Watches

This department has held its own 'themed' sales since 2005; they take place twice a year alongside the jewellery and silverware sales. The auctions mainly focus on wrist watches, for men made by the most prestigious watch-makers.

Selection of the pieces is made not only on the basis of the name of the watch maker but also their rarity, in the case of vintage watches, and their condition.

In this sector today there are many collectors who started out by making purchases motivated by passion and then transformed this pleasure into an investment. Targeted purchases of watches have, in a few years, turned into extremely profitable investments, thereby attracting on account of their profitability ever growing numbers of "investing collectors".

The boom in collectors' watches which began in the eighties, is still increasing today and seems to have not been influenced by the current challenging financial situation. This is true especially for Patek Philippe watches, which achieve the highest prices on the market in international sales.

In our sales we devote a great deal of space to Rolexes, amongst which the vintage sports models are some of the most sought after pieces by collectors, who are willing to spend any sum of money in order to possess these rare and sometimes unique pieces.
This is proved by the results of the thematic sale in June 2009, in which 200 Rolexes, from a private collection, were presented and were all knocked down at higher prices than their estimates. The final result was 200% over the estimates.

There is also much interest in the great maison Vacheron & Constantin and IWC whose models always reach very high prices. The historic maisons however, such as Omega, Jaeger le Coultre, Panerai, Breguet, Ulysse Nardin, Breitling, Gerard Perregaux, are not overlooked; around each of these there are groups of passionate collectors.
The niche market of pocket watches, dating from the seventeenth century to the present is also on offer.