Unseen Since Its Manufacture in the 1930s - a Unique Audemars Piguet Wristwatch | Christie's

Why It Matters

The watch’s rarity and historic significance highlight Audemars Piguet’s pioneering role, potentially reshaping valuation standards for vintage luxury chronographs.

Key Takeaways

• Only six Audemars Piguet mono‑push chronographs ever made.
• First of these rare pieces to appear at auction.
• 1930s wristwatch shrank pocket‑watch chronograph to 32 mm case.
• Restoration required 120+ hours and custom‑made components.
• Design praised for balanced cushion shape and timeless aesthetics.

Summary

Christie’s latest auction spotlights an extraordinary Audemars Piguet wristwatch, the sole surviving example of a mono‑push chronograph produced between 1930 and 1937. It is the first of only six such pieces ever crafted in the brand’s 150‑year history, and the first to ever be offered to the public.

The watch embodies a pivotal moment when Audemars Piguet translated its pocket‑watch chronograph expertise into a compact 32‑33 mm wrist‑sized case. Reducing the classic mono‑push mechanism required exceptional engineering, and the resulting cushion‑shaped design achieved a near‑perfect balance of bezel, bracelet, and proportions—a hallmark that has kept the piece relevant to collectors today.

Restorer Malika spent more than 120 hours rebuilding the movement, fabricating a missing pivot from scratch because no spare parts existed. She described the piece as a “masterpiece of design” after its meticulous restoration, noting the challenge of preserving original aesthetics while ensuring functional integrity.

For the high‑end watch market, the auction underscores the enduring value of historic innovation and rarity. Its appearance may set new benchmarks for vintage chronographs, reinforcing Audemars Piguet’s legacy of forward‑looking craftsmanship and offering collectors a tangible link to the brand’s early technical breakthroughs.

Original Description

Revealed: a unique Audemars Piguet monopusher chronograph wristwatch unseen since its manufacture in the 1930s.

The ingeniously engineered Art Deco watch is one of only three produced by the revered Swiss watchmaker, each to a different design. ‘We knew these watches existed,’ says the company’s heritage and museum director, Sébastian Vivas, ‘but we had never seen them’ — until now.

A monopusher chronograph is a timepiece fitted with a stopwatch powered by a single button, usually integrated into its crown. This button controls all three functions: start, stop and reset.

The mechanics might sound simple, but back in the 1930s, when Audemars Piguet managed to fit this complication into a wristwatch less than 28 millimetres wide, it was revelatory — especially as most people were still used to much bulkier pocketwatches.

It was such an incredible feat of miniature engineering that Audemars Piguet only ever made six of these movements, called the ‘Calibre 11GCCV’. Three of them were fitted into elegant Art Deco cases; the others weren’t used for more than a decade. And Audemars Piguet never made another monopusher chronograph in its entire history.

One of those initial three watches will be offered in the Rare Watches sale on 11 and 12 May 2026 at Christie’s in Geneva. It’s the first time any of them have been seen in public since their manufacture almost a century ago.

According to Audemars Piguet’s archives, one watch was made in white gold in 1930. The other two, including this example, were crafted from platinum in 1935 and 1937. This watch — the latter of the two — is distinguished by its unique case geometry and bold two-tone dial.

‘It’s an extraordinary watch,’ says Sébastian Vivas, the heritage and museum director at Audemars Piguet, in the short film above. ‘We knew these watches existed, we had found some documents in the archive, but we had never seen them, because none of these watches made between 1930 and 1937 had ever come back to Le Brassus.’

Le Brassus is a rural village about an hour’s drive north of Geneva, and home to Audemars Piguet since its foundation in 1875. After leaving the workshop, this watch went to the retailer Veuve Louis Goering in the Swiss city of La Chaux-de-Fonds. In 1943, the store sold it for 280 Swiss francs to the family of a rabbi named Max Schenk. The watch then passed through two generations to his grandson, who had no idea of its importance or value until he recently took it to an Audemars Piguet store to enquire about having it cleaned.

In September 2025, the rediscovered watch was returned to Le Brassus, where Audemars Piguet’s watchmaker Malika Schüpbach spent five months restoring it to its original condition. One of her biggest challenges was hand-making replacement parts, because spares no longer existed. ‘It was the most challenging work,’ she says.

‘It’s amazing to see that wristwatches that were designed and developed by Audemars Piguet in the 1930s are today so relevant for collectors,’ says Remi Guillemin, Christie’s head of Watches and Wristwatches, Europe and Americas. ‘I think at the same time it shows the quest for Audemars Piguet to always innovate and be forward-looking.’

‘The colours, the shape, the proportions of the bezel, everything is perfect,’ says Vivas of the watch coming to auction. ‘And that’s probably the reason why it stood in the same family, as far as we know, for so many decades. For me, it’s a masterpiece of design, especially after its restoration.’