113rd Auction
2025/11/8
Lot 72
Audemars Piguet & Co.
An extremely rare, exquisite minute repeating pocket watch with split seconds chronograph and 30 min. counter
Sold
Audemars Piguet’s finest quality
Around 1890 Audemars Piguet began offering their movements in four quality levels: "Extra", "I", "II", and "III". Highly complicated movements though were only ever created in levels "Extra" and "I". Jules Audemars and Edward Piguet personally wrote several booklets with explicit instructions on the finishing of the movements for their watchmakers. Based on these instructions, a record card would be created for every single watch where every step of the work had to be filled in and signed off by the watchmaker in charge. Upon completion of a watch it had to be presented to either Jules Audemars or Edward Piguet for final inspection. No watch was ever send to a customer without having first been approved by one of the two company owners.
Lit.: Gisbert Brunner, Christian Pfeiffer-Belli, Martin K. Wehrli, "Audemars Piguet", Munich 1992, p. 48.