One of the rarest watches ever is heading to auction – and here’s how you can get your hands on this F.P. Journe model.
F.P. Journe are pretty much the Holy Grail of watch collecting. Founded only in 1999, the brand quickly became synonymous with highly complex and wildly expensive configurations and were followed loyally by a small but intense group of enthusiasts.
That was until recently where an F.P. Journe has become the brand that collectors fight over with the ferociousness you’d expect in a heavyweight title fight. The craze for F.P. Journe has also been spurred by celebrities such as JAY-Z, Tom Brady and John Mayer publicly embracing the brand and raising their profile.
Now, collectors will have an incredibly rare chance to get their hands on one of the very first watches F.P. Journe made. In fact, the first commercially available Chronomètre à Résonance.
The model officially launched in 2000 but its reference 022/99R indicates that it was made a year earlier. The first 20 pieces were reserved for supporters of François-Paul Journe’s Tourbillon Souverain souscription program which helped fund the brand while number 21 was kept by Journe himself, making this watch, number 22, the first of the brand’s watches to ever be sold.
Produced in 1999, only about 10 examples are known to exist and they are considered rarer than the pieces given to early supporters of the brand.
The watch will be featured in an auction by Phillips in Geneva on November 7 and 8 and they have put a very conservative estimate on the piece of around £1 million though if recent market trends are anything to go by, it will fetch much, much more.
Alexandre Ghotbi, Phillips deputy chairman and head of watches for Europe and the Middle East, and Tiffany To, Phillips senior international watch specialist and head of sale, in a joint statement: “What we have here with the present Chronomètre à Résonance 022/99R is not simply an early Résonance. It is, in all likelihood, the very first one delivered, the piece that proved a young independent watchmaker’s most audacious complication worked on the wrist, in the real world.
“Everything that followed—the acclaim, the waiting lists, the mythology around Journe—traces back to this watch. Pre-production examples of this caliber essentially never surface. To have the earliest number is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for anyone who is serious about the history of independent watchmaking.”
This year alone has seen the market for F.P. Journe explode. Phillips sold a Chronomètre à Résonance (reference number 007) for $13.9 million to become the fifth most expensive watch of all time. The hammer also dropped on a Souscription No. 18 for $6.3 million and a Chronomètre à Résonance “Pisa” for $3 million. Two other pieces also surpassed $1 million.
Tom Brady’s own F.P. Journe Vagabondage II was also sold at a recent auction for $960,000, a record for a reference that was limited to just 69 pieces and more than double the lower end of the estimate. The New England Patriots legend is also on the record with calling F.P. Journe watches “masterpieces”.
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