A premier watch auction is an inspiring event. Last week, I joined the bidders at Phillips auction house on Park Avenue in New York. As we progressed through the 74 lots on offer, I was struck by the truly global nature of the vintage watch market. The auctioneer and impresario Aurel Bacs flawlessly switched between English, Italian and French while at one point saying to the phone bank, “I wish I could understand what you’re saying!”, as bidders from around the globe gabbled with house specialists. Earlier, Mr Bacs noted that the highest online bid in any watch auction had just arrived, north of $1 million, from someone on some continent somewhere. The Phillips Game Changers auction was a moment of many such firsts. It was the first time at a US auction that more than five timepieces sold for more than $1 million. We saw the highest valuations for a Rolex GMT-Master, Rolex Presidential, and two Patek perpetual calendar chronographs. And it is highly commendable that Phillips was so successful given the rumblings of global economic uncertainty which have slowly become louder. Over the past three quarters the major world economies have underperformed — a very different context from 2017…
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