Most expensive wristwatch sold at auction

The most expensive watch sold at auction was a one-off stainless-steel edition of the Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime Ref. 6300A, which achieved 31 million Swiss francs (£24,329,900; $33,649,500; €28,520,400) at the eighth Only Watch auction held at Christie’s in Geneva, Switzerland, on 9 November 2019. As this was a charity event, there were no auction fees or buyer’s premium.

In addition to its one-off steel casing, several other features made this watch unique, including golden opaline and ebony-black dials and an inscription on one of the dials of “The Only One”.

Of the total CHF 38,593,000 accrued at the eighth Only Watch charity auction, 99% of the proceeds went to funding research into muscular dystrophy.

This beat the previous record, also held by a Patek Philippe & Co. timepiece, of 23.22 million CHF (£15.1 m/$24 m), including buyer’s premium, paid for the unique Henry Graves Jr Supercomplication, a gold, double-dialled and double open-faced, minute-repeating clockwatch (pocketwatch) crafted by hand between 1925 and 1932 by (Switzerland). This was sold at the Important Watches sale at Sotheby’s in Geneva, Switzerland, on 11 November 2014.

This also beats the previous most expensive wristwatch: a Rolex Oyster Cosmograph Daytona, aka the “Paul Newman” Rolex, which sold to a private telephone bidder for $17,752,500 (£13,520,300), including buyer’s premium, on 26 October 2017 at Phillips Auctioneers in New York City, USA.