Antiquroum held their latest live auction on the 21st of July at the Monte Carlo Hotel de Paris in Monaco. The live auction was broken down into two parts, with the most anticipated auction item being the Patek Philippe nautilus green dial reference 5711/1A-014 (Lot 152). Patek Philippe first announced the Nautilus reference 5711 on the “nautilus” 30th anniversary, superseding the reference 3700 back in 2006.
Patek Philippe made the shocking announcement, that the Blue dial Nautilus will be discontinued at the 2021 watches and wonders.
The announcement of the discontinuation of the 5711 Nautilus saw Patek Philippe launch a final edition model with a border around the date window. The announcement of this final “green dial” edition saw collectors all over the world rush to get their name in on an allocation. With supply being limited and demand skyrocketing, this would’ve been one of the hardest to get pieces alongside being one of the hottest pieces on the market.
What makes this watch at the auction so special is that this nautilus is factory sealed from the original owner, meaning the winning buyer will be the first one to cut the plastic wrapping. Watches in plastic wrapping are in very high demand, and pieces that come in the plastic wrapping are offered at very high premiums. Due to this Patek Phillipe actually banned the sale of their watches still wrapped in plastic.
This green dial nautilus was the first of its kind on offer at an auction. This gained a lot of notoriety for the auction overall. This model is also the first in the production of the green dial nautilus Ref 5711. Antiquroum predicated the auction price to be somewhere along the lines of euro 50,000-150,000, but we all knew these numbers were going to get broken due to the current watch market pricing for Patek Philippe Nautilus pieces.
The bidding for the watch started at 50,000 and it quickly rose to 100,000, 150,000 and before you know it 280,000 EUR. We thought this may have been the final auction price as it stalled for a little bit, but a last-minute buyer came through, with the final price being an astonishing 300,000 EUR! This is a ridiculous price for a watch that retails at 30,000 EUR.
There was a slight twist to this already very mesmerising story. Normally at auctions, especially with high-profile pieces such as this, the seller remains anonymous. This is due to the backlash they could face from the watch brands themselves, for flipping their products for ludicrous amounts of money. Unfortunately for this lad, it didn’t quite turn out that way. Whether it was a mistake or not is still to be seen, but Antiquorum published the name of the seller in an Instagram video of the lot in auction. It’s safe to say that Patek Philippe has blacklisted the seller. It’ll remain to be seen however if the seller will be care, after raking in 300, 000 (+) in profits.
