Important Modern & Vintage Timepieces

Hong Kong, Jun 25, 2010

LOT 425

Breguet Tourbillon Chronographe Breguet, "Tourbillon Chronographe", No. 4530, Ref. 3577. Made circa 2000. Very fine, rare and important, 18K yellow gold wristwatch with visible one-minute tourbillon regulator, round button chronograph, registers and an 18K yellow gold Breguet deployant clasp. Accompanied by a box, Certificate of Origin and instruction manual.

HKD 380,000 - 450,000

USD 50,000 - 58,000

C. Three-body, solid, polished, coin-edge band, rounded bezel, straight lugs, transparent case back, gold screwed bars, sapphire crystals. D. Guilloche silver with painted radial Roman numerals on plain reserves, subsidiary dials for the 30-minute and 12- hour registers, aperture for the tourbillon cage at 12 under a polished two-arm steel bridge, subsidiary seconds hand on the tourbillon shaft. Blued steel Breguet hands. M. Cal. 554.2, rhodium-plated, fausses cotes decoration, 25 jewels, lateral lever escapement, one-minute tourbillon regulator with 3 equidistant polished steel arms, monometallic balance adjusted to 6 positions, self-compensating Breguet balance spring. Dial, case and movement signed, movement also engraved: ?Brevet Du 7 Messidor An 9?. Diam. 38 mm. Thickness 11 mm.


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Grading System
Grade:
Case: 2

Very good
Movement: 2*

Very good

Overhaul recommended, at buyer's expense
Dial: 1-01

As new

HANDS Original

Notes

Created by Abraham Louis Breguet in 1795, the tourbillon is considered a difficult and complex achievement by any watch manufacturer. The Tourbillon is a regulating mechanism in which the escapement of a movement is housed within a revolving carriage, developed in an effort to attain better precision. When a watch is in a vertical position, the force of gravity will speed the balance wheel as it moves in its downward (arc) direction and slow it as it moves upward, creating deviational errors of timekeeping. By placing the balance and escapement in a carriage that revolves 360° per minute, these errors become averaged out and the timekeeping becomes constant.