The Omega Watch Company Museum paid $3.4 million USD at auction for a rare example of one of its own brand watches that has recently been proven to be a fake. link
The 1957 OMEGA Speedmaster that sold at Phillips for a record-breaking USD$3.4 million (AUD$4.6 million at the time) has been revealed as a fake. The immaculate Ref. 2915-1, which was described as the Swiss maison’s “most historically important model” first made headlines in 2021, when it appeared in the lineup for Phillips’ Geneva Watch Auction: XIV. Seen as the holy grail of Speedmasters and a design often thought lost to the world, the model drew the interest of many avid collectors, each clambering to hold a piece of history in their hands. Less than two years later and a string of reports have revealed the most expensive OMEGA ever sold, was simply too good to be true.
But that’s just the beginning.
Bloomberg is reporting that the 1957 OMEGA Speedmaster Ref. 2915-1 is not an original example, but rather a piece constructed using parts from other vintage watches. According to Sydney-based registered watch and jewellery valuer Damien Kalmar, the end result of this process is referred to as a ‘Frankenwatch’, a term used within the industry to demonstrate the lengths and sophistication of the forgery. While not uncommon, these pieces generally take the form of a vintage Seiko or OMEGA Seamaster, due to the ubiquitous and collectible nature of the design.
“Copy (or fake) watches have been around for a very long time, and forgers have been making copies of OMEGA watches for decades,” the Kalmar Antiques director tells us. “Whether they are models produced post-1969 dubbed ‘moon watches’ after Buzz Aldrin famously wore one on the landing of the moon, or the ‘pre-moon watches’ dating prior – Speedmasters have always been highly collectable watches and remain popular in the current market.”
So, with that knowledge on hand, the question begs to be asked, how did a watch that was supposedly OMEGA’s “most historically important model” manage to slip through the cracks?
According to the brand, the very expensive mixup was an inside job. In the Bloomberg report, OMEGA claims that three former employees were behind a very intricate scheme to dupe collectors, auctioneers and the brand itself. Considering the actualised price was around 25 times the pre-sale estimate, they were damn close to pulling it off.
As per OMEGA’s allegations, a former employee of its museum and brand heritage department “worked in tandem with intermediaries to purchase the watch for the OMEGA Museum”. On the advice of this employee, OMEGA purchased the watch for its in-house collection with company executives reportedly told that it was a “rare and exceptional timepiece that would be an absolute must”.
As we reported back in November 2021, the 1957 model represented the perfect culmination of time periods and design language. Only in production between 1957 and 1959, the Ref. 2915-1 and -2 models received the ‘Broad Arrow’ minute and hour hands, alongside a metal bezel – as opposed to the standard bezel with black insert. Additionally, the rare piece was said to sport slightly different dial graphics, distinguishable by the oval O of OMEGA, which later became perfectly round.
“In terms of design, it was the first chronograph to feature a tachymeter scale (or, as OMEGA called it at the time, the Tacho-productometer scale) on the bezel, rather than on the dial,” Phillips wrote at the time. “In terms of movements, OMEGA did not go for a brand new calibre, turning instead to calibre 321, an extremely robust and reliable column-wheel chronograph, which it recognised as the best available option for its new Speedmaster.”
Alas, it was not meant to be. OMEGA has not named the ex-staffers it claims were responsible for the con, however, CEO Raynald Aeschlimann told Swiss newspaper NZZ that the deception had been “to the massive detriment of OMEGA”. Even more bizarrely, the watchmaker apparently doesn’t know who consigned the watch to Phillips for the auction, making the entire ordeal all the more strange. A Phillips Spokesperson confirmed that the auction house obtained confirmation from OMEGA of the date of manufacture of the numbered movement, serial number, the model of watch that the movement was fitted to and the date it was sold
“Until last week, nobody had ever suggested this OMEGA watch was not authentic, the watch was inspected by specialists, experts and even the manufacturer at the time of the sale and nobody raised any concerns over it,” the Spokesperson told Man of Many. “Even now, we have not seen any reports or had access to the watch to carry out an in-depth analysis of the watch regarding those claims.”
