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HighendTime We aim to help you collect exceptional timepieces while focusing on good design, intriguing stories and beautiful photography.

This is the “Art of Time” - a carefully curated selection of the rarest timepieces.

[ Category A Registrant A-B-26-01-10402 ]

The factory called it the “Cartier Dial”. Not because someone later decided it looked like one. Because that is what Cho...
19/10/2026

The factory called it the “Cartier Dial”. Not because someone later decided it looked like one. Because that is what Chopard named it when they decided on the Romans.

18k white gold. Fully L.U.C signed. Late 1960s to the early 1970s, when L.U.C was a manufacture signature on a movement that sat inside a house better known for jewellery than for watches, and when that signature meant something that could not be ordered in quantity.

The case is the part that ends the argument. Weber & Cie held Key No. 29; the collective responsibility mark punched into the precious-metal backs of the elite work of the period. Cartier rectangles. Patek shapes. Vacheron. Rolex. This is that level of form: edges that do the talking, proportions that do not need a speech, a rectangle thin enough to disappear under a cuff and yet substantial enough to hold its own.

White gold was never a volume metal. Patek cut only a fraction of them. Cartier did the same. Chopard cut fewer still. The rooms that have already paid the white-gold premium on Patek and Cartier know the pattern. The dial texture is not mere decoration. Hand carved, horizontal grain so the black Romans and the “L.U. Chopard & Cie Genève” sit in relief instead of floating.

You just do not see these. When one surfaces it does not need a comparison. This is the unicorn the serious desks have been waiting to see. Not the loudest Chopard. The one that makes every other white-gold dress watch in the room feel slightly over-produced.

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Pushers

Fourteen by thirty millimetres of 14k yellow gold, and inside it a movement that was never meant to fill the case: this ...
13/10/2026

Fourteen by thirty millimetres of 14k yellow gold, and inside it a movement that was never meant to fill the case: this was the Uniplan Cal 404. Edmond Jaeger’s idea, executed at Le Sentier: a small calibre, set like a jewel in a larger rectangular frame so a small wrist could carry a proper mechanism without the bulk of a gentleman’s watch.

Cartier took the architecture and dressed it. Co-signed; LeCoultre at the top, Cartier in script across the centre, Swiss at the foot, applied gold numerals, and those Art Deco geometric corner frames that only the 1930s would have drawn.

This one is dated on the back. J.M.D. 1936. American-market 14k, the 0.585 stamp and the case number still sharp, inner cover reading LeCoultre Co, solid gold. Burgundy lizard strap, gold fittings that continue the case rather than interrupt it. Nothing has been rewritten.

Cartier from this decade is already a closed room. Tanks, Santos, early rectangles, the ones that survive unsigned by later hands now trade as if the maison had only ever made a few hundred of anything. A Uniplan with the Cartier signature on the dial sits in a narrower corridor still. Most of what left Geneva or Paris under that double name was absorbed into jewellery drawers and never came back out with the movement intact.

Collectors who spent the last decade learning the difference between a restored Tank and an untouched one already know why this matters. The co-signature is not decoration. It is the contract: Cartier’s line, LeCoultre’s engine, made while both houses still shared language. White-metal Cartier has been the louder market. Gold of this size, this date, this signature, has been the quieter one; and the quieter one is where the real scarcity lives.

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Pushers

The strap disappears and thats the first thing you notice. Not the name, not the seconds register but the way the case e...
30/09/2026

The strap disappears and thats the first thing you notice. Not the name, not the seconds register but the way the case ends in two polished tubes and simply swallows the leather.

This is a mythical reference. Silvered dial, Arabic 12-3-9, baton indexes, subsidiary seconds at six. A gently curved case with corners. Cartier got fame for this idea and called it the Bamboo. Patek built the much quieter version in the 1940s and then almost refused to cut it in steel. Those that collect hooded Pateks already know the difference.

Production ran roughly from 1942 to 1950. Most of the survivors are pink gold. Christie’s once counted a handful of those at auction and stopped. Steel was never the language of the period; wartime and postwar Patek breathed in gold, which is why this reference sits in a rumour band of around fifteen pieces. You just do not see them. When a steel Patek of this era with similar lug architecture surfaces at auctions like Phillips, the estimate becomes theatre. Six to twelve thousand but hammers well north of fifty thousand. The market is not confused; it is hungry.

