When Expectations Meet Reality | Market Report
Geneva auctions 2025, by the numbers.
Happy Saturday. I’m flying to New York tomorrow morning to go to the auctions and a few other events. I hope to see some of you at Sotheby’s on Monday or Christie’s on Tuesday. Before we get to today’s auction report:
📚 For a long read, check out Paul’s in-depth piece about the Patek Philippe 1526 on the Mothership, the first serially produced perpetual calendar.
🧐 I’m intrigued by the new Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Control Classic, a 36mm recreation of the original Master Control from the 90s. The problem is the originals are readily available pre-owned for like half the price. Still, I’m glad the Master Control is getting proper attention again—the collection has a ton of potential.
👩🚀 Did you catch astronaut Jonny Kim using his Omega Seamaster bezel for timing stuff on the ISS?
🧥 The 50 best clothing stores in the U.S., according to the NY Times.
💎 With all these stone dials, do you ever wonder if we’re all gonna be wandering around with cracked dials in like three years? Let me know if you know anyone that’s already got a cracked stone.
Watch auctions are far from perfect as market indicators.1 Bids can be performances as much as true valuations. Still, the bi-annual sales in New York, Geneva, and Hong Kong are our most visible public barometer of collectible watches.
In June, I tried a new method for analyzing auctions. It was well received, so it’s back and bigger for the November Geneva sales. As I explained then:
Auction houses will compare final hammer prices (the total before the all-in price, which includes those hefty buyer’s premiums) as a percentage of the low or high estimates, since estimates are made on a pre-premium basis. It’s not perfect, but it works. Anywhere from 80-100% of the high estimate can be considered expected to strong performance.
I use this metric—hammer price as a percentage of high estimate—to evalute the November Geneva auctions, compiling the results from Christie’s, Phillips, and Sotheby’s.2 Here’s the summary by auction house:
Perhaps the most telling data point: Results achieved 99% of high estimates in aggregate. It gives a picture of a market that’s strong and stable, where expectations, finally, align with reality—last November, results were 86% of high estimates.
Let’s zoom in on a few brands.
Methodology notes: The above figures by house include the results from Sotheby’s 250th Anniversary Breguet sale, but I omitted that sale from the brand-level analysis below. Thematic sales have a tendency to skew results.
Brand Scorecard: It’s Journe’s World
FP Journe performed best compared to its expectations, buoyed by Souscription Resonance No. 2, which sold for CHF 3.3m, well over Phillips’ high estimate of 900k.
Of course, estimates aren’t a perfect indicator of where the market’s actually at. While there are internal and external incentives for setting accurate estimates, auction houses can use different strategies. For example, Phillips is known for setting conservative estimates to entice bidders and get momentum going for each lot.
This shows in the results: Phillips’ performance compared to its high estimate was 114%, way above Christie’s and Sotheby’s. However, that overperformance can also be entirely attrbuted to two watches:
That Souscription Resonance
The steel Patek 1518, which had an estimate “in excess of CHF 8m,” and hammered at CHF 12m
Here are the results for brands that had 5+ watches sold in Geneva. The key figure is the last column, the brand’s total hammer price against its high estimate:
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