-By Logan Baker
Welcome to our series highlighting the exceptional watches that are available through Perpetual, Phillips’ boutique service offering immediate access to the world’s rarest and most desirable timepieces. You can view all currently available watches by visiting our London headquarters at 30 Berkeley Square, or by visiting Perpetual online.
I wandered down an unexpected rabbit hole of watch enthusiasm about two years ago. It was the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and all I could think about was the annual calendar, a complication invented by Patek Philippe in the mid-1990s as a more affordable alternative to the perpetual calendar, the long-established hero element of complicated watchmaking.
The annual calendar provides 90 percent of what makes a perpetual calendar so special at a fraction of the price. It makes automatic, correct adjustments for the day, date, and month, except for once per year when dealing with fickle February; an annual calendar must be manually adjusted to account for leap years.
The complication provided Patek Philippe with a way of accessing a new generation of watch collectors that had graduated from the simple realm of a time-only Calatrava but were perhaps skittish at the thought of investing nearly $50,000 or more on a perpetual calendar. And so Patek Philippe introduced the world-first complication in 1996, with the ref. 5035J. At launch, it had an MSRP under $20,000 USD. The annual calendar has remained in the company’s catalog in some form ever since, and numerous other high-end watchmakers – such as A. Lange & Söhne, Blancpain, F.P. Journe, and Rolex – have introduced their own variation on the complication at some point over the past two-plus decades.
So why exactly has the annual calendar been rattling around my brain for the past two years? It’s simple, really – I’ve primarily been interested in the topic for academic reasons.
The annual calendar is still in a fairly juvenile state compared to something like the perpetual calendar, the minute repeater, or the chronograph. Given its age, the annual calendar is also still rather uncommon. There are far more watches with perpetual calendars released each year than there are those with annual calendars. And though it’s a complication that was legitimately invented for accessibility, it’s also one that’s typically only released by serious, long-established makers.
If one were so inclined, it would be entirely possible to establish a list of all watches ever produced with an annual calendar, a task that would be impossible for basically any other genre of complicated watchmaking. The annual calendar appeals to the completionist side of me in a way that’s rare for a complication.
And yet, you don’t see many individuals opting to build their collection around it. There are no themed auctions focused on the topic. It doesn’t dominate Instagram feeds. I’m interested in the topic for research purposes and because it tends to fly under the radar. I’ve always wanted to produce an in-depth story on every Patek Philippe Annual Calendar watch ever released. But one of the reasons I never started down that path is because of the elusiveness of a single reference, which is the focus of this story – the Gondolo Minute Repeater Annual Calendar ref. 5033.
Combining a minute repeater with an annual calendar is an unconventional choice. I’m sure it upset more than one Patek Philippe purist. It’s a bit like wearing sweatpants in the office or eating caviar at a baseball game. It’s a high-low combination that doesn’t make a ton of sense at first, but when you consider Patek’s history, it starts to become a bit more reasonable.
See, Patek Philippe has been associated with the minute repeater for generations. They created their first pocket watch with the complication in 1845, and the legendary early 20th century collector Henry Graves Jr. commissioned multiple minute-repeating pocket watches from the firm. Philippe Stern, the company’s former leader and current Honorary President, brought the notoriously difficult complication back into production in 1989 to celebrate Patek’s 150th anniversary, and it has represented the highest echelon of watchmaking at Patek Philippe ever since.
It only makes sense, then, that Patek Philippe would at some point decide to combine the two complications that it’s most associated with in the modern era, even if they exist at complete opposite ends of the complexity and affordability spectrum. The ref. 5033 is the one and only time Patek Philippe has experimented with this union.
The Gondolo Minute Repeater Annual Calendar ref. 5033 was released in 2002 in a run of just 10 watches. Nine were produced in platinum, and a single example was created in titanium. Patek Philippe then quickly decided to expand past those initial 10 pieces and began to produce a small number of examples each year that would be offered to their top clients. There is no exact final production total known, but it’s understood that approximately 80 different ref. 5033 examples were created over 10 years, with the final watches delivered in 2012.
The ref. 5033 is a rare bird that rarely comes up for sale. Only two examples have sold previously at Phillips, with the most recent coming at our Hong Kong Watch Auction: XI, in November 2020. The cushion-shaped case of the Gondolo line is instantly recognizable, but it might be easy – at a glance – for a collector to confuse the ref. 5033 with its simpler, non-chiming cousin, the Gondolo Annual Calendar ref. 5135.
The ref. 5033 and 5135 share a case shape and dial design, but the former discloses its intricacy via the subtle slide trigger that is placed on the left side of the caseband and that activates the minute repeater on demand. The caseback also immediately reveals the twin black-polished strikers and gongs of the minute repeater mechanism that are positioned near the 22k micro-rotor, all within the layout of the self-winding caliber R 27 PS QA.
Besides the sheer rarity and complexity, I find the Gondolo Minute Repeater Annual Calendar to be just plain attractive. The Art Deco-inspired Gondolo case is so unlike anything else Patek Philippe makes today – it always makes me smile knowing that such an offbeat case design continues to be available in the company’s catalog.
The ref. 5033 also features Patek’s first implementation of aperture-style displays for the day, month, and date, a design choice that is far more legible and modern than the sub-dial format traditionally found on complicated calendar watches by the brand, including on 1996’s original ref. 5035, and the follow-up ref. 5146. Patek went on to use the same tri-window arrangement on the Gondolo ref. 5135 from 2004, the chronograph-equipped ref. 5960 from 2006, the regulator ref. 5235 from 2011, and the Tourbillon Minute Repeater Perpetual Calendar ref. 5207 from 2008.
The ref. 5033 was only ever produced in platinum, outside of the early unique piece in titanium, but there were still a small number of variants created during its production run. The earliest examples, for instance, featured silver or black dials with Roman numerals. That was changed in approximately 2004, when the printed numerals were dropped in favor of white gold applied hour markers. Finally, a gem-set reference (ref. 5033/100P) with baguette diamonds deposited across the case and on the hour markers was introduced near the end of the reference’s lifecycle in 2011. Out of the approximately 80 total pieces that were created over 10 years, it’s believed that no single variation was produced in a run larger than 40 examples.
The example that’s currently available from Perpetual dates to circa 2010 and features a platinum case and silver dial. Given the production year, the movement inside is marked with the Patek Philippe Seal rather than the Geneva Seal. It's also accompanied by a Patek Philippe Certificate of Origin, an instruction manual, the product literature, a leather folio, an additional caseback, a setting pin, a hang tag, the outer packaging, and the fitted presentation box.
The Gondolo Minute Repeater Annual Calendar ref. 5033 is an unexpected watch in so many ways. It’s pure Patek Philippe – complicated, attractive, and rare – and yet it’s a watch that’s underrated and unappreciated by many. It could be the centerpiece of the world’s first annual calendar-centered watch collection, or perhaps it’s the ideal alternative to a ref. 5016 in a collection already packed with Pateks.
This ref. 5033P is available via Phillips Perpetual right now for £275,000 – email perpetual@phillips.com for more information.
Phillips Perpetual
Phillips PERPETUAL offers a boutique experience to clients for both the sale and purchase of fine and rare watches, in London’s Berkeley Square and the Gstaad Palace, in Switzerland.
About Logan Baker
Logan has spent the past decade reporting on every aspect of the watch business. He joined Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo at the start of 2023 as the department's Senior Editorial Manager. He splits his time between New York and Geneva.
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