Cartier Minute Repeater with Fitted Box, ca. 1930
GUEST:
This was my great-grandfather's watch, and because we have the same initials, it sort of has come down to me through the family.
APPRAISER:
Do you have any idea where the watch came from?
GUEST:
I have no idea.
APPRAISER:
Was he someone who traveled to Paris?
GUEST:
There's a good chance. They were wealthy and did travel.
APPRAISER:
Cartier was based both in, in Paris and in London and in New York.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
So this is a Cartier Paris watch. The watch itself was made in Switzerland. Now, every watch, um, of this period would have been customized, so it's really nice to have this enameled monogram on the back of the watch. But we can see the rest of the watch. We can see the face, which is what most people are interested in, and you can see that it's a very, very thin watch. Cartier was instrumental in designing modern watches. And one of the things they were most successful doing was making watches that were very, very thin. And it's very hard to put complications inside a watch that's very, very thin. What makes this watch interesting is that not only is it thin, it's also a watch that chimes.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
By pulling the slide on the side of the case, it will tell you the time-- it'll give you the chime for the hour, the chime for the quarter, and the chime for the minutes, and it's called a minute-repeating watch. Unfortunately, it's not gonna cooperate with us today. The watch is 80 years old and needs a good cleaning. This is an 18-karat-gold French-made case. Because the watch is by Cartier, and because it's so thin, it puts it into a whole new level of value. Such an interesting early watch by Cartier would be worth many times what a normal repeating watch would be worth. And were this in an auction, I would expect to see a pre-sale estimate in the range of $12,000 to $18,000.
GUEST:
Wow. That's, that's great to know.
Appraisal Details
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