Phillips holds the first watch auction above 100 million dollars, in Geneva

Aurel Bacs auctions lot 7, the F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance "Régence" in platinum, sold for CHF 8,680,500. © Phillips / Joy Corthesy

Phillips, in association with Bacs & Russo, has held in Geneva the first live watch auction to exceed 100 million dollars: The Geneva Watch Auction: XXIV totalled CHF 92,045,568, about US$112.3 million, with all 217 lots sold.

The sale took place at the Hotel President on 7 and 8 November and beat the record the auction house itself had set six months earlier. According to Phillips, 2,121 registered bidders from 69 countries competed in the room, on the phone and online; 17 watches passed the million-franc mark, 24 world records were set and the average price per lot was above US$500,000.

The top lot was an F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance "Régence" in platinum, the only one with a polished, hand-engraved pink gold dial, sold for CHF 8,680,500. It is the fifth consecutive Phillips live auction with a watch selling for more than US$10 million. The 13 F.P. Journe watches totalled CHF 31.8 million: the Chronomètre à Résonance "Tokyo Boutique" reached CHF 6,146,000 and the diamond-set Vagabondage III CHF 5,057,000.

Among vintage watches, the Patek Philippe reference 1436 split-seconds chronograph in steel — one of only two known examples that retain their original steel case and dial — sold for CHF 6,267,000. The Rolex reference 6062 "Stelline" in yellow gold, bought from its original owner in Japan, made CHF 2,334,500, and the Cosmograph Daytona reference 6241 "John Player Special" in 14-carat gold CHF 1,905,000.

Cartier's Portico Mystery Clock No. 4, from 1924, one of six Porticos and the only one with a hexagonal rock-crystal dial, sold for CHF 4,815,000, a world auction record for any Cartier timepiece.

In independent watchmaking, Philippe Dufour's platinum Simplicity made CHF 1,968,500, Kari Voutilainen's tantalum Vingt-8 Inversé CHF 1,524,000 and Sylvain Pinaud's Origine No. 2 CHF 609,600, more than five times its high estimate. A silver flying tourbillon pocket watch with detent escapement by Richard Miklosch reached CHF 762,000.

"As a twelve-year-old boy discovering vintage watches, I never imagined we would go from a few francs to hundreds, to thousands, to hundreds of thousands, and to millions," said Aurel Bacs, Senior Consultant at Phillips.

Find out more on the auction house's website.