂!
Either way, I reckon we’ll see more Berkus watches at auction in the coming years. The Geneva and New York results created two reference prices, and you bet that secondary market dealers will have noted this. This means collectors sitting on early commissions might be tempted to test the waters.
Whether prices hold, climb, or settle back down remains to be seen, but for now, the self-taught alchemist from Czechia has produced six-figure auction results while watching Frozen with his wife.
Not bad for a guy who once described himself as “unemployable.”
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The full “interview” is included in the footnotes below3.
🏭 Studio Underd0g Buys Its Own Factory - Horologium
A few weeks ago I argued that the watch industry is consolidating around players who control critical choke points in the supply chain. Swatch Group owns ETA and Nivarox, Richemont has Valfleurier, Rolex controls Kenissi, Hermès took a stake in Vaucher and LVMH just bought into La Joux-Perret. The big boys are securing their manufacturing futures because movement supply is now more of a strategic consideration which seems to be growing in importance.
What I didn’t explicitly cover is how this same logic applies all the way down the food chain. If you’re a microbrand pumping out a thousand watches a month, your supply chain is just as vulnerable as Hermès’ was before they locked in Vaucher, heck, maybe more so!
We now have some evidence that I was right about consolidation, though from an unexpected direction. Studio Underd0g (SU), the playful British brand known for Watermel0n dials and pizza-themed chronographs, has acquired Horologium Limited.
Initially I thought this was a standard vertical integration play, but commentary from Studio Underd0g founder Richard Benc helped me clarify the picture. This was actually not a pre-meditated exit strategy by the founders, but a negotiation that pivoted towards the end. According to Benc, Studio Underd0g had already secured a minority stake in Horologium Limited in 2024 to secure its supply chain - this actually aligns with Companies House filings showing Goldap Holdings Ltd (Benc’s holding company) acquiring a stake (25-50%) in April 2024.