The 10 most expensive watches in the world.

What do you spend on a watch? $100? $250? Or do you really splurge and fork out $5,000 for that prized Rolex or Tag Heuer that really announces, “I’ve arrived”?

Well even with the most expensive designer fashion or luxury watches we see in stores or ads in magazines, we’re not anywhere near the stratosphere of the world’s most expensive time pieces. These chronographs are more bejeweled, handcrafted works of art than just watches, but if you have a few million dollars to spend – or much more – you may find one on your wrist!

10. FRANCK MULLER AETERNITAS MEGA 4

Price tag: $2.7 million

Designed by Swiss watchmaker Franch Muller in 1991, the watch with the full name “Aeternitas Mega 4 Grande Sonnerie Westminster Carillon” has 36 complications and 1,483 individual components, earning it the honor of being the world’s most complicated watch.

9. PATEK PHILIPPE 1953 HEURES UNIVERSELLES MODEL 2523

Price tag: $2.9 million

Patek Philippe & Co. first started making watches in Switzerland in 1839, and is one of the highest quality makers of timepieces still today, guaranteed to appreciate in value. This model has an 18k gold case, shows several time zones, and a polychrome dial that details a map of North America.

8. PATEK PHILIPPE 1895/1927 YELLOW GOLD MINUTE REPEATING

Price tag: $3 million

This watch was part of the Henry Graves, Jr. signature collection, built in 1895 with the case completed in 1927, it recently went for $2.994 million at a Sotheby’s auction.

7.  LE BRASSUS TOURBILLON CARROUSEL

Price tag: $4 million

The Swiss company that produced this masterpiece, Blancpain, has been around since 1735 but continues to innovate. With this watch, they combined two traditional methods of combatting the degenerative effects of gravity on time keeping, tourbillon and carrousel methods. It’s the first watch in the world to use both, making it an instant classic of quality.

6. LOUIS MOINET “METEORIS”

Price tag: $4.6 million

This chronograph is truly out of this world – and that’s not just my opinion, but fact! That’s because this watch, built as a series of four tourbillons in conjunction with Luc Labenne, is built with pieces of moon rock, but also a meteorite from Mars and an Asteroid!

5. BREGUET & FILS, PARIS, NO. 2667 PRECISION

Price tag: $4.7 million

Horophiles (time piece connoisseurs) appreciate the quality and luxury produced by the Swiss Group, and Breguet & Fils is a branch of that tree, founded in 1775 by Abraham-Louis Breguet. This watch is 18k gold with two timepieces and two movements. 

4. PATEK PHILIPPE 1943 WATCH REF. 1527

Price tag: $5.5 million

Built in 1943, this was the most expensive wristwatch in the world at the time. It features an 18k yellow gold case and a silver matte dial that accentuates its chronograph, perpetual calendar, and moon phase display.

3. PATEK PHILIPPE CALIBER 89 POCKET WATCH

Price tag: $6 million

Designed to commemorate Patek Philippe’s 150-year anniversary in 1989, this is the world’s most complicated pocket watch with 33 complications and 1,728 complications, weighing more than 2 pounds and taking the design team more than five years of research and 4 years of manufacturing to build.

2. PATEK PHILLIPE HENRY GRAVES SUPERCOMPLICATION

Price tag:  $11 million

This watch comes not only with a big price but a fascinating story. Back in 1927, Banker and watchmaker Henry Graves Jr. entered a contest with his friend, James Ward Packard of the Packard Car Company, to produce the world’s most complicated watch. After four years, Graves emerged victorious when he produced this gold pocket watch with two faces and 24 complications. When it sold at auction, Sotheby’s appraised it at $5 million but it actually sold for a then-record $11,002,500.

1. THE GRAFF DIAMONDS HALLUCINATION 

Price tag: $55 million

We saved the best (and most expensive) for last with this only women’s watch o

n the list. Encrusted with rare gems and a face of diamonds set in platinum, this one-of-a-kind watch (they really only made one!) debuted last year at the iconic Baselworld watch show, becoming an instant legend – and a price tag that makes it the most expensive watch in the world.

Right on Time; A History of Watches.

There’s something special about wearing a great watch. You can put on a fancy suit or drive a nice car but that little timepiece on your wrist beats them all, conveying class and confidence to the gentleman wearing it.  But we seldom think about where they came from, and how they’ve evolved over the years.  So we’re going to explore everything there is to know about watches, the noble and sophisticated timekeeping accessory.  Today, in part 1, we’ll look at the history of watches, and then in part 2 we’ll explore the world’s best, most expensive, coolest, and highest-tech watches, as well as the most renowned and prestigious watchmakers.

Our modern version of wristwatches evolved from pocket watches and before that, spring-powered portable clocks, that came into existence about 500 years ago in Europe.  The word “watch” has two possible origins.  One is that it originates from the Old English word “woecce,” which means “watchman,” describing a town watchman who had to keep careful track of time shifts.  The second entomology traces back to 17th century sailors, who used the new inventions to time the duration of their watches, or shifts of duty.


15th century
Spring powered clocks are commonplace, but are still large and hang on the wall.

1485
The famous artist, scientist, and inventor, Leonardo da Vinci, sketches the mechanism for a smaller clock, or watch.

