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The Cartier Tortue Perpetual Calender ref. 2540
Jan 15, 2020,19:14 PM
Hi Everyone,
Just want to share my recently acquired Cartier Tortue Perpetual Calender (Ref. 2540) from the CPCP collection.
Over the years I have bought a few vintage and new Cartier watches for my wife, but never had one myself until now. This is my first Cartier watch and I love it.
Recently, I was looking for an office watch, this watch caught my eye in a vintage shop while window shopping and fell in love with it at first sight. So I went home thinking about it and tried to search more info on the watch. Nothing really came up. So I went digging around looking at past auction listings and ebay listings for past catalogues, The watch grew on me fast. And after a few days, I went to the shop, negotiated a great deal and bought it. It was watch only, and didnt have any paper with it. None of the listings online had paper with this watch, except one with a service reciept.
Love the tortue case shape and love how it wears on my 16cm wrist. Not too big and not too small. and relatively slim at 9.7mm thickness.
Heres some pictures of it:
Wristshot - 34mm wide, 43mm lug to lug (16cm wrist)
Look at that central rose motif and guilloche dial!
cal.9100MC movement by Frederic Piguet with interlaced double C declorations
Love the curves and reflections on the Tortue.
Below is the info on the watch gathered from a few sites.
Cartier Ref. 2540 Collection Privee Tortue Automatic Perpetual Calendar 18k White Gold
- Introduced in 2001
- 18K whitegold case w/ 18k white gold
deployment buckle
- Case width 34mm (excluding crown) and
43mm Lug to Lug
- Barrel shaped tonneau solid two-body case
- Curved sapphire crystals, and curved
sapphire caseback
- Case back engraved with "CARTIER –
WATER RESISTANT – 2450 – SWISS MADE," hallmarks, and a serial number
- Octagonal pull out winding crown set with
a sapphire cabochon
- Polished straight screwed lugs, and convex
bezel
- Silver flinque sunray guilloche dial with
painted black Roman numeral hour markers, with the Cartier secret signature in
the "X" around a black railway-style minute scale with black square
hour indices.
- Blued steel Breguet-style hands
- Three silver recessed subsidiary dials
with black Arabic numerals, markers, and blued indicator hands, including a
radial date register at 9 o'clock, a month and red leap year dial at 6 o'clock,
and there is a radial day indicator in French at the 3 o'clock position
- Water resistant to 30 meters/100 feet
- 40-hour power reserve at full winding
- 11mm thickness from bottom of lug to top
of crystals, as the watch is curved, the thickest part of the watch is only
9.7mm
- Mechanical automatic self-winding Cartier
caliber 9100 MC movement. Manufactured by frederic piguet.
- Perpetual Calender complicatons with month,
date, day of the week and leap year indicator
- Movement is rhodium-plated and engraved
with special Cartier double C and oeil-de-perdrix embellishment
- 29 jewels
- A straight-line lever escapement, and a
monometallic balance. It includes a shock-absorber device, a self-compensating
flat balance-spring
- 18K white gold rotor with a skeletonized
Cartier signature
- Oscillates at a frequency of 28,800 vph
(4 Hz)
- Cal. 9100MC Diameter 25.6mm, and Height
4.45mm
Found these information from EWC past
listing , Past Auctions Photo , and an Ebay listing for the technical details
sheet in Spanish
Still many questions on the watch
- how many was produced ? (i could only find 4 samples online)
- how long it was produced for?
- was this a Frence market only watch (as all the samples and pictures i saw have the Weekdays in French) but the tech sheet is in Spanish.
- what was the MSRP of the watch?
- when was my watch sold and where was it sold?
- what is that film slide on the tech spec sheet
wish Cartier have the Extract from Archives service.
Anyone know around how much Cartier will charge for a Perpetual overhaul service? Called a boutique, but they say this will have to take it in and assess it first before they could quote me. Anyone have past experience?