The ground-breaking reference 1518 has been compared to “the iPhone of Pateks”
A rare and historically significant Patek Philippe watch is up for auction next month.
The reference 1518 was the world’s first perpetual calendar chronograph made in series – until then perpetual calendar chronographs had been one-offs, due to the painstaking level of expertise required to assemble them. Almost all the other versions of the 1518 exist in yellow gold, making this pink gold model especially sought-after.
The 1940s was an important time for Patek. After a decade of economic contraction and mass unemployment during the Great Depression bought on by the 1929 stock market crash in America, Patek Philippe found itself over-leveraged and forced to cut salaries, as well as melt down its own gold cases as a way of freeing up assets to pay staff. At one point it looked as though the then-90-year-business was about to go under.
This early version of the perpetual calendar chronograph bears the unusual “Patek, Philippe and Co” signature on the dial and is in pristine condition – because of its snap-back case moisture has had a tendency to tarnish the dials on other models. Its estimate is CHF 800,000-1,600,000 .
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