“We understand representatives of OMEGA saw the watch before they purchased it. We believe OMEGA is bringing criminal charges against the perpetrators.”
Since we are already on the subject of insane collecting obsessions and astounding prices, I figure I may as well pass along this video discussion of the latest case of time-keeping conspicuous consumption from Cartier.
I bought a Rolex decades ago, and I still find it rather loco to think $29K is a price worth paying for a watch (unless you are Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates), but other people’s enthusiasms and obsessions I do find rather interesting and I occasionally sit through these watch nerd videos.
I guess he’s right: there is something impressive about top-end innovative design and extreme connoisseurship. Alas! those of us who neglected to acquire high-end positions at Goldman Sachs will probably not be engaging in this kind.
Some people think they prove both superior taste and financial acumen by modestly wearing only Timex watches. Other people look suspiciously at a man’s wrist and conclude that he never had any serious money if they don’t see a big name wristwatch Rolex or better. Younger people these days commonly don’t even wear watches. They get the time from their smartphones.
Then, there is also out there a small, very rich element that is fascinated by horology and that collects watches costing more than most people’s houses.
Crown and Caliber discusses some of the over-the-top timepieces built specifically to appeal to that rechercher market. I think it’s worth watching because it makes you feel good to see hideously expensive objects you couldn’t possibly afford that you actually don’t want.
On December 12, Phillips will hold a live online auction featuring two iconic watches: a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona that actor and race-car driver Paul Newman was given by his wife and actor, Joanne Woodward, as well as a Heuer Monaco, one of six identical watches worn by actor Steve McQueen while filming the classic racing film Le Mans. The auction spotlights the importance of celebrity backstories to big sales. Read the rest of this entry »
c. 1600-1610. A watch set in a single large Colombian emerald crystal of hexagonal form with a hinged lid. The dial plate (the hand is missing) is enamelled in translucent green.
For almost 300 years a buried treasure lay undisturbed below one of London’s busiest streets. No one knew it was there until workmen started to demolish a timber-framed building in Cheapside near St Paul’s Cathedral, in June 1912. The property had stood on the site since the 17th century, but the cellars were older and lined with brick.
On 18 June 1912 workmen started to excavate the cellars with their picks, and while they were breaking up the floor, they noticed something glinting in the soil below. Quickly scraping the chalky soil aside, they realized that they had struck the remains of an old wooden casket, and to their immense delight a tangled heap of jewellery, gems and other precious objects came tumbling forth. They had uncovered what is now known and celebrated as The Cheapside Hoard the greatest cache of Elizabethan and early Stuart jewellery in the world and one of the most remarkable and spectacular finds ever recovered from British soil.
As a time-capsule of contemporary taste and the jewellers’ trade The Cheapside Hoard is unsurpassed, and it remains not only the most important source of our knowledge of Elizabethan and early Stuart jewellery in England because so little jewellery of this date has survived, but also provides unparalleled information on the international gem trade in an age of global conquest and exploration.
The Hoard was acquired by the London Museum in 1912 (which merged with the Guildhall Museum to form the Museum of London in 1976).
Michael Brendan Dougherty explains why he wants a hideously expensive huge wristwatch, historically associated with the Italian Navy.
If my children someday ask me about a certain personal extravagance, I will blame the Axis Powers.
On December 18, 1941, Luigi Durand de la Penne and five of his comrades were ahead of schedule. They stopped to eat figs and drink cognac, when, to their great fortune, they saw two British battleships and a British destroyer entering the harbor of AlexÂandria, Egypt. These men were part of Italy’s elite frogman unit, the Decima Flottiglia MAS. They had launched from the Italian submarine Scirè, driving their two-man sea chariots toward the British fleet. These chariots were manned torpedoes, with a maximum speed of 3 knots, and so unwieldy and unreliable that their riders referred to them as maiali, or pigs. The frogmen used rebreathing units invented for spear fishers during interwar years to operate undetected under the surface of the water. From there, they could navigate their explosives around nets and set up other forms of protection for their ships. That night, these six men would dramatically alter the balance of power in the Mediterranean.