White-metal vintage Patek has been winning the race for years. Platinum and steel from this house, in this decade, were produced in much lower numbers than yellow or pink gold. Collectors who stayed awake watched those pieces outrun not only their gold siblings but also a long list of conventional indices: equities, bullion, even a generation of modern sports references that were supposed to be the smarter trade.

The legendary Caliber 9’90 hums underneath. In-house, thin, the movement reserved for the serious references of the golden age. The dial on this one still reads original; the 12 with that slight eccentricity, hands unmolested. Most collectors will spend a decade hunting a pink 1532 and call it a win. Steel is the chapter they were not supposed to find.

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Pushers

Sydney. That back-street antique shop that still smells of damp wood and forgotten time. I wasn’t hunting but the tray u...
24/09/2026

Sydney. That back-street antique shop that still smells of damp wood and forgotten time. I wasn’t hunting but the tray under the porcelain stopped me cold.

Gold case. Warm. Not the typical 18k that floods every auction. This was 10k; the harder, leaner alloy Rolex reserved for Commonwealth markets in the mid-fifties. Lower duty. Practical. And much rarer now. Most of these never left the country in numbers that mattered. The ones that survive are unicorns.

I turned it over. Black honeycomb. The tightly engineered textured surface Rolex used for only a few years before abandoning it. Not a print or sunburst. A living grid that fractures light into tiny cells. “SHOCK-RESISTING” printed clean at six. A refined dress watch from the moment Rolex still experimented.

Serial intact between the lugs. Circa 1955–56. The case would have been stamped the same year as the movement left Geneva; a small manual-wind Rolex calibre with proper shock protection, the kind that still sweeps with the authority of the era.

18k gold pieces from this period are relatively common. This isn’t. The 10k gold, the black honeycomb, the Australian-market specification, three layers of scarcity stacked on a 33–34 mm case that most people walk past because it doesn’t scream “Rolex.”

The honeycomb still catches the morning the same way it always did. The gold still feels slightly harder, slightly more honest than 18k. Stolen treasure doesn’t always come from vaults. Sometimes it comes from a dusty tray in Sydney, waiting for the one person who knows that 10k can be infinitely rarer and much more investable than 18k.

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Pushers

Most jewellery watches try too hard but this one does not. Van Cleef & Arpels for Gerald Genta. Circa 1980. 18k gold. A ...
09/09/2026

Most jewellery watches try too hard but this one does not. Van Cleef & Arpels for Gerald Genta. Circa 1980. 18k gold. A barley-twist tank case; the candy-rope architecture Genta kept coming back to when he was bored of polite rectangles, wrapped around a black dial so dark it makes the four diamond points look like they were dropped there by accident. They were not. Eight-cut stones at the quarters. Baton markers for the rest. Signature small, Swiss small, hands thin. The design does the talking.

Genta’s name on a VCA is the part most rooms still miss. He was not moonlighting. He was building the same sculptural language he put on Audemars and IWC and then handing a jeweller the version that actually looks like jewellery. The twist was the whole story: gold that refused to sit flat, a case that caught light the way a rope of confectionery would if confectionery were 18 carat and cut for a wrist.

Candy, if you want the word. Architecture, if you are paying attention. Inside it, a high end Swiss quartz movement, the period’s quiet concession so the object could stay thin and convenient. The design never needed the romance of a rotor. It needed the case to stay the event.

26mm by 28mm on paper (including crown and lugs), and still a watch that can stop a conversation. Black dials on these were the rarest. Most went ch*****ne or white and disappeared into a safe. This one stayed nocturnal. Numbered 4316 on the reverse. Original language throughout.

You do not wear this next to a Royal Oak and apologise. You wear it because Genta already knew the square did not have to be industrial to be serious. He just needed a maison willing to twist the gold.

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Pushers

This is a story told in aged leather and gold, but its essence lies in a request; one that changed the course of human h...
04/09/2026

This is a story told in aged leather and gold, but its essence lies in a request; one that changed the course of human history.

