TO DESCRIBE PATEK Philippe as a luxury brand is an understatement. It likes to be known as a prestige brand.
The claim is hard to challenge, given that the brand made the most expensive timepiece ever auctioned: an 18-carat gold pocket watch created for American banker Henry Graves in 1933, which went for a record US$11 million at a 1999 auction.
Patek Philippe has also topped the 20 most expensive watches auction chart in the past seven years, and crafted 80 of the 100 most expensive wristwatches ever made.
The record-making streak is likely to continue with the brand's continuing innovations. Patek Philippe has some 70 patents for watch-making.
Destined for the same hall of fame is the Sky Moon Tourbillon, introduced a couple of years ago. Said to be the most complicated wristwatch ever made, the reversible timepiece has 686 parts with the unique complication of duplicating the northern hemisphere sky on the back watch face, a perpetual calendar with a retrograde date display, a minute repeater and a tourbillon.
With a price tag of HK$6 million, only two to three of the limited edition have ended up in the hands of Hong Kong celebrity collectors. On average, the Hong Kong market snaps up 8 per cent to 10 per cent of Patek Philippe's annual production of no more than 30,000 watches. The production quantity is limited largely because of the complexity of most of the brand's timepieces.
Such limited supply is also the reason the brand has not yet entered the China market.