Patek 2499 in pink gold leads Phillips at over $3m
The 5 and 6 December sale in New York carries a second-series pink gold example. Phillips says eight are publicly known of 349 made, and seven named lots carry a $6.3 million floor.
By Carat Capital
What changed
Phillips names its December leader. A second-series Patek Philippe Reference 2499 in pink gold leads The New York Watch Auction: XV on 5 and 6 December. Phillips estimates it above $3 million and says eight such examples are publicly known.
What it means
- If you collect perpetual chronographs: Phillips puts the second-series pink gold population at eight, against 349 examples of the reference in total. That is its count, not an independent census.
- If you bid on independents: Three F.P. Journe lots carry floors of $600,000, $600,000 and above $500,000. One is described as the only known pink gold Pre-Souscription Resonance.
- What this is not: A result or a record. Phillips' claim to the highest-value US watch catalogue is a pre-sale claim about its own consignments.
Key figures
| Estimate, pink gold Patek Reference 2499second series, 18-carat | Over $3m |
|---|---|
| Second-series pink gold examples knownPhillips' own counts, unverified here | 8 of 349 |
| Floor across seven named lotson our addition; three floors open-ended | $6.3m |
| The New York Watch Auction: XVPhillips' New York gallery | 5-6 Dec |
Source: All figures as published by JCK on 16 October 2026, read from the raw page, 200, 110,659 bytes, JSON-LD datePublished 2026-10-16. Every estimate and every count is Phillips' own, pre-sale. The $6.3 million floor is Carat Capital's addition of seven published low estimates. No lot has sold.
The leader and its population
One reference, two counts. Phillips says 349 examples of the Reference 2499 were made over nearly 35 years and that eight second-series examples in pink gold are publicly known.
Both are the house's. Carat Capital has not matched either count against a registry or a maker's record. They are repeated here as Phillips' statements about its own leading lot.
The estimate is open. The watch is given as more than $3 million with no upper figure. An open-ended estimate sets a floor and declines to set a ceiling.
| Lot | Estimate | Floor used |
|---|---|---|
| Patek Philippe Reference 2499, second series, pink gold | More than $3,000,000 | $3,000,000 |
| F.P. Journe Tourbillon Souverain, second generation | $600,000 to $1,200,000 | $600,000 |
| F.P. Journe Pre-Souscription Chronometre a Resonance, pink gold | $600,000 to $1,200,000 | $600,000 |
| F.P. Journe Octa Reserve de Marche prototype, one of three | More than $500,000 | $500,000 |
| Cartier Model A Mystery Clock, ex-King Farouk I | More than $500,000 | $500,000 |
| Akrivia AK-02 Tourbillon, unique | $500,000 to $1,000,000 | $500,000 |
| Patek Philippe Reference 5971, 42 baguette emeralds | $600,000 to $1,200,000 | $600,000 |
| Total floor | - | $6,300,000 |
Notes on this table
Addition printed so it can be checked: 3,000,000 + 600,000 + 600,000 + 500,000 + 500,000 + 500,000 + 600,000 = 6,300,000. Three of the seven estimates are open-ended, given as more than a figure, so the true floor is above $6.3 million by an unknown amount. Phillips has not published a total lot count for the sale, so this figure is a floor on seven lots and not an indication of the sale's size. Separately, 8 divided by 349 is 2.29%, which is the share of all Reference 2499s made that Phillips says are publicly known second-series examples in pink gold.
Independents fill the middle
Journe takes three slots. A second-generation Tourbillon Souverain and a pink gold Pre-Souscription Resonance each carry $600,000 to $1.2 million. An Octa Reserve de Marche prototype is above $500,000.
Akrivia joins them. A unique AK-02 Tourbillon carries $500,000 to $1 million, which puts a contemporary independent in the same bracket as the vintage Patek's supporting lots.
A gem-set Patek follows. Reference 5971 with 42 baguette-cut emeralds on the bezel and seven emerald hour markers is estimated at $600,000 to $1.2 million.
Two lots are not wristwatches
Farouk's clock returns. A Cartier Model A Mystery Clock commissioned by King Farouk I in 1936 and delivered the following year is expected above $500,000.
Seinfeld's Daytona too. The Vic Elford Rolex Daytona from Jerry Seinfeld's collection was announced earlier and carries no published estimate in this report.
A charity section runs. The third TimeForArt edition sits inside the sale with the Swiss Institute taking all proceeds, including the house's donated buyer's premium.
What to watch
- Before 5 DecemberA full catalogue with a lot count. Seven lots are named and the sale's size is not published.
- 5-6 DecemberWhether the Reference 2499 clears $3 million. The estimate is a floor with no stated ceiling.
- 5-6 DecemberWhether the sale total supports Phillips' pre-sale claim to the highest-value US watch auction.
The story so far
Go deeper
What would change this call
The catalogue itself. Everything here comes from one trade report of a house's own pre-sale announcement, and no lot has sold. Phillips' two population counts for the Reference 2499 are the softest claims in the piece: a count of publicly known examples is by construction a count of what the counter knows, and a ninth pink gold second series could surface in the sale room. The reporting outlet also discloses that its first draft was produced with AI assistance before staff review, which is a reason to hold each figure to the catalogue when it appears.
Why an open-ended estimate is a different instrument
Most auction estimates come as a range, a low and a high, and the pair does two jobs at once. The low is a signal to bidders about where the reserve sits, because a reserve is conventionally at or below it. The high is a signal about where the house expects competition to stop. When a house publishes an estimate as more than a figure, it is deliberately doing only the first job. It establishes a floor, usually to reassure a consignor and to filter the room, and it declines to guess at a ceiling because it does not want the published high to become one. Three of the seven named lots in this catalogue are presented that way: the Patek at more than $3 million, the Journe prototype and the Cartier clock each at more than $500,000. For a reader trying to size the sale, the practical consequence is that no total can be built from these numbers. A sum of the published lows is a hard floor, which is why this paper prints $6.3 million and calls it exactly that. A sum of the highs cannot be built at all, because three of them do not exist. That asymmetry is not a reporting gap; it is the house's choice, and it is worth noticing which lots it applies to. Here it applies to the leader and to the two most difficult-to-comparable objects in the sale, a prototype and a royal commission, which are precisely the lots with the thinnest comparable record.
Method
One source, fetched in this run and saved as raw bytes before any figure was read: jckonline.com, 200, 110,659 bytes. Date established from the page's own JSON-LD datePublished, 2026-10-16, which matches the byline date in the body. Figures were read from the article's own paragraph run and the extraction was stopped before the SEE MORE recirculation block, so no figure belonging to a neighbouring story could be matched; the adjacent teaser on that page carries no figures in any case. JCK's own page states that its News Desk used AI to produce the first draft and that the story was reviewed by a named staff writer; that disclosure is printed in the article above rather than left in this note. ARCHIVE, by entity and by period, hits opened and read: grep -ril '2499' website/*.html returns exactly 1 hit, a-phillips-235-million-spring, which was opened. OURS 2026-07-09 covers PHILLIPS' SPRING 2026 SEASON and lists, among its comparators, a Reference 2499 sold in HONG KONG at $10.3 million, a different physical watch in a different metal that has already sold. THIS ITEM covers a NOT-YET-SOLD second-series PINK GOLD Reference 2499 catalogued for a NEW YORK sale on 5 and 6 DECEMBER 2026. Same reference number, different object, different market, different period. NEW. grep -ril 'Akrivia' returns 0 and grep -ril 'Farouk' returns 0, both validated against the positive control grep -ril 'Phillips', which returns 39.