Fresh from the Showcase here at SwissWatchExpo, this morning we're talking about the legacy
and the art of Piaget.
Piaget, for a lot of people, is one of those watch brands that's really under the radar,
especially when people really only think about the big brands - Rolex, Omega, Breitling,
Cartier, Patek Philippe - Piaget is probably not in the top 10, but they should be.
When you think about their history, if you think about them as purely a jewelry company,
you've really missed the mark because they were founded in 1874 as a movement company.
They initially specialized in pocket watches and precision clock movements, but their bread
and butter, their history was that they made movements for other companies.
This continued through to the 1940s when they opened a factory and trademarked their own
name, Piaget, and started producing some of the most beautiful and creative watches that
the watch world has ever seen.
They were also super innovative.
In 1957, they came out with the nine P, those Caliber 9P, was the world's thinnest manual
line watch movement at two millimeters thick.
It was just astonishing.
They made a series of watches that were ultra thin before really even other companies had
ultra thin as a feature that they were exploring.
Piaget really broke the ice and blazed the trail on these ultra thin movements.
Three years later in 1960, they came out with the thinnest automatic movement the world
had ever seen.
It's in the Guinness book of world records, 2.2 millimeters thick as an automatic movement,
just astonishing.
Then through the 1960s and 70s, there was just an explosion of creativity at Piaget.
At this time, they didn't make any watches in steel.
They believed that everything was made in precious metal.
They really joined together the artistry of watchmaking and jewelry in a way that really
no other company, I guess, other than maybe Cartier or van Cleef and Arpels does.
But their watches, you can see here on the front row - one of the things that they initially
made a creative mark with were these stone dials.They were doing the stone dials before
anybody else.
These stone dials are incredible.
It was one of the hallmarks of creativity at Piaget.
You can see here we have a Tiger Eye in a tank shape watch.
To be clear, these stone dials, they are thin thin slabs of a natural stone that's polished,
printed with the Piaget name.
I's just so interesting to see that combined with the gold.
So the Tiger Eye, next over we have the Lapis with a really interesting bracelet that combines
gold links with pieces of alligator that's also blue.
Next over, again just such an interesting shape.
This one is, to me, just screams this 1960s-70s motif that's so popular right now.
It's a coral dial in a hexagon shaped watch case.
Never seen that from any other watch company.
The next one is an Onyx dial.
Again, a thin slab of stone, and also a bracelet that combines gold links with leather strips
- those are lizard.
We have here on the second row, a really bright blue Lapis dial in an all gold watch.
It's interesting because it sort of reminds me of the Rolex Stella dials, and yet it's
a natural stone, just so beautiful.
Though beyond that, and by the way, we have all these watches in stock here at SwissWatchExpo,
ready to go.
Give us a call if any of these are piquing your interest, we can see if they're still
in stock, if we can ship one out to you.
The next kind of stage in Piaget history came in 1979 when they launched the Polo watch.
The Polo, it is so distinctive because you can see the dial design, it sort of just drips
into the bracelet.
This was the watch of the jet set in the late seventies and the early eighties.
These were the people who were really making things happen.
I brought to mind people like Steven McQueen and Allie McGraw were wearing watches like
this.
It was such a fresh design and so interesting beyond where at the time people were kind
of viewing things that had been around for a few decades, like the Rolex President as
being a little bit tired, a little long in the tooth, and they wanted something fresh
and this became the prestige watch of the time.
The links feel so good.
They're really supple even though each one is flat.
They're a small link, each one and they're hinged beautifully.
So they feel like a piece of jewelry that happens to tell time.
Now they are really in demand, they are a great investment right now while the price
of gold has just surged.
Yet these watches contain a huge amount of gold for the value of the dollar.
I think for anyone who's thinking about any sort of a solid gold watch, that maybe isn't
exactly the same thing that other people have seen - if you want to be a little bit different,
the Piaget Polo definitely represents a great choice.
The Polo has gotten a lot of press lately.
They've launched the Polo S, which is the polo sport and steel, and it's gotten a lot
of attention to Piaget lately as potentially an alternative to some of the more expensive
steel sport watches out there, like the Patek Philippe Nautilus.
It does look a lot like the Nautilus, it very definitely borrows from those Gerald Genta
designs.
I think that that current model really gives a lot of extra notice and credibility to this
original Piaget Polo.
The Polo S has been marketed as sort of a game changer in the steel sport watch because
for many, many decades, Piaget didn't make anything in steel.
So they're really aligning themselves with things like the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak,
the Patek Philippe Nautilus and Aquanaut, and providing a much less expensive alternative
from an extremely prestigious house.
Piaget in 1988 became part of the Richemont group.
It really injected a lot of new funding for research and development, new watches, boutiques
- I believe they have about 80 boutiques around the world now.
You know the Richemont group - it's Cartier, Panerai, Jaeger LeCoultre, Vacheron Constantin,
Baume & Mercier, Montblanc, Chloe, Dunhill some around, we could go on and on.
But within that group, they allow each of their houses to be completely independent
and keep their own brand identity.
So when you look at these Piaget's, it's a great history.
They're definitely a bonafide watch company, having started as a movement company.
They're also a bonafide jewelry company.
They make fantastic jewelry along the lines of, Cartier and van Cleef and Arpels, and
yet they have these incredible, beautiful creative watches from yesteryear that are
truly a fraction of the price of what they would be as a new watch.
Definitely a smart buy here on the pre-owned market here from Swiss Watch Expo.