Record-breaking watch sales in Geneva: watch auctions exceed $203 million
Phillips is the first to break the 100 million mark, Christie’s achieves its highest ever result, and Sotheby’s its best in over 10 years. The common thread is F.P. Journe
Key points
Over the course of three days, three auction houses sold watches in Geneva for over 203 million dollars (166 million francs). There is cause for triple celebration: the market leader, Phillips in association with Bacs & Russo, was the first auction house in history to exceed $100 million in a single watch sale; Christie’s achieved an all-time high for its department (+221 per cent on the previous year), whilst Sotheby’s recorded its best result in over a decade. Almost all of them achieved a 100 per cent sell-through rate. Almost, because the world’s oldest auction house, Sotheby’s, fell just short of a sell-out by a single watch (of which there is no trace on the website). From these three auctions, it became clear that the collecting of rare watches (not necessarily from the best-known brands – quite the contrary) is deeply rooted and subject to repeated revaluations; that the average age of collectors has fallen significantly (Christie’s is the most forthcoming with data: 40 per cent of registered bidders are millennials or Gen Z; 19 per cent are new collectors). There was also a common thread running through all the catalogues: that of the independent watchmaker François-Paul Journe.
At Phillips, ‘just’ half-a-million watches
The colossal ‘The Geneva Watch Auction: XXIV’, held on 7 and 8 November, was the fifth consecutive live auction in which Phillips sold at least one watch with a hammer price in excess of 10 million dollars (a run that began on 9 November 2025, also in Geneva, with the most expensive Patek Philippe in history, a stainless-steel 1518, which sold for 14,190,000 francs / 17,631,075 dollars). The average value of the 217 lots in the catalogue was over $500,000, with 24 new world records and 17 watches selling for over one million francs. Under the gavel of Aurel Bacs, lot number one was the platinum ‘Chronomètre à Résonance Régence’ by F.P. Journe, the only existing example with a hand-engraved polished rose gold dial, which sold for $10.59 million (8.68 million francs).
Christie’s hits the ground running with Schumacher, Zidane and the Sultan
The auction house held its ‘Rare Watches’ sale on 9 November, the first under the leadership of the new global head of watches Remi Guillemin. A successful debut: the auction totalled the equivalent of $58.7 million (47.8 million Swiss francs), a record for the division. Once again, the top lot was an F.P. Journe, a limited-edition rose gold ‘Vagabondage’ with jumping hours and seconds, which sold for 2.54 million francs, approximately 3.1 million dollars. Also on sale were the five F.P. Journe watches from the ‘Ruthenium’ series that belonged to Michael Schumacher, all in platinum – apart from the brass dial plated in ruthenium – dating from around 2004. They fetched approximately 8.48 million dollars.
Among the iconic lots is the Patek Philippe ‘Nautilus ref. 3700/1 Khanjar’ in 18-carat yellow gold, with automatic winding. It was crafted in 1978 for the Sultan of Oman Qaboos bin Said al Said. Christie’s describes it as one of the rarest and most ‘elusive’ of all vintage gold Nautilus watches. The price? The equivalent of 1.26 million dollars. The auction also featured the second edition of Watches for ELA, a charity auction in aid of the European Leukodystrophy Association. This section raised $615,000 in hammer prices, net of fees, thanks to twenty watch brands and the highly personalised ‘Pasha’ by Cartier donated by Zinedine Zidane: Starting from a low estimate of 10,000 francs, the champion’s timepiece fetched 102,400 francs including commission (80,000 francs net).
Sotheby’s: just one lot unsold
Sotheby’s ‘Important Watches’ sale on 8 and 9 November, meanwhile, totalled $32.1 million (26.3 million Swiss francs): this is the auction house’s best result in Geneva for over a decade. Of the 182 lots in the catalogue, 181 were sold. The average price per lot was just under $180,000, a figure never before recorded. This result builds on the momentum from the September sale in Hong Kong, where the auction house achieved its highest-ever total for a watch sale in Asia. Under the gavel of Clara Kessi, head of the Geneva watch department, the star lot was a masterpiece of watchmaking: the ‘Sky Moon Tourbillon’, ref. 5002 by Patek Philippe in yellow gold (circa 2007), featuring a double dial and twelve complications – ranging from a minute repeater to a celestial chart – which sold for $2.79 million (2.29 million Swiss francs, from an estimate of 1–2 million). Here too, as at Christie’s, F.P. Journe’s ruthenium piece took centre stage: the ‘Octa Chronographe Ruthenium’ in platinum (circa 2004) set the record (1.48 million dollars) for this version of the model, ranking fourth.
