F.P. Journe's HK$31,400,000 tops a HK$426m Sotheby's sale
The Cartier Cheich that led Sotheby's own announcement set a world record and placed second by price. Four of the sale's top six lots are F.P. Journe. The sale ran in Hong Kong on 21 September.
By The Watches Desk
What changed
The record was not the top lot. An F.P. Journe Tourbillon Souverain took HK$31,400,000 at Sotheby's Hong Kong sale, 18.4% more than the Cartier Cheich the house led its announcement with.
What it means
- If you consign independent watchmaking: Four of the top six lots were F.P. Journe, and the highest price in the room was not a listed group's brand.
- If you read house announcements for price: The record watch and the dearest watch were different lots here. Check the lot table, not the headline.
- If you valued a Cartier Cheich: HK$26,520,000 is 3.32 times the low estimate and 33.7% below the high.
- What this is not: A current reading. The sale is 15 days old and nothing since has been measured against it here.
Key figures
| Sale totalUS$55m | HK$426m |
|---|---|
| Top lot, F.P. Journe7.4% of the sale | HK$31,400,000 |
| Cartier Cheich, recordsecond by price | HK$26,520,000 |
| Bidders, 50 countriestwo-day sale | 2,000+ |
Source: Sotheby's post-sale recap · Important Watches, Hong Kong, 21 September 2026 · released 22 September
The dearest lot set no record
Eighteen percent apart. Lot 2400 took HK$31,400,000 and the Cheich HK$26,520,000. The division gives 1.184, so 18.4% more.
Different headline. Sotheby's leads its recap on the record rather than on the highest price realised in the room.
| Rank | Lot | Watch | HK$ | US$ | Share of HK$426m |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2400 | F.P. Journe, Tourbillon Souverain | 31,400,000 | 4,002,558 | 7.4% |
| 2 | 2292 | Cartier Cheich | 26,520,000 | 3,413,124 | 6.2% |
| 3 | 2579 | F.P. Journe, Tourbillon Souverain | 23,470,000 | 2,991,721 | 5.5% |
| 4 | 2387 | F.P. Journe, Répétition Souveraine | 12,160,000 | 1,550,035 | 2.9% |
| 5 | 2596 | Patek Philippe, Reference 5074R-018 | 11,520,000 | 1,468,454 | 2.7% |
Notes on this table
Lot numbers, names and both currency figures are read from the Top 10 lots table inside Sotheby's own post-sale recap PDF, 436,953 bytes, fetched to raw bytes and decompressed locally. Share of total is Carat Capital's division by the HK$426,000,000 the same document reports: 31,400,000 ÷ 426,000,000 = 7.37%. Only the top five are tabled. The recap's table lists lot 6, an F.P. Journe Octa Chronographe, at the same figure as lot 5, HK$11,520,000 / US$1,468,454; that may be a genuine tie or an artefact of the document, it could not be resolved against a second source, and lot 6 is therefore named in the prose by brand and lot number but not priced here. The recap also prints the Cartier London Midi Pebble's second figure as HK$494,208 where a US$ label is expected; that figure is not reproduced.
Four of six are Journe
Independent at the top. Lots 2400, 2579, 2387 and 2414 are all F.P. Journe, four of the six highest by the recap's own ordering.
Groups take the rest. Patek Philippe holds three of the top ten and Audemars Piguet one, by the same table.
Doubled, and under its high
A wide band. The Cheich was estimated at HK$8 million to HK$40 million. It realised HK$26,520,000.
Print the division. 26,520,000 ÷ 8,000,000 = 3.32 times the low; 26,520,000 ÷ 40,000,000 = 66.3% of the high, so 33.7% below it.
One document, two durations
Nine or sixteen. The recap's body calls the Cheich's contest a nine-minute bidding battle. A quoted comment in the same document says sixteen minutes.
Neither is printed. No second source carries either figure, so no duration appears in the figures above or the table.
What to watch
- October to November 2026Christie's and Phillips Hong Kong and Geneva watch sales. The first comparable totals to set against HK$426m.
- Next Cartier Cheich at auctionWhether HK$26,520,000 holds as the Cartier wristwatch record. The recap says the prior record was set in May 2026.
- May 2027The anniversary of the record this one displaced, and the usual window for the house's Hong Kong luxury week.
The story so far
Go deeper
What would change this call
A corrected recap. Two internal inconsistencies were found in this one document — two bidding durations and a currency label — and a reissued table could change the lot ordering printed here.
What a sale total counts
A house total is the sum of hammer prices plus the buyer's premium on each sold lot. It excludes lots that failed to sell, so a high total can coexist with a weak sell-through rate. Sotheby's recap for this sale publishes no sell-through percentage and none is estimated here. Currency conversions are the house's own, struck at the rate on the day of sale, which is why the HK$ and US$ columns do not move together across lots.
Method
The press-release page was fetched to raw bytes, HTTP 200, 127,219 bytes, and carries datePublished 2026-09-22T15:17:52.032Z; the headline string HK$426 returns seven hits on it. The page's body is script-rendered, so the figures were taken instead from the house's own post-sale recap PDF, fetched to raw bytes, HTTP 200, 436,953 bytes, four pages, decompressed and flattened locally to newsroom/sources/2026-10-06/sothebys-recap.txt. Exact-digit greps on that extracted text: HK$426 two hits, US$55 two, HK$26.5 one, US$3.4 one, HK$26,520,000 one, HK$31,400,000 one, 2,000+ one, 50 Countries one, 21 September one. The recap's own dateline reads HONG KONG 21 September 2026. Age is computed from that dateline to today's clock, 2026-10-06, and is 15 days; from the release date it is 14. Both are printed rather than either being hidden. Archive check, by entity and period: no file in website/ matches Important Watches together with 426 million, and no prior Carat Capital article covers this sale; the September 2026 Hong Kong Important Watches sale is a new period for this desk. The estimate comparison is Carat Capital's arithmetic, shown on one line in the prose so the division and the sentence can be compared. Sotheby's own words unprecedented and smashing are not reproduced as this paper's prose. No quote is carried: the house's two available comments run 34 and 22 words, both over the 15-word cap, and were paraphrased with attribution instead.