The 10 most expensive watches ever sold at auction

The prices below have nothing to do with anything you will run in a school hall. They are worth reading anyway, because the same forces are at work in both places: two people who want the same object, a room that knows it is watching something happen, and a clock. The scale is different. The mechanism is not.

Each figure is the price as reported at the time of the sale, with the house and the date, so it can be checked. Geneva sells in Swiss francs, New York in dollars; each heading leads with the dollar figure and gives the sum actually paid in brackets.

1. Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime Ref. 6300A-010 — $31 million (CHF 31,000,000)

Sold by Christie's in Geneva in November 2019 at the Only Watch charity sale, and still the highest price paid for a wristwatch at auction. It is a unique piece with twenty complications, but the detail collectors care about most is the case. Patek Philippe does not make its grand complications in stainless steel, and this is the one that is. Because it was a charity lot, the whole sum went to research into Duchenne muscular dystrophy rather than being split with the auction house.

2. Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication — $24 million (CHF 23,237,000)

A pocket watch, not a wristwatch, sold at Sotheby's in Geneva in November 2014 for CHF 23,237,000. The New York banker Henry Graves Jr. commissioned it in 1925 and took delivery in 1933. It carries twenty-four complications, including a chart of the night sky as seen from his apartment in Manhattan. It had already set a world record once before, in 1999, at a fraction of what it made fifteen years later.

3. Rolex Cosmograph Daytona Ref. 6239 — $17,752,500

Paul Newman's own example of the watch later named after him, sold by Phillips in New York in October 2017. The caseback is engraved DRIVE CAREFULLY ME, a message from his wife Joanne Woodward. Bidding opened with a single telephone bid of ten million dollars and the lot ran for about twelve minutes. For years beforehand collectors had been paying premiums for so-called Paul Newman dials without anyone having seen the man's actual watch.

4. Patek Philippe Ref. 1518 in steel, the first one made — $17.6 million (CHF 14,190,000)

Sold by Phillips in Geneva in November 2025 for CHF 14,190,000. The reference 1518 was the first perpetual calendar chronograph produced as a series wristwatch, and of the several hundred made only four are known in stainless steel. This one has the number 1 engraved inside the caseback and was sold in Budapest in 1944. In this corner of collecting, steel is worth many times gold.

5. Patek Philippe Ref. 1518 in steel — $11.1 million (CHF 11,020,000)

A different example of the same reference, sold by Phillips in Geneva in November 2016 for CHF 11,020,000. At the time it was the first wristwatch to pass eight figures at auction, and it held the record for a vintage Patek Philippe until the watch above beat it nine years later. Two of the four known steel 1518s therefore appear in this top ten.

6. Patek Philippe Nautilus Ref. 5711/1A-018 in Tiffany blue — $6,503,500

Sold by Phillips in New York in December 2021. The retail price of the model was a very small fraction of that. What was actually being sold was the first of a short run made with Tiffany and Co., at a moment when the waiting list for the ordinary version ran to years. Proceeds went to a conservation charity. It is the clearest case on this list of a price made by scarcity and timing rather than by age or complication.

7. Patek Philippe Ref. 5208T-010 in titanium — $6.2 million (CHF 6.2 million)

Christie's, Geneva, November 2017, again for Only Watch. A minute repeater, single-button chronograph and instantaneous perpetual calendar in a titanium case, made once. Titanium is light and unglamorous and Patek Philippe almost never uses it, which is precisely why the piece existed. Charity auctions produce objects that could not otherwise be bought at any price, and bidders behave accordingly.

8. Rolex Cosmograph Daytona Ref. 6265, "The Unicorn" — $5,936,906 (CHF 5,937,500)

Phillips, Geneva, May 2018, at a sale devoted entirely to Daytonas. The nickname is literal: it is the only known vintage manually wound Daytona in white gold, in a line otherwise made in steel and yellow gold. Proceeds went to a children's charity. An object with no comparable object tends to attract bidders who have run out of other things to buy.

9. Rolex Cosmograph Daytona Ref. 6263, "Big Red" — $5,475,000

Paul Newman's second Daytona, given to him by Joanne Woodward in 1983 and engraved DRIVE SLOWLY JOANNE, a reference to a motorcycle accident he had survived. Sold by Phillips in New York in December 2020, consigned by his daughter, with part of the proceeds going to charities he had founded. The estimate was in excess of one million dollars. Provenance did the rest.

10. Rolex Ref. 6062 "Bao Dai" — $5,060,427 (CHF 5,066,000)

Phillips, Geneva, May 2017. A triple calendar with moon phase, a black dial and diamond markers, ordered by Bao Dai, the last emperor of Vietnam. The same watch had been sold at auction in 2002 for a small fraction of this price, which was itself a record for a Rolex at the time. Fifteen years changed nothing about the object and everything about the market for it.

What twenty lots in a village hall can take from this

None of these lots opened anywhere near where they closed. The Bao Dai Rolex started at one million Swiss francs and ended above five. The Big Red Daytona carried an estimate in excess of a million dollars and made more than five times that. A low opening number does not make a lot cheap; it makes the first bid arrive, and the first bid is what turns an object into a contest. If you are setting opening bids for your own evening, that is the most transferable lesson on this page, and the guide works through how to pick them.

The second lesson is that these prices came from two bidders, not from a crowd. Ten people bidding a lot up to four hundred and then stopping is a worse outcome than two people who both refuse to lose. When you plan a lot list, the job is to make sure that for every significant lot there is more than one person in the room who genuinely wants it. That means knowing your guests, which a small committee usually does and a professional house often does not.

Third, every record above happened at the end. The Newman Daytona took twelve minutes and the last of them mattered most. If your lots close at a fixed second, the bidder who was still deciding never gets to decide, which is why a late bid should extend a lot rather than end it. That behaviour, along with the countdown and the running total on the big screen, is set out on the how it works page.

Fourth, presentation is not decoration. Each of these watches arrived with a catalogue entry explaining why the object was unlike any other. You are not writing a catalogue, but three honest sentences per lot saying what the winner gets and who is giving it will do more for your total than a better photograph. Art and collectables sold for a good cause behave the same way, and there is more on that on the page for art auctions.

You can build a lot list and rehearse a full evening before deciding whether to run it for real. There is a walk-through at getting started.

Prices as reported at the time of sale; figures include buyer's premium where stated.