The World's Most Expensive Watches

Some watches become valuable because of what they are.

Others because of who wore them.

Paul Newman's Rolex Daytona Ref. 6239 belongs unmistakably to the latter.

The watch was given to Newman by his wife, Joanne Woodward, and would become intimately associated with both the actor and the style of Daytona dial that collectors would eventually call the “Paul Newman”.

When the watch appeared at Phillips in New York in 2017, bidding opened at US$10 million.

Twelve minutes later, it sold for US$17,752,500.

Its importance cannot be understood through reference number, movement or material alone.

This was not simply a Rolex Daytona associated with Paul Newman.

It was Paul Newman's Rolex Daytona.

Provenance had transformed the object.

Some watches are rare because few were made.

Others are rare because almost none exist.

Introduced in 1941, the Patek Philippe Ref. 1518 became the world’s first serially produced perpetual calendar chronograph wristwatch. Across a production run of 281 examples, most were created in yellow gold, with a smaller number in pink gold.

Only four are known in stainless steel.

The example offered by Phillips in Geneva in November 2025 was more significant still.

Engraved Number 1 inside its caseback, it is the first known stainless steel Ref. 1518 ever made. The same watch had already made history in 2016 when it became the first wristwatch to exceed eight figures at auction, selling for CHF 11,002,000.

Nine years later, it returned to the same auction house.

It sold for CHF 14,190,000, approximately US$17.63 million, establishing a new world auction record for a vintage Patek Philippe wristwatch.

Its complication matters.

Its history matters.

But its rarity changes everything.

Four are known. This one was the first.

Not every important watch becomes valuable because it is complicated, unique or made from a precious material.

Sometimes the idea itself changes everything.

When Audemars Piguet introduced the Royal Oak in 1972, the conventions of high watchmaking were very different. Fine watches were typically discreet, precious and traditional.

The Royal Oak challenged all three.

Its case was large for its time. Its octagonal bezel exposed the screws that held it together. Its bracelet became part of the architecture of the watch itself.

And it was made from stainless steel.

Yet the steel was treated with the attention normally reserved for precious metal, its surfaces satin brushed, polished and finished to create something that felt entirely new.

The material had not become more precious.

The watchmaking had made it precious.

That distinction would influence an entire generation of luxury watches.

Decades later, the significance of the original idea became tangible in another way.

In 2022, Gérald Genta’s personal Royal Oak appeared at Sotheby’s in Geneva. The watch combined a steel case and bracelet with a yellow gold bezel, a configuration believed to be unique.

It sold for CHF 2.1 million, four times its high estimate.

Its value was not simply that it was a Royal Oak.

It was the Royal Oak worn by the man who had imagined it.

At the highest level, design can become provenance.

There are moments in watchmaking when value is created not by looking backwards, but by attempting something that previously seemed impossible.

The Richard Mille RM 56-02 Tourbillon Sapphire belongs to that world.

Introduced in 2014, its transparent sapphire case reveals a movement that appears almost to float within it.

The effect is not merely visual.

At its centre, a grade 5 titanium baseplate is suspended inside the case by a specially developed braided cable measuring just 0.35 mm in thickness.

The cable passes through a system of pulleys positioned around the movement, holding the mechanical architecture in tension within the sapphire structure.

It was an approach derived from the cable suspended movement architecture developed for the RM 27-01 Rafael Nadal.

Even the case represented an extraordinary manufacturing challenge.

Sapphire, a material normally encountered as the transparent crystal protecting a watch dial, had become part of the architecture of the watch itself.

The RM 56-02 was produced in just ten examples.

At launch, its price was reported at approximately US$2.02 million.

But the significance of the watch lies beyond that figure.

Its value was inseparable from the difficulty of making it.

When engineering becomes exceptional enough, the process itself becomes part of the luxury.

The watches explored here could hardly be more different.

One became extraordinary through complication. Another through provenance. One exists in a material so rare that only four examples are known. Another changed the language of watch design itself. Richard Mille pushed engineering and materials into territory that had previously seemed impossible.

Their values cannot be explained by a single formula.

Nor can they be understood simply by adding together the cost of the movement, the case, the gemstones or the hours required to make them.

At this level of watchmaking, value begins to move beyond the object itself.

It lies in what the watch represents.

The ambition behind it. The difficulty of creating it. The story attached to it. The hands responsible for making it. The person for whom it was created.

And, perhaps most importantly, whether the same thing can ever exist again.

Rarity tells us how few exist. Singularity asks whether another ever will.

For Baresi & Caine, that distinction sits at the heart of everything we create.

For decades, rarity in watchmaking has often been expressed through numbers.

A production of one hundred pieces becomes a limited edition. Fifty makes it scarcer. Ten more difficult to encounter still.

There is an undeniable appeal in knowing that very few people can own the same watch.

But there is a point beyond limited.

One.

At Baresi & Caine, we chose to build our atelier around that number.

Not because limited editions have lost their importance, but because we believe there is another expression of rarity, one that cannot be defined by how difficult a watch is to obtain.

It is defined by whether another exists at all.

A Baresi & Caine commission is created for one person.

Its materials, proportions, stones, dial, movement, details and finishing can all become part of a conversation between the client and the atelier.

What emerges is more than a rare configuration. It becomes an identity.

And there is a particular feeling that comes with wearing something you know cannot be encountered on another wrist.

Not another example allocated to a different market.

Not another belonging to a collector you have never met.

Not another waiting somewhere in a safe.

There is only yours.

That knowledge carries its own kind of kudos.

The intrigue of being asked what it is. The pleasure of knowing the answer cannot simply be found by searching for the reference. The quiet confidence of wearing a watch whose story begins with you.

For some collectors, exclusivity means gaining access to something very few people can buy.

For us, its ultimate expression is creating something nobody else can own.

A limited edition makes you one of a few.

A Pièce Unique makes you the only one.

Once a Baresi & Caine commission has been realised, that exact watch is retired from possibility.

It has found its owner.

It will not be made again.

The watches that occupy the highest levels of watchmaking rarely arrive there through price alone.

Patek Philippe has shown what can happen when mechanical ambition is pursued without compromise. Audemars Piguet demonstrated that an original idea can change the language of watch design. Richard Mille proved that engineering and materials can take traditional watchmaking somewhere entirely new.

Different maisons. Different philosophies.

Yet each reveals something important.

The watches that endure are those with a reason to exist.

At Baresi & Caine, our answer is singularity.

From our atelier in La Chaux-de-Fonds, we approach each commission as an opportunity to create something that has never existed before, and will never exist again.

The movement, the materials, the dial, the stones, the smallest personal details, each can become part of a watch conceived around the individual who will ultimately wear it.

This is not exclusivity created by restricting production.

It is exclusivity created by removing repetition altogether.

There will always be extraordinary limited editions. There will always be watches produced in numbers so small that encountering another is almost impossible.

We simply chose to go one step further.