Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

An 88-year-old Patek Philippe timepiece designed for use by doctors set a record price for a stainless- steel wristwatch sold at auction, fetching $5 million in Geneva.

A sale of watches on May 10 amassed a total $31.8 million, the auction house Phillips said in a statement. The 1927 Patek Philippe single-button chronograph was auctioned for almost five times the low end of its estimate range of 1 million francs ($1.08 million) to 2 million francs.

The timepiece, featuring an aged off-white silvered dial and a pulsations scale for helping measure heartbeats, is just one of two produced, and the other is in Patek Phillipe’s museum. The bidding lasted 21 minutes and the watch was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder. Phillips also auctioned a 1948 Patek Philippe pink gold perpetual-calendar chronograph for $1.5 million that features a pink dial, moon phases and heavy Gay Freres bracelet.

The record is the second set in six months by a Patek Philippe model, reflecting intensifying demand for high-end art and collectibles driven by increasing wealth. The watchmaker’s 24-function Supercomplication, completed in 1933, was sold for 23.2 million francs in November by Sotheby’s in Geneva, the highest auction price of any timepiece. Pablo Picasso’s 1955 painting, “Les Femmes d’Alger (Version ‘‘O’’),” garnered $179.4 million at Christie’s in New York on Monday, the highest price paid for any artwork at auction.

Christie’s sold 15.5 million francs worth of watches at an auction in Geneva on Monday. The top item was a platinum double- dial sky moon tourbillon Patek Philippe model with 12 complications that went under the hammer for 1.09 million francs.