Generally speaking, tourbillon watches are the most expensive watches of all time. Tourbillon is a watch mechanism invented by Frenchman Abraham-Louis Breguet, one of the most respected watch makers of all time, in the late 1790s. The tourbillon mechanism is an ingeniously complicated and delicate watch mechanism. Even in the most basic form, it has over a hundred parts and requires a team of highly skilled workers months to make from scratch. As a result these watches are extremely expensive. The average going price is US$150,000 and above, not many people can afford them.
Like fast cars, we may not be able to afford them, yet we are still interested in their specs, trivia and their prices. The question is which is the most expensive tourbillon watch? And how much is it? Or was it, as most of the collector watches tend to be of limited edition and their price is constantly climbing one their sold.
The answer to your million dollar question is that the most expensive tourbillon watch is the Blancpain 1735 and it was priced at exactly $1,000,000 when it first came out. Yes, it is a seven figure number and it was not a typo. This watch has half-a-dozen complications, two more than a watch needs to qualify as a “grand complication”. In fact, it’s arguable to say that this is even a tourbillon watch since there are so many other complications inside the watch. There is a perpetual calendar, a split-second chronograph, a minute repeater, a tourbillon and a moon phase minder.
It looks pretty neat yet very elegant and almost humbling from the outside. Unlike almost all other tourbillons, such as the Blancpain fifty fathoms, desperately trying to show off their tourbillon mechanism with a window in the dials, you won’t see any of those on display. There is the more implicit beauty in this watch and probably can only be appreciated by the true watch connoisseurs.
Under its minimalistic cover, the 1735 has 740 components and takes an average 8 to 10 months for a team of dozens of skilled watch artists to assemble these parts together. Blancpain intended to make just 30 of these, apparently, so far, only 18 have been made. So if you have some spare money, well, something like a million dollars, then dial up and booked you very own piece of the most expensive tourbillon watch.
Take a look at the inside of this amazing watch:
