Auctions: Phillips Bringing Three Mega Pateks to Its Spring Sales

And, man, is a first-series 2499 a thing of beauty, especially with the Vichet case. Sure, it’s a bit smaller in diameter, but those lugs are tremendous and so complex. The case feels a bit less rosy than the following watch (another rose-gold QP chronograph), but the hallmarks look solid. The dial looks nice too, and pretty sharp. If there was any cleaning of the zappon layer, it must have been done very lightly and a while ago, since the dial still has that fine texture and no obvious brushing, nor does there seem to be major missing raised hard enamel text. The estimate is $3,000,000 to $6,000,000, compared with the previous result of around $3.3 million. Phillips estimates are always (sometimes comically) conservative, and they like to estimate in the range of the hammer price, not all-in, but as you get into the big ticket items, they start to seem more on the money. I’d expect that you could see toward the high end or a bit above, but you can never tell the whims of people with so many zeroes in their bank account.