The watch market is often very far from being efficient, sure. A lot of emotions and egos combined with monopolistic sources of information (keyword "Guru" & "King") and sovereignty of interpretation for certain brands combined with economic interest -- that often does not go well together. Well, all of this is known and nothing new. But there is one specific watch where the inefficiency is more obvious than anywhere else: the coinwatches. Especially the USD20-Patek Philippe ref803.

Patek coin-watches trade regularly at multiples of the prices of other brands coin-watches -- USD35'000 is a common price and sometimes reaching USD50'000, too. While a same USD20-coinwatch by Vacheron, Ulysse Nardin, JLC, Blancpain or Piaget trades just between 10 and 20% of this price. Wow! Patek is the crown of horology; the sun in the solar-system of watches, right? And so these markups come with a good reason, correct?

Now, let me say it like this: in other models of the Patek-portfolio there might be differences to other brands that are hardly to compare and that could be used by the seller (or buyer) to justify a significant markup in price. Just, in coinwatches this is not the case; yes, the case of these watches was made by Guyot & Cie, La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland) as indicated by the Hammerhead[122] and not only the Pateks: any coinwatch was made by this casemaker: Audemars, Vacheron, Ebel, Paul-Buhre, Rolex, Favre-Leuba etc; besides the ones made by Piaget. The latter were made everything in-house: case, dial and movement by Piaget.

A propos movement: Patek Philippe uses a cal177, which is nothing else but an Ebauche of the Fred Piguet cal21, that is in use widely in some Longines, Cartier and Certina (see here). It is a wonderful movement and I am far from being a critic. Instead I think it is one of the most important manual calibers of all time. But whether its use sets Patek apart and on the top of the horological scene could be discussed. And if we do, I am happy to place one or another salty question in this discussion...

But not for now. This leaves us with just one very obvious question: why are Patek coinwatches so high valued? The only explanation could be that there are many collectors simply buying a certain brand instead of the highest quality product -- and that this is far from our approach (see here: *klikk) and whats the possible flaw with such a strategy is topic of a later blog-post.

NB: This post is focusing on the USD20-coin ref803 but there is a USD10-coin by Patek and several others and although they are rarer the fact described stays exactly the same.