Collector’s Pocket Watches, Wristwatc...

Grand Havana Room, New York, Mar 13, 2002

LOT 122

Audemars Piguet, Brassus and Geneva, No. 12587, made in 1908. Very fine, 18K gold, minute-repeating watch with split-seconds chronograph and 30-minute register. Accompanied by a photocopy from the Archives.

USD 10,000 - 12,000

Sold: USD 11,270

C. Four-body, ?bassine?, polished, gold hinged cuvette. D. white enamel, radial Arabic numerals, outer minute and seconds rings with five-minute/seconds red Arabic markers, subsidiary sunk seconds, sunk minute register below 12 o?clock, ?Spade? blued steel hands. M. 40.6mm (18'''), Cal. SMCRV, (?CR? stands for chrono rattra-pante), rhodium-plated, 36 jewels, straight-line calibrated lever escapement, cut bimetallic compensation balance with blued steel Breguet balance spring, ?swan-neck? micrometric regulator, wolf-tooth winding wheels, chrono-graph mechanism on the back plate, split-seconds mechanism under the dial, the minute register mechanism is cleverly driven directly from the motion train to economize the chronograph power, all-or-nothing repeating mechanism jeweled to the hammers with an unusual surprise piece with notched ends of the arms. Diam. 48 mm.


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Grading System
Case: 3

Good
Dial: 3-01

Good

HANDS Original

Notes

Audemars Piguet specialized in manufacturing complicated movements. Its reputation was so great that the best watch companies in the world - companies such as Patek Philippe, Breguet, Cartier, Frodsham, and others - bought their move-ments, cased them, and sold the complete watches as their own. For years, the German company Dürrstein advertised that they made the most complicated German watch ever. It turned out that the movement was bought from Audemars Piguet. (Incidentally, this is the reason a number of their watches were not signed). An identical Audemars Piguet watch bearing the number 12829 is illustrated on p. 130 of ?Audemars Piguet? by Brunner, Pfeiffer-Belli and Wehrli.