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Watches & Wonders: The Best From Patek Philippe
Despite an overall cooling off in the luxury watch market, Patek Philippe, arguably the pinnacle of classical watchmaking, is still outperforming just about every maison at the very top end of the industry.
At this year’s Watches & Wonders ball, the Geneva-based benchmark rocked up with some 19 new references to frustrate everyone who might want to actually buy one.
Among them were a stunning astronomical grand complication, the first automaton in its modern era and the introduction of a perpetual calendar to the Cubitus range. In addition, perhaps their greatest success story ever celebrated its golden jubilee with a quartet of limited editions.
Here at Beckertime we have our favorites, and below we go into a bit more detail about them.
The Patek Philippe Nautilus 50th Anniversary 5810/1G, 5810G, 5610/1P
You sometimes see the Patek Nautilus described as a cult hit. Personally, I’m not too sure it qualifies for that description; I’ve always thought a cult hit describes something with a small but highly passionate following.
The Nautilus certainly has extremely passionate fans, but they are also legion—just about everyone with an interest in elite watchmaking either desperately wants a Nautilus or, at the very least, appreciates what it is and what it has brought about.
This year, the 1976 icon, designed by the legendary Gerald Genta, commemorates its half century and to mark the occasion, Patek has come out with four limited edition versions.
The issues consist of three two-hand wristwatches in precious metals, each with a blue sunburst dial featuring the trademark horizontal ‘teak decking’ effect and white gold baton markers. The ref. 5610/1P-001 (2,000 pieces) comes in a 38mm platinum case as a callback to the more modest sized Nautili of the 1980s, while the other two, the ref. 5810/1G-001 (2,000 pieces) on a bracelet and the ref. 5810G-001 (1,000 pieces) on a composite strap with diamond indexes, are both white gold and 41mm as direct reference to the original 3700/1A.
All three come with the ultra-thin, automatic caliber 240 complete with a 22K gold mini rotor inscribed with ‘50 1976-2026’, ensuring the watches all measure just 6.9mm thick.
The fourth birthday release is a 100-unit desk clock in a Nautilus case. Made from palladium white gold, the 50.65mm piece comes with a day-date and power reserve display and an 8-day movement. Yours for just $256,315.
The Patek Philippe 6105G-001 Celestial Sunrise and Sunset
It’s big, it’s unbelievably expensive and it is absolutely magnificent.
The 6105G-001 builds on the work of Patek’s other ‘Celestial’ watches (the 6102 and 6104) so that it not only shows the exact configuration and apparent movement of the stars in the northern hemisphere, it also displays the sunrise and sunset times as well—a first for a Patek wristwatch.
The dial is something of a work of art in itself. Representing the night sky as seen from Geneva, the stars, the position of the moon and its phases are all multi-layered on separate independently rotating discs.
Around the edge we get a date display, with a red hammer-shaped pointer hand, and an extra pair of additional needle hands are used to indicate the sunrise and sunset. Not only that, thanks to the 240 C LU CL LCSO movement, which was five-years in the making and is the holder of six patents, the display can be changed from winter time to summer time with the press of a single corrector.
The white gold watch measures a hefty 47mm. But that is not the whole story. The case has no lugs and sits on an integrated composite strap so, while it is not going to be confused for a Cartier Tank, it is still highly wearable. Although, at 12.39mm thick, shuffling it under a shirtsleeve might be a challenge.
That’s not such a bad thing; this is a watch you will want people to see. The case comes with a distinctive and futurist crosshair pattern inspired by the look of space modules which is echoed onto the strap in an X-shaped design.
Essentially, the whole thing is made to capture the current trend for all things space related, and in many ways, the only folk who are going to be buying one of these beauties are the same 0.001% of the population who can afford to build their own rockets and head up to orbit for a looksee. Retail price for the 6105G-001 is $437,610
The Patek Philippe 5204G Split Second Chronograph and Perpetual Calendar
Just as with the 6105G above, the ref. 5204G released this year also sits in Patek’s Grand Complications collection. I’ve included it in our line-up of picks from this year’s show not only because it is a work of engineering genius, combining as it does possibly watchmaking’s two most demanding complications into one perfectly balanced and weighted whole, it is also my own personal favorite watch at the moment.
The 5204 was introduced into the Patek portfolio back in 2012 and continued the brand’s development of integrating split second chronograph functions with Patek’s own perpetual calendar complication. The movement which drove the watch back then, the CHR 29-535 PS Q consisting of 496 parts, is the same one which drives this latest version. As before, the stopwatch mechanism accounts for two column wheels with a horizontal clutch. Power reserve (without the chronograph running) is around 65-hours.
The 2026 model comes in the same livery as another of my grail watches from Patek, the 5470P-001, with its awesome navy blue dial and bright red accents. In that way, it is much more laidback and sporty than the reference it replaces, which came with a comparatively conservative olive green aesthetic. This latest actually earns the title sports watch; its $380,971 price tag notwithstanding.
As before, the component-heavy manually-winding caliber has been shoehorned into a 40mm white gold case, although it does stand at 14.3mm high. But as it powers not only the two main complications but also a moonphase indicator and day/night display as well, it can be forgiven for being a little on the rotund side.
The sunburst dial is busy without overwhelming; day and month windows sit at the 12 o’clock, while the 9 o’clock sub dial houses a small seconds counter and the one opposite accounts for the 30-minute totalizer. The moonphase dial is at the 6 which also has the day of the month gauge around its edge. A white tachymeter scale is printed inboard on the dial.
Pulling everything together, the navy composite strap has bright red stitching to match the two chrono hands and also carry on the more casual theme.
In all, this succeeds brilliantly in just about every respect—engineering, design and with all the typical Patek swagger.
One for the serious collector.
Featured Photo: Mixed art by Oriol Mendivil for BKT Archive.
