Important Collectors’ Wristwatches, P...

Hong Kong,the Ritz Carlton Hotel,harbour Room, 3rd Floor, Nov 25, 2006

LOT 169

?Asprey No. 1, Watch with 12 Complications? Audemars Piguet, Genève, No. 265034, case No. C 52560. Made for Asprey, London, in 1989. Very fine, very rare and important 18K gold, astronomic, trip minute-repeating, two-train grande and petite sonnerie clockwatch with perpetual calendar, chronograph, moon phases and lunar. Accompanied by a fitted box.

HKD 450,000 - 550,000

USD 58,000 - 70,000 / EUR 46,000 - 56,000

Sold: HKD 944,000

C. Four-body, ?bassine et filet?, polished. Hinged gold cuvette engraved with the technical details.
D. White enamel, radial Roman numerals, outer minute and fifths of a second divisions, Arabic five minute/second numerals, subsidiary dials for the days of the week, the months and four-year cycle, date, seconds, aperture for the moon phases with lunar calendar. Blued steel ?spade? hands.
M. 43 mm., 20???, rhodium-plated, ?fausses cotes? decoration, 35 jewels, tandem winding with two wheel trains, straight-line lever escapement, monometallic balance, self-compensating Breguet balance spring, index regulator, repeating on gongs activated by a trip-slide on the band, strike/silent and grande/petite sonnerie selection levers protruding from under the bezel. Dial, case and movement signed. Diam. 63 mm.


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Grading System
Grade:
Case: 2

Very good
Movement: 2

Very good
Dial: 2-01

Very good

HANDS Original

Notes

Audemars Piguet Grande Complication watches are extremely rare. Several ultra complicated watches such as the present one were made by Audemars Piguet, for retailers such as the Uhrenfabrik Union, Dürrstein & Co. in Dresden, and J.W. Benson, London, and Smith and Son, London. They often bore the retailer?s name on the dial. This watch is richly illustrated in ?Audemars Piguet?, by Giesbert L. Brunner, Christian Pfeiffer Belli and Martin K. Wehrli, p. 162-163. For a history of Audemars Piguet, see page 150.
The complications of this watch are:
- Day of the week - Date - Month - Leap year - Moon phases and lunar calendar - Two wheel trains - Tandem winding - Chronograph - Minute repeat - Grande sonnerie - Petite sonnerie - Silent mechanism