Fresh from the Showcase. An exquisite offering
from Audemars Piguet in a tourbillon platinum watch.
We have, Fresh from the Showcase here at SwissWatchExpo,
an exquisite watch from Audemars Piguet, it's a Tourbillon. We've talked about that before,
but we'll hit it again, just in case you're fresh to the idea of this kind of complication,
but it's an interesting watch. It was done for the 150th birthday of Jules Audemars, one of the
founders of the company. His birthday was in 1851. So this watch was done in 2001 as a 150th birthday
celebration. Now the company wasn't founded until 1875, but this one's for his birthday,
not the founding of the company. And it's really interesting. Some of the ways they built that
design into the watch. It's a 40-millimeter platinum case and a really interesting dial,
not a conventional layout. When you look at the watch, it is completely platinum. It's
11.9 millimeters thick and a 40-millimeter case, but it is really interesting how they brushed the
sides of the case and the lugs, but high polished the bezel ring and the lugs and the caseback.
So really interesting when you look at the dial, it sort of shimmers. It has different looks
depending on how the light is hitting it. But of course, the star of the show is the tourbillon
mechanism. Now what this does is it kind of puts the escapement, the balance wheel in sort of a
cage that rotates once a minute. So you can see this entire mechanism rotating. It really takes
the place of the second hand for the watch. And it's fascinating to see it operate. What
it's supposed to do is counter-effect the Earth's gravitational and magnetic pull on the movement of
the watch, so that it's supposed to keep better time. The reality is, it doesn't really so much
keep better time than a non-tourbillon watch, but it is still fascinating to see,
and it's considered one of the highest levels of complication that you could build into a watch.
It's one of the most technically difficult movements to make. And it's just amazing
anytime you see one. This watch has a couple of other interesting things going on. The dial, it
has a power reserve indicator at 9 o'clock and the date at 3 o'clock. And then the watch is kind of
scrunched up here at the top, at the 12 position, with painted Arabic numerals and of course,
lume-filled 18 carat white gold hands. So it's a great look, if you notice there's no crown on the
side and that's because they've sort of hidden it on the back to give it sort of a sleeker look. And
when we look at this caseback, you can see that it has this beautiful guilloché pattern that emanates
from the Audemars family crest. And then it actually says Jules Audemars 150 years in French.
So it's a really neat celebration of his birthday and what happened. The company itself, we haven't
really talked about a whole lot, but it's been family-owned since it was founded in 1875.
There are still people from the Audemars family are in charge of the company. It's a relatively
smaller manufacturer. They make about 40 or 50,000 watches a year, all super high-end. Of course,
they got their giant push towards their current reputation through the release of the Royal Oak
in the 70s', which was the first sort of modern sporty luxury watch. The caliber in this watch
is a 2875. It beats at 216 it's 41 jewels. A power reserve of about 54 hours. But what's
really interesting about it is when you shake this watch, you can actually feel it thumping
because instead of a regular rotor that spins around and around like a regular automatic watch,
this one uses a hammer in spring and it sort of flips back and forth. And so when you buy
this watch from us, be expecting that, that you can feel the watch sort of thump as you move it.
The retail on this watch was $198,500. It's a bargain here at SwissWatchExpo at $64,990. Give us
a call, see if it's still in stock. I don't expect it to last long in this condition at this price.