Each good public sale these days appears to wish just a few massively costly “grail-level” items, and the duvet heaps this yr for MLG match the invoice. First is a fresh-to-market model of the primary serially-produced perpetual calendar, made by Patek Philippe, a ref. 1526 in pink gold, with a pink dial, signed by the retailer Casa Masson in Brazil, with a large magnifying “cyclops” over the moonphase and date. 

There’s additionally an instance of the water resistant Oyster case calendar Rolex, the ref. 6062, in stainless-steel with an Arabic-numeral dial configuration. That watch final bought at Christie’s in 2009 for CHF 447,000. The estimates are €500,000 to 1,000,000 for the Patek and over €1,000,000 for the Rolex. However I used to be drawn in by three watches with fascinating provenance, together with – after all – one extremely cool pocket watch.