Our final live auction of the fall 2023 season is here. The PHILLIPS New York Watch Auction: NINE takes place on December 9 and 10, at our New York headquarters. The auction includes more than 150 of the world's finest watches – including the magnificent example of a 1962 Patek Philippe Ref. 2597 featured below.
– By Logan Baker
Patek Philippe's superlative reputation in the world of Swiss watchmaking has largely been built around the company's mastery of complicated watchmaking. Henry Graves Jr and James Ward Packard weren't buying simple time-only watches from Patek during their famous collecting rivalry that took place in the 1920s and '30s. Minute repeaters, perpetual calendars, chronographs, perpetual calendars and chronographs together – Patek has been and remains at the top of the complicated watchmaking monolith.
The vintage Patek Philippe wristwatch we're highlighting today is far less mechanically complex than a minute repeater or perpetual calendar, but it deserves more attention for being a first of its kind. You see, the ref. 2597 can rightfully be considered one of the very first wristwatches dedicated to tracking two time-zones at once.
The ref. 2597 was first introduced in 1957/1958. The design and complication was based on a prototype Patek had received from watchmaker Louis Cottier – the same gentleman that created the first world-time wristwatch, also for Patek – in 1953. Patek and Cottier had a special relationship that eventually saw Cottier deliver approximately 380 movements to the Geneva firm.
What made the ref. 2597 different from any previous Patek was the inclusion of a jumping hour hand, also known as heures sautantes, that could be moved forward or backward in one-hour increments by engaging with the slim-set pushers on the left-side of the caseband. You didn't even have to take out the crown! For early members of the jet-set in Europe and the United States, Patek's new take on a travel wristwatch was sleek, seamless, and refined, a big contrast to the few earlier second time-zone watches, like the Glycine Airman and Rolex GMT-Master, that were marketed more to civilian and military pilots at the time.
There are two distinct generations of the ref. 2597 you should be aware of. The first generation, introduced in circa 1957/58, featured only two central-set hands – one for the hours, and one for the minutes, with small seconds at six o'clock. You could then set the hour hand using the twin pushers to whatever new time-zone you were traveling to. It didn't actually have a second time-zone mechanism, but the watch's intention was clearly to reach the leisure passenger during the Golden Age of Flight.
It's worth making a note here of the primary casemaker for both generations of the ref. 2597 was Antoine Gerlach, one of the most important specialty manufacturing firms working for Patek Philippe in the middle of the 20th century. (Antoine Gerlach also produced the incredible ref. 844 pocket watch case.) Those with sharp eyes for vintage Patek might notice aesthetic similarities between the ref. 2597 and the standard non-jumping time-only Calatrava ref. 570. It's a fair observation – the ref. 2597 is more or less a ref. 570 with an upgraded movement. And I think it's all the better for it.
The ref. 2597 also changed movements halfway through its production life as well, evolving the caliber 12-400 to the caliber 27-400.
The ref. 2597's second series appeared a few years down the road, in 1962, with a major development – a third hand had been added to the watch's central pinion. This additional hand is closer in design to what we today associate with GMT watches; though the overall mechanical jumping hour system remained the same. Engaging these two pushers would move this new third hand, rendered in a much darker color than the gilt of the primary hands, in one-hour incremenets, either forward or backward.
Patek revisited the second-generation mechanical system in the 1990s inside watches like the ref. 5034, kickstarting a whole new era for the Travel-Time at Patek Philippe. They continue to use a variant of the heures sautantes approach to this day, including in many watches inside the Nautilus (ref. 5990), Aquanaut (ref. 5164), and Pilot (ref. 5524) collections. Laurent Ferrier, former Patek Philippe technical director, was also clearly inspired by the ref. 2579's simplicity when designing his own watch with a second time-zone display, the Galet Traveller.
As wonderful as those modern and contemporary Pateks and Laurent Ferriers are, there's something that's just radiant about a well-preserved ref. 2597 – but you'll have your work cut out for you if you decide the ref. 2597 is the right vintage Patek for you. We're not kidding, the ref. 2597 is an extremely rare watch.
It's believed that first-generation ref. 2597examples, such as the one included in our upcoming New York Watch Auction: NINE, were only produced in a run of approximately 100 examples, mostly in 18k yellow gold. The second generation had an even shorter production lifespan, lasting only two years before the last ref. 2579 is believed to have left Patek's Geneva facilities.
The rarest and most desirable configuration for the ref. 2597 are those cased in 18k pink gold. You can count on one hand how many have surfaced for sale in the past few decades. As a result, they tend to attract extremely high prices when sold at auction. The most expensive ref. 2597 sold at auction to date came at Phillips Geneva in November 2017, when one of the two known second generation ref. 2597s to be cased in 18k pink gold sold for CHF 540,500.
A total of 26 ref. 2597s have sold at auction from the start of 2013 up until the end of November 2023. First-generation pieces make up almost 85 percent of that total (22/26), selling for an average of USD $100,505. Four second-generation ref. 2597s have sold in the past decade, at an impressive average of USD $343,232.
The second-generation average is inflated by the outlier results of two pink gold ref. 2579s, where each sold for over half a million U.S. dollars. If the two outlier results are removed from the second-generation results, the average settles down to USD $164,374. That's still an impressive premium on the first-generation examples, but not quite as eye-popping as the inflated average.
Probably the most important detail to know about collecting these watches is that there was a decent amount of component swapping between the two ref. 2597 generations. When the Second Series was launched, Patek Philippe provided retailers who still had stock of the first-generation the chance to upgrade the older watch with a “three-hand service kit.” As a result, First Series examples retaining the original two-hand configuration are extremely scarce. If a ref. 2597 has a third central hand but carries a production date before 1961, it's likely that the third hand was added after the fact. That doesnt mean it's not an authentic Patek Philippe product, it just has a bit of a background story.
If we include the example (lot 152) offered in our upcoming New York Watch Auction: NINE, Phillips has sold nine examples of the ref. 2597 to date. It's always a special occasion when one comes up for sale, and it feels particularly appropriate to have it included in New York sale, given America's prominent role in developing the commercial air travel industry.
You can learn more, place a bid, and view the entire New York Watch Auction: NINE catalog right here.
About Phillips In Association With Bacs & Russo
The team of specialists at PHILLIPS Watches is dedicated to an uncompromised approach to quality, transparency, and client service. Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo holds the world record for the most successful watch auction, with its Geneva Watch Auction: XIV having realized $74.5 million in 2021. Over the course of 2021 and 2022, the company sold 100% of the watches offered, a first in the industry, resulting in the highest annual total in history across all the auction houses at $227 million.
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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