In 1904 Louis Cartier answered a pilot. Alberto Santos-Dumont could not take his hands off the controls and needed to read the time. The result was a square case, exposed screws, a strap; a wristwatch made for a man, and also for mankind. Cartier released it to the public in 1911 under the aviator’s name.

This is the ignition point of horology.

Showcased here now is a slightly later chapter of the same story: a 1940s small Santos Dumont in yellow gold, which still speaks the original language. The same square case and faceted cabochon crown. The cream dial with black Romans and the inner railway track, the surface already carrying honest, untouched ageing that no restorer should be allowed near. Blued hands. Brown strap. Inside, a rare EWC movement: European Watch & Clock Company, the Jaeger-linked calibre that sat in early Cartiers and almost never survives this clean.

Small Santos pieces from this decade are already scarce. The square had fallen out of fashion; wartime taste wanted round. The ones that were made were few. The ones left original; dial unrestored, case unpolished into softness, movement still the EWC it left with, are fewer still.

Untouched is a word that matters. This is not a restored icon. It is the icon as it actually arrived. In the original brief. In a size the market forgot. With a movement the serious collectors look for. The design that taught the wristwatch how to exist, preserved at the scale and in the condition almost no one kept.

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Pushers

Patek Philippe does not raise its voice. It never had to. For more than a century and a half, the maison has built the n...
02/09/2026

Patek Philippe does not raise its voice. It never had to. For more than a century and a half, the maison has built the narrative that other names measure themselves against; not through volume, but through the stubborn refusal to make anything ordinary.

This rare reference belongs to that lineage. An early automatic double Ellipse in 18k white gold, Caliber 28-255 beneath a cream dial of black Roman numerals and slender hands, the case formed as a soft oval with that distinctive stepped bezel. In this condition it feels less worn than preserved; the metal still honest, the dial still luminous, the whole object still carrying Patek’s original intention of the 1970s: restraint as a form of power.

The Ellipse was never meant to compete with louder Pateks. It was meant to correct them. Introduced at the end of the 1960s and carried into the following decade, the shape followed the golden ratio, a proportion so exact that the shape seems organic rather than designed.

This is among the first automatic versions of that idea. Production was short. White gold examples were shorter still. Yellow gold was the default language of the period; white metal was the quieter, more expensive choice, and far fewer left Geneva. Those that survive in this state; original dial, original hands, case unmolested, are the ones that surface only when a collector finally lets go.

Vintage Patek as an asset class has long outrun ordinary markets. White-metal examples have gone further. The indices that measure stocks, gold bullion, even many contemporary sports references have been left behind by the right vintage Patek in the right metal. This watch is that kind of object: not a trophy, but a thesis.

On the wrist the black strap disappears and the white gold does the rest. The dial reads like a page that was never rewritten. You do not wear it to be seen. You wear it because you already know what the maison is, and because pieces like this keep that knowledge alive.

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Pushers

It’s midnight. 1961. One half of Paris is making love to the other half. As the street lamps of Paris illuminate the nig...
14/08/2026

It’s midnight. 1961. One half of Paris is making love to the other half. As the street lamps of Paris illuminate the night, every tiny facet of this masterpiece reflects a piece of that light back into the dark.”

Frédéric Boucheron founded the maison in 1858 in the arcades of the Palais Royal. Wristwatches followed by 1885. But the postwar decades; the 1950s and 1960s, were when the house truly found its horological voice. European taste had shifted. Ornament was out. Innovation was in.

Boucheron answered with patented clasp systems the industry had never seen.
The Reflet was born in 1947, designed by Gérard Boucheron, the founder’s grandson. The brief was simple and radical: build jewelry that happens to tell time. No spring bars. No pin buckles.

The strap integrates directly into the case, secured by an invisible mechanism; patent BT 908247, filed in 1944, the same number stamped on this caseback. Slide the lug, and the strap releases. The kind of engineering that makes you unhook and rehook it twenty times just to feel the precision.

This is the first generation. The tell on this reference is the blank dial; no branding, no logo, nothing but gold and shadow. The Clous de Paris pattern, each pyramid cut by hand, catches light like a field of frozen geometry. The case was manufactured by Cristofol, the same French atelier stamping gold for Cartier. Movements came from suppliers like Omega, Ulysse Nardin and ETA, the Boucheron of the era never made its own, and never needed to.

