Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo is thrilled to welcome you to The Hong Kong Sessions, Fall 2023, online auction, running from 12:00 PM CET, Friday, September 8, to 2:00 PM CET, Friday, September 15. Featuring more than 130 different high-end luxury wristwatches, the sale covers everything from A. Lange & Söhne and F.P. Journe to Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe.
– Arthur Touchot
Watch auctions.
Those once-upon-a-time intimate events attended by a small group of veteran collectors. Today, they more closely resemble a music festival, capable of attracting thousands of watch enthusiasts from all over the world.
Some things have changed: Introductions are now done using Instagram handles instead of business cards; only a few individuals grab paddles on their way in, while others check their iPhones' batteries to ensure they'll be able to capture that magical "world record" moment.
Still, what remains and what has contributed to the growing popularity of these events is the high that live auctions provide long after the auctioneer has slammed their gavel down on the final lot of the sale.
But those are not the only auctions that arouse excitement among watch collectors these days. Online-only auctions have plenty to offer, including seriously exciting and collectible watches and some unpredictable results. There's a reason they've become a much more regular occurrence in the calendar and why, after some resistance (for reasons which we will explain in a moment), Phillips began hosting online Watches auctions in 2021.
Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo hosted its first live auction six years earlier. Held in Geneva, inside a prestigious hotel, that inaugural auction featured only a highly curated selection of the finest Rolex Day-Date models, and it immediately set a new standard for a distinctive watch auction.
Phillips would focus only on the best, the most qualitative watches on the market, and would honor them with beautiful catalogs and glamorous events.
This was a bold strategy, in stark contrast with the more fashionable pursuit at the time of high-volume online auctions. But online auctions were slowly developing a reputation as tools to swallow up the lower quality watches that were often taken in by specialists to secure the more important pieces in a collection. The unwanted watches would end up in poorly advertised online sales, while the more coveted pieces would feature in prestigious live sales. Unfortunately, this strategy was transparent to sellers and buyers, and online sales slowly became associated with subpar or undesirable collectibles.
At the same time, it became impossible to overlook the substantial surge in online activity during our live auctions. By the end of Phillips' first year of business, online bidding had already become the preferred method of bidding. By the end of 2019, the number of bidders in our Digital Salesroom outnumbered those in the room by a factor of seven to one, while our auctioneers were taking virtual bids on 95 percent of the lots offered. In those four years, the record result for a watch sold to an online client was broken every six months, as collectors became comfortable bidding at every level and on watches sight unseen.
Our decision to introduce online-only watch auctions was carefully considered, with the Watches department progressively entering pieces through INTERSECT, a series of cross-category online auctions hosted by Phillips between 2021 and 2022.
This strategic move was motivated by one of the fundamentals of our passion: watch collecting isn't seasonal. It's a life-long, year-long passion, and while there is a certain appeal to waiting for catalogues to show up in the mailbox every six months, there is also a need and a desire to buy and sell watches in between the typical "auction seasons." The introduction of online sales emerged as a highly effective solution to cater to the evolving needs of our valued clients, enabling them to engage in watch transactions at their convenience.
But if we were going to host an online-only Watch sale, we would only do it our way.
Our approach would have to be unique, and unique back then meant upholding the same exacting standards for watches sold online as we do for any timepiece in our collection.
Our commitment involved:
- Crafting extensive lot essays and editorials.
- Showcasing exquisite in-house photography.
- Producing high-quality videos.
- Providing robust support to ensure clients worldwide were well-informed about the pieces available.
Our aim was not to regard online sales as inferior to live auctions but to seamlessly integrate them into our auction calendar.
Phillips hosted its first online-only Watch auction last Summer, in July 2022. It was a statement sale, with more than 100 watches selected to inaugurate the department's first virtual sale. The auction featured an impressive selection of (mostly) modern and lightly worn watches, including a top lot that any auctioneer would be more than delighted to hammer in front of a room full of excited collectors. After a week of open bidding, the sale ended with a perfect, 100 percent sell-through rate.
It was a good start for the Watches department and the beginning of a fantastic run of online sales, including four INTERSECT auctions, multiple multiple-owner sales (including our annual charity auctions with the Horological Society of New York) and three thematic online sales (The Beauty in Everything, Le Concours de Complexité, and Disruptors).
Overall, our online sales have been wildly successful. In total, we've sold 576 watches online over the past two years, and all 576 watches have found a new home.
We hope our record stays perfect over the next seven days with our curent online auction. The Hong Sessions, Fall 2023, which features more than 130 high-end luxury wristwatches, covering everything from F.P. Journe and Patek Philippe to Audemars Piguet and Rolex.
We are once again very proud of the watches offered and believe they represent the quality of timepieces one will always find at Phillips – whether in a live auction or an online one.
About Arthur Touchot
Arthur Touchot is a former journalist who specialized in the luxury market. Having earned a master’s degree in journalism at Northwestern University, Arthur combined his love of watches and words by becoming a regular contributor to The New York Times and the Financial Times at the start of his career, later becoming senior European editor at Hodinkee. In 2017, Arthur joined Phillips as International Head of Digital Strategy to lead the global content and digital marketing strategy of the auction house’s watch department, and has been involved in bringing some of the world’s rarest timepieces to auction.
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