Leaving behind figs and cognac, de la Penne and his crewmate approached the HMS Valiant. Their equipment began to fail — this was the Italian navy, after all — with de la Penne’s wetsuit and mask letting in water. He swallowed it to clear his vision. After a mighty struggle with his pig, he managed to place the limpet mine on the keel of the Valiant. But almost immediately afterward, he and his partner had to surface for air. They were spotted and captured.
Refusing to talk, de la Penne was placed below deck, right above his charge. Ten minutes before it was set to explode, he alerted the captain that in a few minutes the Valiant would sink and all he could do was evacuate his men. De la Penne reached the deck unscathed after the bomb went off, and he witnessed similar mines exploding beneath the HMS Queen Elizabeth, the HMS Jervis, and the oil tanker Sagona.
Six men had disabled the bulk of the British fleet in the Mediterranean. The world wouldn’t discover it for months, since the ships sank in shallow water on flat bottoms. Winston Churchill would praise the ingenuity and courage of the Italian frogmen when he relayed the news in a secret session of Parliament. After the war, the captain of the Valiant, Admiral Charles Morgan, even lobbied for a British decoration for de la Penne.
How did the frogmen know that they were ahead of schedule? Or determine that there were ten minutes left before the explosion? They had another piece of equipment, issued to them by the Italian navy: a hulking, 47-millimeter, plexiglass-domed, submersible wristwatch. Its guts were made by Rolex, but the Italian watch firm Panerai modified the cases, soldered on wire lugs, and added a sandwich-style dial. The bottom half was a disk painted with glowing radioactive material; the top half was a black disk with cutouts to make the indices. This was the Panerai Radiomir.
And I really want to spend an exorbitant amount of money to get a watch that looks like the ones that de la Penne and his comrades wore.
Well, not exactly like it. The modern versions are no longer made with radium, so they don’t give their makers and wearers cancer. Also they have better components and much shinier and more polished cases than the originals. You get them not from military contractors but from luxury boutiques, where the staff wear white gloves to handle them and speak to you in hushed tones.
It makes no sense, really. Cheapo battery-powered watches keep better time than expensive modern Panerai. An even more accurate time is available on my smartphone. But you can’t get better advertising than de la Penne’s physical courage and sportsmanlike conduct in one of the most daring feats of World War II. He wore it. It’s cool. And I want one so bad.
November 17, 2018 Sale, Lot 289: VIANNEY HALTER Antiqua
Description: Case: Rose gold case; Dial: Hours and minutes silver dial, date display, silver-coloured month and year dial, silver weekday display; Movement: Automatic movement, Mov. no.: 8R, Case no. 99.8R.132, Cal. VH198, 43mm, black leather strap with pin buckle.
Why would anybody spend so much money on such a weird watch? GaryG explains.
[A]t first I’d be tempted to characterize the Antiqua as a “patronage†piece: one purchased in recognition of and in support of the great work of one of the most skilled independent watchmakers.
Upon reflection, however, I’m going to classify it as a member of the “investment†category: a watch that, regardless of its prospects for future financial appreciation, can be a foundational element of a carefully curated collection. For me, the Antiqua merits a spot in the watch box of any serious collector of independent watches, and I know that I’m certainly not alone in my view.
The truth is that I fell for the Antiqua when I first saw one more than a dozen years ago; while many of my friends will freely confess that at the time they were at first put off by its looks, I was smitten from the start. It took me a number of years to save up the money and find the right piece, but for me buying an Antiqua was just a matter of time.
I’ll start with one word: steampunk.
