Patek Philippe

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PP World Timer´s – just more commemorative watches for the 175th Anniv. or a must-have ...

... for the collector and/or connoisseur, the references 5131-175G and 7131-175R?

A world timer (complication) from Patek Philippe sings loud to quite a lot of fellow PuristS here (and not only PuristS) and if there is enamel on-top it doesn´t hurt, not at all

Before we look closer, two hands-on pictures to warm up:

Both watches got immediately my full attention for more than one reason.

One of them is the motive shown, which is called Geneva Harbor. No this time it is not a colorful map, this time it is a view of Geneva harbor with one of the fine old Lake Geneva sailboats known as barques and I like those a lot. Another reason is the execution of the enamel which is outstanding and to be very honest, superior to all contemporary “enamel world timers” I have seen yet. The cloisonné enamel decoration shows a palette of opaque, transparent and opalescent enamels in 23 colors; and ten firings in the kiln.

Some background information or context if you prefer it like this.

Patek Philippe has a serious tradition when it comes to world time watches in general and is even more famous for their enameled maps. Therefore I will share some pieces from the past with you.

I would be honored to have at least one (anyone!) of those vintage beauties in my possession, because they are simply to die for. As this is almost impossible, I can still appreciate them whenever I have the pleasure to look at them and the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva is a great place to do so.

Sidenote : currently there is an exhibition at the PP Museum which is dedicated to commemorative pieces from 1989 till 2014 and it runs until April 11, 2015 (for more, see here: news.watchprosite.com )

If we talk about contemporary world timer´s, there are several.

The most known one is the Ref. 5110 (2000 – 2005; in production) with several iterations (different metals, editions …). The one still in production (more or less; depending on the version) is the Ref. 5130 (different metals, editions …) …

… and not to forget the Ref. 5131 which was launched in 2008 with the yellow gold version 5131J-001. One year later, in 2009 followed by the 5131G-001.

These two were in the collection till 2012. In 2013, those were replaced by 5131G-010 and 5131J-014 . The latter I heard are now out of production as well, but I have no official confirmation on this yet.

Along with the last change of the dial number, also three cities names changed:

•          Caracas became La Paz

•           Moscow became Riyadh

•           Dubai became Moscow

No to forget is the 5131J “View-of-the-City-of-Geneva”, which was a piece unique and specially made for Children Action Charity, in 2012.

Just for comparison, it was sold for approximately twenty times the price of the regular 5131 and I will come back to this later.

Note : Of course there have been some nice world timer´s for women as well, but I won´t go in detail here and will only show the 175^th Anniversary piece.