3 Record-Breaking Watches Serious Collectors Can’t Stop Talking About
Alex Teuscher
Friendly competition keeps things interesting in the watch world—and occasionally leads to vaguely unsettling arms races. The thinnest watch. The most complicated watch. The deepest dive watch fabricated entirely from sea slug slime. Things like that.
But this year’s edition of Watches & Wonders has seen even more world records than usual—and impressive ones, at that. To wit: The race for the world’s thinnest watch continues apace. Back in the spring of 2022, Bulgari’s Octo Finissimo Ultra clocked in at an unbelievable 1.8mm tall. But then, just a few months later, Richard Mille unseated the Italian-founded brand with its RM UP-01, which measured just 1.75mm in height. Not to be undone, Bulgari—which doesn’t exhibit at Watches & Wonders, but still shows its new novelties in Geneva this same week—took a chisel to its Ultra and debuted a new, 1.7mm-thick, COSC-certified version. At 40mm in titanium, it cuts a dashing, wafer-like figure and positively disappears when turned sideways. And, of course, it’s once again the thinnest watch in the world.
Elsewhere, Piaget also dropped a ludicrously cool creation: the Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon. At 2mm thick, it’s the world’s thinnest tourbillon-equipped watch. An outcrop of 2018’s Altiplano Ultimate Concept, it edges out the previous record holder, the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Automatic, by some margin. (That watch measured 3.95mm tall.) Its construction is notable: The movement is part of its caseback, further reducing thinness, and all components are arrayed on a single plane. Wound by a special tool and outfitted with a front crystal measuring a scant 0.2mm thick, the new A.U.C. debuts at an important time for the maison—2024 marks Piaget’s 150th anniversary. Famous for ultra-thin watchmaking going back to the 1950s, the brand has truly outdone itself—and everyone else, for the moment.
But those two pieces are for the minimalists. For those whose taste runs more maximalist, check this out: The world’s most complicated watch. As you’re likely aware, the race for such a timepiece has been going on for a century. Back in the early 20th century, supercollector industrialists such as Henry Graves Jr. (banking, railroads) and James Ward Packard (automobiles, duh) battled it out, taking turns commissioning über-complicated fare from the likes of Patek Philippe. Now, a collector has done similarly with Vacheron Constantin, charging the maison with developing a pocket watch with no fewer than 63 different functions.
Referred to the Berkley Grand Complication, it contains the world’s first Chinese perpetual calendar programmed until 2200—plus a Gregorian perpetual calendar, a split-seconds chronograph, a triple-axis tourbillon, a rotating sky chart, an equation of time display, and much more. Designed by the commissioning party—presumably a “Mr.” or “Ms. Berkley”?—and three Vacheron watchmakers, the Berkley Grand Complication took 11 years to develop and over a year just to assemble, while its Calibre 3752 movement comprises a mind-bending 2,877 components.
It’s doubtful that we’ll see another edition of Watches & Wonders with so many world records any time soon. Exorbitantly expensive as unattainable as some of these timepieces may be, the innovation resulting from these horological arms races ultimately trickles down to the industry at large, resulting in better, thinner, more accurate, and downright cooler watches.
Originally Appeared on GQ