Edith Piaf, the French icon, bought her first Reflet in 1948. It brought her luck. She owned twenty-one by 1963. The watch was designed for men but immediately also loved by women, a unisex vision decades ahead of its time.

Cartier gets the headlines. The Tank. The Santos. Multiple anniversary reissues. Boucheron gets the sleepers. Same suppliers. Same heritage. A fraction of the production. The math is simple but most people never do it. The coveted Clous. Unpolished. Original. The kind of piece that silences a room.

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Pushers

While the rest of the collecting world is still focused on the auction results at Monaco last weekend, this gold-filled ...
31/07/2026

While the rest of the collecting world is still focused on the auction results at Monaco last weekend, this gold-filled square is sitting here quietly proving that the real power moves never needed a spotlight. Enter the 1971 Omega De Ville Super-Emeraude, Ref. 551.070. The one they call the “Sugar Cube”. Thick, unapologetic, and still looking like it arrived from a parallel decade where Swiss factories actually listened to jewelers.

Andrew Grima did not design watches because he needed the time. He famously said that if you need to know the time, you ask your chauffeur. Omega somehow talked him into it anyway. In 1969 they commissioned the experimental ‘About Time’ pieces; sculpture that happened to tell time. Then the commercial fallout arrived: the Emerald line, 1971 to 1973 only. Grima’s rule was simple and radical. Build the watch around the dial. The case, the crystal, the proportions all had to serve the face, not the other way around.

This Super-Emeraude is inspired by Grima’s philosophy. Emerald-cut crystal with sharp, architectural facets that catch light like a cut stone. A ch*****ne dial with the absolute minimum of indexes. The ultra-thin automatic Caliber 663 humming underneath.

The case itself is pure 1970s confidence; stepped, geometric, almost brutal in its thickness for a dress watch. Gold-filled, yes, but on the wrist it feels denser and more intentional than most of its solid-gold contemporaries. Most of these have disappeared into jewelry boxes or got polished into anonymity. The ones that survive with original dial, hands, crystal, and that unmistakable ‘Grima’ geometry are the ones that make serious Omega collectors sit up.

Short production window. Strong design DNA. This is not a watch that asks for permission. It is the one that still looks modern fifty-five years later because the man who shaped it never cared about looking modern in the first place. He just cared about making something that felt inevitable.

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Pushers

In the secret archives of Swiss horology, some documents do not just record invention; they capture moments when time it...
23/07/2026

In the secret archives of Swiss horology, some documents do not just record invention; they capture moments when time itself was forced to challenge its boundaries.

A Swiss patent (No. 201339) by John Simon of Tramelan, registered on 30 Nov 1938 and issued on 1st Feb 1939, describes a unique watch case designed to keep water out. The goal was a sealed joint through compression screws and lateral flanges that locked components tightly together; a clever answer to a rectangular case’s struggle with sealing.

Rectangular waterproofing had always been a problem child. Cartier had proven it was theoretically possible in 1931 with the legendary Tank Étanché, commissioned by the Pasha of Marrakech; however, production was tiny due to its complexity. Tramelan’s patent reimagined this design, offering a much cleaner solution.

And here, perfectly preserved after almost 90 years, is one of the hallmarks of our collection; the earliest example of this design, released just after the patent was issued.

In watches, the word “Hermetic” means airtight, influenced by the Greek word for a perfectly sealed vessel. No one knows with certainty where the word stems from and while conjecture on our part, we believe that the word could also be a derivative of ‘Hermes’; and this piece unique that pioneered rectangular waterproofing.

The Hermetic from Hermes is not inspired. It is the origin, a witness to horology’s long battle against water: from W. Pettit & Co.’s 1851 pocket watch, Droz et Fils’ “L’Impermeable”, Rolex’s iconic 1926 Oyster, through Cartier’s 1931 Étanché, and finally John Simon’s refined solution.

Hold it and you can feel the weight of history in your palm. This is the kind of piece that does not belong to a museum or a collection. It belongs to the story of time itself.

- Personal Collection -

Pushers

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