1504
Peter Henlein, a clockmaker from Nuremberg, invents the first pocket watch.  It’s under dispute whether he was actually the first, but he was one of those who designed taschenuhr, or timepieces worn as pendants that could be carried.

1571 

England’s Queen Elizabeth I received a wristwatch as a gift from watchmaker Robert Dudley, which he describes as an “arm watch.”  

Late 1500’s
Clock-watches become popular for the elite and wealthy, which they attached to clothing or wore around their necks on expensive chains.  These timepieces had four hands and kept accurate time only marginally well, but were a status symbol.

1687
Inventor Daniel Quare patents a mechanism for clock watches that sets off a ringing bell every quarter hour, the first rudimentary alarm (though it was little more than a regular egg timer.)

1657
The balance spring is invented, the seminal advance in watch technology.  Before this, most watches were commonly off by hours and offered little practical use.  But with the balance spring, accuracy of timepieces improved to the point where watches were off maybe only 10 minutes per day.

1680-1700
The minute hand is introduced in Britain and later in France

1780
Frenchmen Abraham Louis Perrelet invents the self-winding movement, vital as a source of powering watches.

1848
The first watch company is born when Louis Brandy opens his own workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds, eventually becoming the Omega Watch Company.

1868
Patek Philippe made the first wristwatch in 1868 for Countess Koscowwitcz of Hungary.  The Swiss watchmaker out of Geneva went on to pioneer the perpetual calendar, split-second hand, chronograph, and minute repeater in watches.  Patek Philippe is still known as one of the finest quality watch companies in the world.

1876
Sharing of technology, cheaper materials, and mass production allow watches to reach the common person, sometimes only for a dollar.  These were all pocket watches, however, not wristwatches yet.

1880
Constant Girard-Perregaux develops the concept for the first wristwatch on orders of the Kaiser to outfit German naval officers.  Two thousand of these first wristwatches were made.

1884
Greenwich, England is officially named the zero meridian and recognized as the international basis of time zones (GMT +0) which centralizes the watchmaking industry around those European countries.

1880’s
Wristwatches became an important resource in wartime for two reasons: it allowed soldiers on the field to synchronize maneuvers.  Before that, smoke signals, drums, flag waving, and horsemen were used to signal the time for action, which also signaled the enemy at the same time.  Also, it allowed soldiers to keep their hands free to carry weapons or other tools.  Officers in the British Army use wristwatches during their colonial military campaigns in the late part of the 19th century, such as in the Anglo-Burma War of 1885.

1904
Albert Santos, a Brazilian aviator, asked his friend Louis Cartier to come up with an alternative to the pocket watch that would allow him to keep both hands on the controls during flight.  Cartier comes up with the prototype for the first wristwatch, called the Santos wtristwatch.  Alberto was a celebrity so the watch was replicated.


1905
Hans Wilsdorf opened a watchmaking office in Switzerland, the start of the Rolex Watch Company.

Early 1900’s
Smaller forms of wristwatches are made, called wristlets, but only for women and are considered a brash fad, like wearing of skirts.  Real men still carried pocket watches.

1914-1918
Solders are issued wristwatches in World War I, called “trench watches.”  They were large and bulky and the 12 o’clock crown was to the left, not top, but they allowed soldiers to check the time without having to put down or sheath their weapons.

After the war, pocket watches lost popularity for these new wristwatches, and by the 1930’s it’s estimated there are fifty men wearing wristwatches for every one carrying a pocket watch.

1957
Watches that are powered by electric batteries are introduced.

1969
The use of quartz revolutionizes watch making.  Quartz is a common mineral in nature, containing silica and oxygen.  Due to its composition, quartz can produce electric pulses when placed under mechanical stress, a process called Piezoelectricity.  Therefore, the use of quarts crystals in watches produces a very precise frequency standard, helping regulate the movements of a watch or timepiece to amazing precision.  


1972
More than forty years ago, the Hamilton Company introduced the world's first commercial digital wristwatch, retailing for $2,100!

1974
The Japanese company, Casio, launches two decades of Japanese dominance in electronics, including innovations in watches, calculators, synthesizers, and cameras. They start with the release of the Casiotron, the first electronic watch to reach mass popularity.




1982
The American personal computing company, Texas Instruments, releases its own multi-function digital watch before pulling back from the watch market in 1982. Armitron, Pulsar, Sanyo, Seiko, and Citizen all have their own versions.

1983
Casio releases its G-Shock watch, a digital but shock proof and water resistant watch with practical uses for military, law enforcement, and outdoor enthusiasts who need something rugged but functional.

1980’s
Watches take a step away from geeky functionality for Warhol-inspired pop aesthetics with the Swatch watch phenomenon.

1990’s
Junghans offers the first radio-controlled wristwatch, the MEGA-1. The correct time is always accessible through radio signals received from government operated time stations, giving it the same accuracy as atomic clocks.

2000's
Fashion watches get bigger and bolder, making a statement about the wealth, lifestyle, or personality of the person wearing it.

2012+
Smart watches come in vogue as an extension of smartphones and computerized personal assistants. They sync to those devices with Bluetooth technology and allow the user to access data, play games, playback audio, video, and listen to the radio, and do just about everything else that apps offer.  Cameras, GPS, SD cards, microphones, fitness trackers, even insulin pumps – the possibilities are endless.  Pebble, Fossil, Sony, and a model for Android users are some of the first popular brands.