The steampunk ethic really appeals to me, and I appreciate Halter’s use of something he calls the Futur Anterieur (roughly, “the future as seen from the pastâ€) as a guiding design principle. Because we cannot truly see the future, at any point in time we envision it through the lens of present-day items and technologies. As seen from the 1860s’ vantage point of Jules Verne, building a submarine or spaceship with heavy, riveted windows would have made perfect sense; and for the occupants of those vessels as imagined by Halter, a matching watch would be just the thing to have.
I think that it’s also fair to say that the Antiqua began the modern design movement in watches. A leading independent watchmaking impresario once told me that he considers the Antiqua “the missing link between traditional and contemporary watchmaking.â€
I’m of like mind, and for this reason alone, for me the Antiqua is one of the few most important independent watches ever made.
Bukowskis, June 7, 2018, 1:00 PM CET, Stockholm, Sweden, Important Spring Sale 609 – Day 1,
Lot 194: HENRI DE BARY, POCKET WATCH, SILVER, PROBABLY LATE 17TH CENTURY
HENRI DE BARY, POCKET WATCH, SILVER, PROBABLY LATE 17TH CENTURY
Est: kr30,000 – kr40,000 [$3666 – 4888]
Starting bid: kr24,000 [$2932.80]
Description: Verge escapement, keywound, three sub dials for time, date and lunar date and three windows showing moon phases, months and the zodiac, engraved signature and 265, 50 mm, outer case 57,5 mm
Matt Meltzer wore expensive watches (rented from this company) on several different occasions, and found that people treated him “wayyy differently.”
Many long years ago, an art dealer friend from Yale asked me to accompany him to look at a collection, pretending to be a wealthy interested collector. (I forget exactly why bringing along a ringer was desirable.) Before we departed for the meeting, my fashion-plate art dealer friend looked me over, decided my contemptibly ordinary Tissot wristwatch would never do, and hurriedly lent me a solid-gold Corum to wear.
My poor old Tissot finally died of old age, I replaced it, and the next one died as well after about a year. I bought a Timex, but I didn’t much like it, and it died even quicker. Going to a watch dealer to get new batteries put in constantly seemed to be a nuisance, so I decided finally to buy a better, more durable watch. I was also really sick of scratching watch crystals and needing to get them replaced. An expensive watch commonly has a practically-indestructible artificial sapphire crystal.
My choice (pictured above) was perhaps boringly conventional. I bought the gold-and-steel version of the Rolex DateJust with the Jubilee band.
Rolexes are sport watches, which you can wear doing manual labor and outdoor sports. The gold raises the watch’s formality just enough that the same watch is also perfectly appropriate for formal evening wear. With this model, one only needs one watch.
Once I started wearing my Rolex, I began noticing covert wrist glances from other people at business meetings and social occasions, and before long I found myself also taking other peoples’ wristwatches as a strong clue to each individual’s professional and social level, overall affluence, and adult sophistication. Wear that Rolex or Girard Perregaux, and you will catch new acquaintances making small facial expressions of approval after that covert questioning glance at your left wrist.
When you reach a certain point of middle-age, not owning a real watch, i.e. an expensive name brand watch, tends to suggest that you have never at any one time had a whole bunch of free cash and/or that you are some kind of Puritanical hippy with an ideological thing about high-end consumerism.
Pari passu, wearing too complicated a watch tends to make your viewing audience suspect that you are a Walter-Mitty fighter pilot/racing driver wannabee. Wearing a truly hideously expensive watch avec complications tells people you are a deranged watch collector who probably has a hedge fund. A watch is a form of self-expression that requires some exercise of personal judgement and taste.
I must confess, though: Watch prices have gone up so much that I would never ever buy my Rolex today.
Built to celebrate the company’s 175th anniversary, the Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime Ref. 5175 is so complicated that it is absolutely fascinating to watch it being designed and built.
The Hodinkee blog recently reported that the Hublot watch company of Geneva is building a new ultra complication watch as a tribute to the Antikythera Mechanism.
The finished product, scheduled to be unveiled at a show in Basel next Spring, will combine a watch with the functions recently identified by archaeologists in the Antikythera device.
