If you were a millionaire you might baulk at spending a hundred thousand dollars on a watch. Even if you were a serious watch fan, this would be 10% of your fortune. You would therefore have to be at least a multi-millionaire to consider spending over a million dollars on a timepiece, presumably after covering your living arrangements, second home, supercar and yacht at the very least. If you still had enough case left, what would be the choice of timepieces on offer for a million dollars or more?
Back in 2007 Hublot was probably the first watch brand to provocatively include the astronomical million-dollar price tag in the very name of its One Million Dollar Big Bang. For several years, the only other competitor in this race of upwardly spiraling prices was Hublot itself, with the One Million Dollar Black Caviar in 2009, the Two Million Euro Big Bang in 2011and the Five Million Dollar Big Bang in 2012.
The million-dollar mark was a significant barrier to leap in the watchmaking industry and the inclusion of the Hublot One Million Dollar Big Bang in Born Rich’s list of things you can buy for a million dollars offers a handy yardstick of what else you could splash out on for the same amount of money. How about a Pagani Huayra supercar? Or, for the cigar aficionado, a million-dollar humidor?
While Hublot focused on the quantity and quality of diamonds used on the watch to justify these mind-boggling price benchmarks, other brands have created added value with some bewildering complications, such as the million-dollar
Roger Dubuis Quatuor with four separate balance wheels, which was first presented in 2013. The following year, Patek Philippe presented the ultra-limited-edition Grandmaster Chime (Reference 5175) in celebration of its 175th anniversary, which is the most complicated timepiece this independent brand has produced. Although the company is traditionally discreet on prices, the Grandmaster Chime was rumoured to cost around 2.5 million Swiss francs. In the same year, Richard Mille matched a tourbillon with a revolutionary and fiendishly difficult to produce sapphire case in the RM 56-02, which sold for two million dollars.
If you’re stuck for ways to spend a million dollars, you will find plenty of results courtesy of Google. Up the amount to five million dollars, however, and the results are more oriented towards people who would like to help you invest that money. The choice of items to buy becomes a lot more restrictive and if you’re looking to buy a small aeroplane or yacht, Google would probably not be your first port of call anyway. Type in the specific figure of 18 million dollars, however, and you will more than likely see the Jacob & Co. Billionaire watch among the results. Its name is perfect, because if you have 18 million dollars spare to spend on a watch, there is a good chance that you are among the select few of the world’s billionaires.
For the ultimate in horological decadence, you need to more than twice the price of the Billionaire watch. The Graff Fascination, presented last year, has a more poetic name that reveals little about its price. Displayed amidst discreet but high security at Baselworld, this jewellery watch is worth a cool 40 million dollars. Enough to buy 40 million-dollar Hublot Big Bang watches, or 8,000 Tiffany East-West Automatic models in stainless steel!
