Get Box + Papers, GQ's newsletter devoted to the watch world, sent to your inbox every Friday. Sign up here to get it free. This is the biggest weekend of the year for vintage watches.
It’s the year-end watch auctions in Geneva, where many prestigious houses bring their very best pieces to market. And it’s never been a more enthralling time to keep a close eye on what happens in Geneva over the next few days. In the first half of the year, the number of million-dollar watches nearly eclipsed the total for the entirety of 2025.
A couple of the pieces listed below, including a unique Rolex and a rare Patek Philippe in stainless steel, have estimates above a million bucks. Writer Oren Hartov and I pored over hundreds of lots to bring you our 11 favorite watches plus one bonus selection. Rolex ref. 3830 Anti-Magnetique "Verga" (Estimate: In excess of $1,210,000) You know a banger is coming up for sale when the house behind it doesn’t even bother capping its price range.
Auction estimates are routinely and famously low to encourage bidders, and this watch’s starting point is still $1.2 million. Well, have you ever seen a Rolex like this before? Before Rolex defined the look of modern watches with pieces like the Submariner, it operated similarly to many other manufacturers in Switzerland, willing to make one-off pieces and experiment frequently with its design.
This square beauty from the early 1940s is “most probably unique,” as Phillips auction house writes in its essay on the piece. This exact piece last hit the auction block in 2004, and no other example has come up for public sale since. It’s crazy to see how much this watch’s case shape resembles Heuer’s similarly blocky Monaco, which wouldn’t be released for another 25-plus years.
Unfortunately, as cool as this watch is, it does not come with onyx prayer beads. —Cam Wolf Patek Philippe ref. 1436 (High estimate: $4.8 million) There’s Patek, then there’s complicated Patek, then there’s stainless steel complicated Patek, then there’s stainless steel complicated Patek made in just a handful of examples, then there’s stainless steel complicated Patek made in just a handful of examples in insane condition. This watch checks all those boxes. A reference 1436, it’s a split-seconds (rattrapante) chronograph, meaning it can time successive intervals of a race or event.
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