THE CURATED EDITION.
Reportage / Geneva
In November 2025 Phillips closed its first decade in Geneva with a white-glove sale of CHF 66.8 million, led by a 1943 steel Patek Philippe ref. 1518 at CHF 14.2 million. Six months later, the same room went higher still.
WATCHES · AUCTIONS
Records in watch collecting are not broken so much as borrowed. On 8 and 9 November 2025, at the Hotel President in Geneva, Phillips in association with Bacs & Russo marked ten years of its Geneva watch auctions with Decade One: Geneva 2015 to 2025. Every one of the 207 lots found a buyer, and the sale totalled CHF 66.82 million, roughly US$83 million, the highest figure any watch auction had reached.
The title did not last a year. In May 2026 the house’s own Geneva Watch Auction XXIII realised CHF 74.8 million, about US$96 million, and Phillips described its spring season across Geneva, Hong Kong and New York as the strongest in the history of watch auctions. Decade One remains the sale that set the new altitude, and the one that explained why the market had climbed there.
The centre of gravity was a Patek Philippe ref. 1518 from 1943, the first perpetual calendar chronograph made in series. Most of the roughly 280 examples were cased in gold; only four are known in stainless steel, and collectors have long spoken of them in the tone usually reserved for paintings. With Aurel Bacs at the rostrum, the watch sold for CHF 14,190,000, about US$17.6 million, a record for a vintage Patek Philippe wristwatch.
Bacs, who has spent the decade turning the Geneva sales into events, said that the team still approaches every auction as if it were its first. The room seemed to agree. A second ref. 1518, from 1947, with pink gold case and pink dial, followed at CHF 3,569,000, confirming that the reference now trades as a category of its own.
The other signal of the evening came from a much younger name. An F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance from the Souscription series of 2000, number 2, sold for CHF 3.33 million, around US$4.2 million. The Souscription watches were the pieces François-Paul Journe financed by selling in advance to a handful of believers; a quarter of a century later they sit beside Patek Philippe in the catalogue, and the spring of 2026 only extended the trend, with further Souscription examples reaching even higher sums.
Rolex held its ground. A yellow gold Daytona ref. 6239 “Golden Pagoda” of around 1967, with champagne dial, made CHF 1,079,500, a record for the configuration, while a Daytona ref. 6263 of 1971 reached CHF 1.39 million, about US$1.73 million.
Ten years ago, a watch auction in Geneva was a specialist’s afternoon. Decade One showed what it has become: an international stage where nineteenth century pocket watches, wartime chronographs and independent work from the 2000s are judged by the same standards of originality, provenance and condition. The records that followed in 2026 are less a correction than a continuation.
Records are borrowed, and Geneva has already handed this one on. What stays is the image of a small steel watch from 1943, made in a neutral country during a war, being passed from one custodian to the next in a quiet hotel room, its value measured in something far slower than money.
Details: Phillips in association with Bacs & Russo, Decade One: Geneva 2015 to 2025, Hotel President, Geneva, 8 and 9 November 2025. phillips.com
GABRIEL SILVEIRADO, FOR WAYFARER.
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