It is known to all that the year’s fall auction season is all about Paul Newman’s Paul Newman Daytona. You might be forgiven for forgetting that there are any other watches hitting the block at all, with the wall-to-wall coverage, the non-stop chatter on social media, and the anticipation of seeing one of the most legendary cheap replica watches of all time sell publicly. But you’d be making a big mistake. Just 39 lots later in the very same Phillips auction, I have to say, there is a watch that is even more amazing than Newman’s chronograph: patek philippe Dufour Duality No.00.
When I first visited the Phillips preview in Los Angeles two weeks ago, I had to check out the Paul Newman first. Anyone would. And, of course, the provenance of the watch is as good as it gets, and the watch itself is pretty damn cool on its own. But the moment I put it down, my eyes immediately went right to Duality No.00 and they didn’t leave the rest of the evening. This watch is getting much focus, but to me it’s the real star of this auction week, popular chronographs.
All of these replica watches were made to sell, and as with any Dufour model, the customers had a few options. The case size is always 34mm, but it could be ordered in yellow gold, rose-gold, white gold, or, like the model here, platinum. The dials had some variation in color and markers, but there is always a subsidiary seconds dial between six and nine o’clock, and the layout seen here, with the numerals at the poles and subtle applied markers, is the most typical. As you’d expect from No.00, this watch dates to 1996, the very first year the model was offered.
As you’d expect, you don’t see the Duality very often. As a matter of fact, there is only one that has ever come up for sale publicly before, and it was this very watch. It sold at Christie’s in Geneva back in 2007, fetching 180,000 CHF on an estimate of 25,000-35,000 CHF (whoever drafted up that estimate must have been smoking some pretty good stuff) and has been with the same collector since. Back then, that was a huge price for something like this, and it’s a pretty safe bet that it will perform even better this time. The real question, though, is how much better?