Audemars Piguet and unpopular?!? Now that’s an oxymoron!
Although Audemars Piguet is one of the most popular brands in the world today and achieved record sales of 1.6B Swiss Francs in 2021 overtaking its rival Patek Philippe as the 4th biggest revenue-generating watch brand, there are still numerous watches from AP that can be had for serious bargains on the pre-owned market. So today we’re going to show you $1,000,000 in unpopular Audemars Piguet watches!
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So what exactly are those watches? Well, we feel we would be doing a disservice to the watch community if we didn’t provide at least a little bit of history on the brand. Audemars Piguet was founded in 1874 by Edward Piguet and Louis Audemars and is the only brand of the Holy Trinity – that being Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, and Vacheron Constantin – that is still owned and operated by the brand’s founding families. Both of the founders were respected watchmakers with Louis Audemars actually getting his start by making complicated pocket watches for Tiffany & Co. Some of the brand’s accomplishments include creating the first-minute repeater wristwatch in 1892, the world’s thinnest watch in 1946 with a movement measuring 1.64mm, and of course how can we not mention the launch of one of the most famous designs in the watch industry, the Royal Oak, in 1972.
While Audemars Piguet is mostly known for the Royal Oak, it has made other incredible models over the years which have allowed AP to flex its watchmaking ability. Starting us off with the first watch on the list, the Audemar Piguet Millenary deadbeat seconds. A watch that retailed for $225,000, and yet it’s on the market today for under $100,000. The Millenary was originally designed by Emmanuel Guiet who also designed the first Royal Oak Offshore in 1992 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Royal Oak. The oval shape of the Millenary was inspired by watches Audemars Piguet designed in the 1950s that were never actually released and were based on the oval shape of the Colosseum.
This version of the Millenary actually has an incredibly innovative movement. Firstly, the watch features a deadbeat seconds complication which means that the seconds hand ticks, as opposed to it, sweeping. This is truly a complication for watch enthusiasts because why else would someone want a deadbeat second complication?!? Historically, this complication was actually used by watchmakers as it would allow precise setting of all of their timekeeping devices.
However, the most impressive part about this watch is its escapement. Audemars Piguet calls this the “Direct-Impulse Escapement” and it works exactly as it sounds. In a traditional watch with a lever escapement, energy is transmitted from the barrel to the watch’s escape wheel through the gear train. Energy from the escape wheel is then transmitted to the lever which is attached to the balance. Although this is a very reliable and widely used system, there is a lot of lost energy as power is transferred to so many moving components. Through the direct-impulse escapement, power is delivered directly from the escape wheel to the balance wheel which allows for increased efficiency, reduced energy loss, and an escapement that does not require lubrication. These technological advances aren’t just for the sake of AP flexing their watchmaking prowess but actually improve the watch’s accuracy, shock resistance and increase service intervals.
This escapement is truly innovative and was unseen in modern watchmaking at the time of its release when it first debuted in our next watch, the Millenary Cabinet Five in Platinum. The Cabinet series was originally launched in 1999 and it was expected that 8 watches would be produced and only 20 examples of each watch would be made. To date, only five pieces have been released and less than 10 examples of any single watch from the Cabinet series are known to exist.
Each watch in the cabinet series featured new innovations to essentially flex the technical watchmaking prowess of Audemars Piguet and no cabinet watches have been released since the Cabinet Five. The Millenary Cabinet Five was originally launched in 2006 and is the watch that debuted the direct-impulse escapement and also had a perpetual calendar chronograph added to it because Audemars Piguet felt the watch just wasn’t complicated enough as it was. When this watch was released it had an original retail price of $583,000. Yet today, it has a market price under $200,000. This is mostly due to the fact that the Millenary series was never a design that resonated with the mass market. However, considering the insane innovation and how complicated this watch is, the fact that it trades for much less than say a 15202 Royal Oak Jumbo in precious metal is just insane.
The last one may come as a HUGE shock. It’s actually an unpopular Royal Oak! How is that possible?!? Well this Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Tourbillon Chronograph is a watch that measures 45mm, so it’s not for the faint of the wrist. But what you get in this watch is an incredibly innovative movement made by Giulio Papi from Renaud & Papi. Renaud &Papi is the watch industry’s equivalent to a movement think tank where some of the biggest names in the independent watch world today originally came from including Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey from Greubel Forsey and Tim and Bart Gronefeld. Renaud & Papi were also the movement supplier and still are for Richard Mille and are now owned coincidentally by Audemars Piguet.
Although the movement of this watch is incredibly innovative, the size of this watch makes it really unwearable for the average watch collector. This was a watch that retailed for $230,000 and is now trading in the $110,000-$125,000 range where they were previously trading below $100k. In this brown dial and steel case, it makes for a rather unique combination that is actually quite rare.
So there you have it! 3 unpopular Audemars Piguet watches whose combined retail is well over $1,000,000 but can be bought today for a fraction of that original cost. All of these watches showcase the incredible watchmaking ability of Audemars Piguet and showcase the incredible deals out there to be had for collectors in the know or for people who follow Luxury Bazaar because these are the types of watches we showcase on a weekly basis!
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