A uncommon yellow-gold timepiece has simply fetched virtually $2 million to set a new file for essentially the most invaluable Cartier wristwatch ever offered at public sale. It was neither a coveted Cartier Tank nor a {custom} creation by the French luxurious home, nevertheless. The record-breaker ultimately week’s Sotheby’s Hong Kong public sale was, as an alternative, one of many watch market’s unlikeliest hot-ticket objects: a Cartier Crash.
Straight out of the swinging ’60s, the Crash’s dripping form appears to be like extra like considered one of Salvador Dalí’s Surrealist melting clocks than a luxurious timepiece. Yet, regardless of its mechanical simplicity and diminutive dimension, the uncommon mannequin is more and more prized by collectors and wanted by stars from Timothée Chalamet to Kim Kardashian lately.
The Crash’s attract could also be partly all the way down to an — albeit apocryphal — origin story that’s as uncommon as its warped, uneven case.
The legend begins in 1967 London, when a buyer arrived at Cartier’s New Bond Street boutique to restore a watch broken in a automotive accident. The fiery warmth of the crash had (or so the story goes) melted its once-oval case. Jean-Jacques Cartier, the great-grandson of founder Louis-François Cartier, was “so seduced by the shape” that he “decided to reproduce it,” the corporate claims in advertising supplies shared with NCS.
Few are satisfied by this story — not least Jean-Jacques’s granddaughter Francesca Cartier Brickell, whose account is extra easy. In her 2019 e book “The Cartiers,” she wrote that her grandfather and designer Rupert Emmerson adjusted the already-popular Cartier Maxi Oval mannequin for loyal shoppers demanding distinctive, custom-designed watches. They realized a steel case might be made to look “as though it had been in a crash” by “pinching the ends at a point and putting a kink in the middle,” she added.
Regardless of how Crash was born, the parable has solely added to its cultural cache, in line with Benjamin Clymer, founding father of the luxurious watch website Hodinkee.
“I think the story that has been perpetuated is just so compelling, so wonderful and romantic and crazy,” he mentioned in a video name. “And then the name, the Cartier Crash with the double consonants — it just rings.”
Only a dozen or so watches are thought to have emerged from this primary manufacturing run. The Crash’s irregular form made it laborious to make — and Cartier’s signature Roman numerals and sword formed palms proved tough to learn.
“That first Crash watch caused a lot of headaches,” Brickell quotes her grandfather as saying. “You see, it’s all very well coming up with a good-looking design, but it had to tell the time too! And because the dial was irregular, the numbers weren’t at the standard places.”
The watch was removed from an immediate hit. One the period’s largest film stars, Stewart Granger, was among the many first prospects, although he returned his inside a week as a result of it was “too unusual,” in line with Brickell.
“I don’t think the design did resonate especially back then,” the writer mentioned over electronic mail, including that it was “almost too radical for Cartier’s clientele” on the time.
It was nonetheless an essential improvement for the corporate’s London outpost, which at that time solely stocked Cartier watches from France and Switzerland. Jean-Jacques “really did want to push things forward,” Clymer mentioned, including the Crash helped set up the British department’s repute for design.
“From a geometric perspective, it was just so different than everything else out there.”
The very first Crash is assumed to have offered for round $1,000 (about $9,000 in right now’s cash). But the mannequin has soared in worth on the resale market lately.
In 2021, one dating to 1970 fetched over 806,000 Swiss Francs ($1.02 million) at Sotheby’s in Geneva, setting a then-record for the mannequin. Less than a 12 months later, an exceptionally uncommon 1967 authentic smashed the file once more when it offered for over $1.65 million through the net watch public sale website Loupe This.
These astronomical costs will be attributed, partially, to the mannequin’s shortage on the collectors’ market, in line with Tom Heap, a watch specialist at Sotheby’s London. Although Cartier doesn’t publicize the entire quantity made, specialists consider it’s within the tons of, somewhat than the hundreds. They exist in “immeasurably small quantities,” Heap added on a video name.
After the preliminary batch, Cartier continued to supply Crashes on demand. The record-breaking mannequin that offered in Hong Kong earlier this month is believed to be considered one of solely three produced in 1987, in line with Sotheby’s. Cartier additionally produced new variations in white gold, pink gold and platinum (most notably in a restricted version run in 1991, although these are credited to Cartier Paris and often promote for lower than older London fashions).
In 2018, Cartier then made two new limited-edition Crashes accessible through its New Bond Street retailer in 2018 — one with an 18-carat yellow gold case and the opposite constructed from white gold and encrusted with diamonds. They had been reasonably priced at 27,000 euros ($32,000) and 65,000 euros ($76,000), respectively, although Heap mentioned they had been largely reserved for Cartier’s “top-tier clients.”
Rarity alone can not clarify the sudden surge in costs, nevertheless. Heap recollects talking to sellers who, lower than 10 years in the past, turned down alternatives to purchase Crashes for round £60,000 (now round $70,000), regardless that they might now promote for a lot of occasions that. Clymer in the meantime mentioned that whereas he noticed revived curiosity in collector circles in 2016 or 2017, the Crash was “not super sought-after.”
The turning level, he mentioned, got here in 2018 when Kanye West was seen sporting one on David Letterman’s Netflix particular. “I’ll give credit where credit’s due,” Clymer mentioned. “I think it was Kanye West wearing a crash that really put it back on the map.”
Subsequent celebrity endorsements have helped ship costs skywards. Tyler the Creator, for instance, sported a Crash in his 2021 “Lumberjack” video, earlier than being noticed sporting one at a Cartier watch public sale in Monaco later that 12 months. “Schitt’s Creek” star Dan Levy in the meantime wore one to the Met Gala.
Heap welcomed the event as an antidote to the “big, ostentatious diamond-set pieces” usually seen on celebrity wrists. “It’s almost like a dress watch style, with a leather strap and a small-sized case,” he added. “I think that’s very cool.”
The Crash’s enchantment amongst collectors might communicate to wider aesthetic tendencies. It is probably no coincidence that its revived fortunes coincide with renewed curiosity within the Surrealist motion, which is the topic of current exhibitions at establishments together with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern and London’s Design Museum.
How a lot, if in any respect, Jean-Jacques Cartier and Emmerson had been influenced by Dalí’s 1931 portray “The Persistence of Memory” — the enduring picture of clocks showing to soften in a sparse panorama — could also be misplaced to historical past. Regardless, Clymer believes the connection between horology and tradition at giant displays luxurious watches’ rising function in mainstream consciousness.
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When there’s something occurring (in broader tradition), like a revived curiosity in Surrealism, it’s a lot simpler for folks to make the connection between that and a Cartier Crash,” he mentioned.
For Heap, the Crash’s enchantment amongst collectors might also be attributable to its “imperfect and very organic” form — one that can be near-impossible to mass produce.
“It looks almost like it’s liquid or fluid. When you pick one up, it feels like it’s going to move or wobble,” he added: “As opposed to a lot of pieces nowadays… you can tell it was made by a person. There’s a human element to it.”
Editor’s Note: A model of this text was first printed in 2023.