26 October

The day in brief

The 12th Biennale du patrimoine horloger opens the doors of manufactures, workshops and museums in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Le Locle and Saint-Imier on Thursday, and Eberhard & Co. is opening its museum to the public as an exception.

Audemars Piguet today launched The Watch Keepers, its own online platform for buying and selling pre-owned watches of the brand, checked and certified by the manufacture. Among the new releases, A. Lange & Söhne marks 20 years of the Datograph Perpetual with a platinum and diamond edition, Favre Leuba gives the Chief Tourbillon a hand-guilloché dial and Franck Muller brings the world of Mexican artist Amador Montes to the Vanguard Slim.

Biennale du patrimoine horloger opens manufactures and the Eberhard & Co. museum

From 29 October to 1 November, the 12th Biennale du patrimoine horloger turns the Neuchâtel Mountains and the Bernese Jura into one large open workshop. The programme, organised by the Fondation Urbanisme horloger, brings together 63 visits, open days, introductory workshops and cultural activities in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Le Locle and Saint-Imier. The first two towns have been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2009, precisely because of the town planning that grew out of watchmaking.

The manufactures welcoming visitors include Patek Philippe, Cartier, including its Maison des Métiers d'Art, Audemars Piguet, Tudor, Zenith, with a chronometry workshop, Tissot and Longines. The Biennale also shows the less visible side of the industry: dial, case and tool makers, testing laboratories, schools and the COSC, the body that certifies Swiss chronometers. Independents are represented by, among others, ochs und junior and Yosuke Sekiguchi. The programme is completed by the Musée international d'horlogerie, the Musée d'horlogerie du Locle at the Château des Monts, and the Musée de Saint-Imier.

Bookings closed on 23 October and several visits are already full. Access is with the Pass Biennale, which costs 10 Swiss francs and is free for under-18s.

Among the Biennale's new features is the opening of the Eberhard & Co. museum, which normally receives visitors by appointment only. On 30 and 31 October the brand is running one-hour guided tours, with six slots a day between 10:00 and 16:00, at the Maison de l'Aigle, its historic headquarters on avenue Léopold-Robert. The tour covers around 140 years of history, from late-19th-century pocket watches to the first wrist chronographs, and includes archives, components, tools and materials.

Two pieces from 1969 that joined the collection this year will be on display. The first is a Contograf, reference 31504: a 43 mm steel case, the hand-wound Eberhard 310-82 calibre, a black dial with two white sub-dials and a date at 6 o'clock. The tachymeter and telemeter scales are printed on the inner face of the acrylic crystal rather than on the dial, a solution that keeps the scales off the dial. The second is an 18-carat rose gold brooch watch, 16.5 mm in diameter, with the small hand-wound Eberhard 400 calibre of 4¾ lignes, set in a plant motif of enamel and precious stones.

Find out more on the organisation's website.

Audemars Piguet launches The Watch Keepers to resell pre-owned watches certified by the manufacture

On 26 October Audemars Piguet launched The Watch Keepers, its certified pre-owned (CPO) programme. It starts in Europe and Switzerland, and the brand plans to extend it to other regions later. Anyone can browse the platform, but only verified users can buy or sell.

It works differently from a pre-owned dealer. Sellers must register the watch, verify its serial number and provide proof of ownership; the watch must have been first sold at least two years earlier. It is then sent by insured courier to a brand service centre, where watchmakers check it against the archive registers and grade the condition of the case, dial and bracelet on a five-point scale. The seller chooses between a fixed price and a bidding format and decides when the watch is published. Until it is sold, the watch remains the seller's property and is stored at Audemars Piguet's facilities. Operations are coordinated from Le Brassus, with regional service centres.

The buyer receives a two-year warranty, a certificate of authenticity and a travel pouch. According to Watchonista, only the seller pays a commission and a full service is not included: if the watchmakers find a problem, they recommend the work, which is invoiced separately. The platform shows around one hundred watches at a time.

Marc Montagne, director of the programme, says the initiative “responds to strong demand from collectors and reinforces our commitment to supporting the long-term lifecycle of our watches”. Rolex has run a similar programme since December 2022, but it relies on its authorised retailers. Audemars Piguet, by contrast, keeps the checking, the custody of the watches and the sale in its own hands.

The choice has market consequences. According to Morgan Stanley and WatchCharts data cited by WatchPro, the Royal Oak trades on the secondary market at an average premium of 37% over list price, while the Royal Oak Offshore is 23% below and the CODE 11.59 34% below. A platform backed by the brand's guarantee could give more confidence precisely to the collections that currently sell at a discount.

Find out more on the brand's website.

A. Lange & Söhne marks 20 years of the Datograph Perpetual with platinum and diamonds

The Datograph Perpetual was introduced in 2006, in platinum. Twenty years later, A. Lange & Söhne returns to that metal with reference 410.136E, limited to 50 pieces: a 950 platinum case measuring 41 mm in diameter and 13.5 mm in height, a black dial and a five-link platinum bracelet with alternating brushed and polished surfaces, closed by a double folding clasp with push-buttons.

The hour markers are 11 baguette-cut diamonds, about 0.13 carats in total, including a pair at 12 o'clock. The 4 and 8 o'clock markers have been removed to make room for the sub-dials, which have a rhodium finish. The hour, minute and calendar hands are gold; the chronograph minute counter and small seconds use blued steel hands.

The movement is the hand-wound calibre L952.1, with 556 components, 223 of them in the perpetual calendar, a frequency of 18,000 vibrations per hour (2.5 Hz) and a 36-hour power reserve. The chronograph is a flyback: with the chronograph running, one press of the reset pusher returns the hands to zero and restarts the timing in a single action. A frequency of 2.5 Hz means five vibrations per second, and that is what allows times to be measured to a fifth of a second.

The perpetual calendar shows the day of the week, date, month, leap year and moon phases. All the displays advance together via a single corrector at 10 o'clock, protected by a safety mechanism. The first manual correction will only be needed on 1 March 2100, because that year, although divisible by four, is not a leap year. According to the brand, the moon-phase display deviates by only one day every 122.6 years. The price is on request and the watch is sold in the brand's boutiques.

Find out more on the brand's website.

Favre Leuba gives the Chief Tourbillon a hand-guilloché dial

In 2025 Favre Leuba presented the Chief Tourbillon, the first tourbillon in its 288-year history, developed with watchmaker Jean-François Mojon. The second edition, limited to 25 pieces and priced at 26,000 Swiss francs, keeps the cushion-shaped steel case, 41 mm in diameter and 11.45 mm thick, water-resistant to 100 metres, and changes mainly the dial.

The blue dial is guilloché by hand on a late-19th-century rose engine, with the grain d'orge, or barleycorn, pattern formed by intersecting lines. On a rose engine, a metal rosette guides the movement of the workpiece against the cutter and the craftsman advances each pass by hand; each dial takes five to six hours. The indices are rhodium-plated, with Super-LumiNova, and the small seconds hand at 6 o'clock is flame-blued.

The movement is the hand-wound calibre FL T01, based on the Chronode C502, with a frequency of 3 Hz and a 60-hour power reserve. The one-minute tourbillon has a cage 14.85 mm in diameter: by rotating the regulating organ once a minute, it spreads across all positions the errors that gravity causes when the watch is vertical. The watch comes with a steel bracelet with H-shaped links and a blue FKM rubber strap, which are interchangeable.

Find out more on the brand's website.

Franck Muller brings the world of Mexican artist Amador Montes to the Vanguard Slim

On 23 October Franck Muller presented the Vanguard Slim Amador Montes, a limited edition of 60 pieces created with Mexican artist Amador Montes, a native of Oaxaca with more than 25 years of career and over 130 exhibitions in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

The camel-coloured dial, with a micro-blasted finish, brings together the artist's illustrations and personal references. The hands are inspired by the wings of the crane fly, a recurring insect in Montes's work, and the pink crown picks up one of the colours of his palette. The tonneau-shaped Vanguard case has caramel inserts on its flanks, and the strap is integrated into the case with two hidden screws instead of the usual spring bars. Each watch comes with two interchangeable straps, one pink and one camel, in a box designed by the artist.

The edition comes in two sizes: 41 mm in steel, at 14,800 Swiss francs, and 35 mm in 5N rose gold, at 23,000 Swiss francs. The movement is the brand's own automatic calibre FM 708, with 136 components.

Find out more on the brand's website.

What deserves attention

The Watch Keepers puts the manufacture at the centre of the secondary market for its own watches: the brand does not buy the watch, but it controls the checking, the custody and the sale. It is worth following the commission charged to sellers, which has not been disclosed, the pace of expansion beyond Europe and the effect on prices for the collections that currently sell below list.

The Biennale comes at a delicate time for the region: Zenith, which is opening its chronometry workshop in Le Locle, is in the middle of a consultation on collective redundancies that could affect half of the manufacture's jobs. The open days show an industry that depends as much on the big brands as on the suppliers and the schools that train watchmakers. The next major date in the calendar is the GPHG ceremony in Geneva on 7 November.