Carat73 lots over a million: the watch auction room reflates
EveryWatch puts first-half watch auction sales at $680 million, up 45%. Seventy-three lots cleared $1 million against roughly 25 a year earlier, three passed $10 million, and the median watch sold for $5,900.
§1Best six months since the boom.
The watch auction room has had its best six months since the boom, and it has had them at the top of the book. EveryWatch's first-half report puts auction sales at $680 million, up 45% year on year, inside a total secondary market of $10.5 billion. Seventy-three lots cleared a million dollars in six months, close to three times last year's count. Three lots passed $10 million. Against a dealer market that grew 37.2%, the salerooms grew faster, which reverses the pattern of the past two years when auction was the segment shedding value while dealers held the floor.
The record at the top of that column is one this desk filed on 9 July. An F.P. Journe Chronometre a Resonance Souscription, number 007, made $13,922,000 at Phillips New York on 14 June, the highest price ever paid at auction for a watch by an independent maker. It is not an isolated result: Phillips also placed a Resonance Souscription number 18 at $6.3 million and a Resonance Pisa at $3 million across the spring season. One workshop supplied a meaningful share of the seven-figure lots in a half that had 73 of them.
§2Underneath the trophies.
Underneath the trophies the market is behaving normally, which is the more useful signal. The median watch across all channels sold for $5,900, up 19%, and took 43 days to move against 39 a year earlier. A rising median with a slightly slower clock describes a market absorbing higher prices rather than chasing them, and it sits consistently with the dealer-side picture of value growing faster than unit volume. EveryWatch compiles from sold results rather than asking prices, drawing on about 650 dealers and roughly 470 auction houses, which is why the figures are worth more than the usual index snapshot.
Seventy-three lots cleared a million dollars in six months, close to three times last year's count.
§3Where the estimate should sit.
For consignors the practical read is about where the estimate should sit. Heritage booked a record half in jewellery, Phillips took $235 million across the spring watch season, and the million-dollar count has tripled, but none of that has repriced the middle of the catalogue, where the median is still under six thousand dollars and the clock has slowed by four days. The lot that benefits from this market is the one with a name, a serial number and a story that can be checked. The lot that does not is the good watch with no argument attached to it.
The auction room is not recovering broadly, it is recovering at the top, and a 45% headline hides a market that has become two markets. Seventy-three seven-figure lots is a statement about a few hundred buyers, not about the trade. If you are placing goods, place the extraordinary piece at auction and sell the ordinary one across the counter, because the salerooms are currently paying a premium for provenance and charging a discount for everything else. That spread will close, and it will close from the top.
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A $235 million spring, and the record that came with it.