Our first live auction of 2025, the PHILLIPS Geneva Watch Auction: XXI, takes place on 10 - 11 May, at the Hotel President, at Quai Wilson 47, in central Geneva. The auction includes nearly 200 of the world's finest watches – and though we are loath to boast, we truly think it's one of the best catalogs we've ever put together. We'll be highlighting a number of the most interesting lots and stories featured in the sale over the next month, including the one-of-a-kind brushed platinum Vacheron Constantin ref. 6448 detailed below.
– By Logan Baker
Believe it or not, but Vacheron Constantin has been developing timepieces with chiming mechanisms for over 200 years. As early as the 1810s, Vacheron crafted pocket watches that could strike the time on demand.
Incredible historical creations such as the 1929 Grande Complication No. 402833 pocket watch that was presented to King Fouad I of Egypt helped cement Vacheron’s reputation as one of Switzerland’s most impressive makers of chiming watches.
By the 1930s, Vacheron was introducing its first minute-repeating wristwatches, highlighted by a watch Phillips followers will already be familiar with: the one-of-a-kind “Don Pancho.”
Officially known as the reference 3620, this unique wristwatch was commissioned in 1935 and completed in 1940 on the request of the Spanish businessman Francisco “Don Pancho” Llano.
Housed in a chunky yellow gold tonneau case with the crown at 12 o’clock, it combined a minute repeater with an innovative 31-day retrograde calendar display. It is among only three known wristwatches produced before 1940 to marry a repeater with a calendar function. The Don Pancho’s successful miniaturization of typically pocket-watch complexities into a wristwatch foreshadowed Vacheron’s ongoing commitment to pushing technical boundaries. It sold for CHF 740,000 at Phillips Geneva, in May 2019.
Mid-Century Minute Repeating
By the 1940s, Vacheron Constantin truly hit its stride with its ultra-thin ref. 4261. It holds a special place as the brand’s first serially produced minute-repeating wristwatch model. Launched in 1943, the ref. 4261 was made in exceedingly small numbers – less than 40 pieces through 1951 – yet it helped to define the mid-century Vacheron style.
A study in mid-century elegance, the ref. 4261 has a clean dial in a midsize precious-metal case set off by distinctive teardrop-shaped lugs, a design flourish that became a Vacheron hallmark. Inside was an extra-flat hand-wound movement (mostly 12-ligne in size, but approximately 10 examples are known with a larger 13-ligne movement) that made the watch remarkably slim. In fact, the ref. 4261’s case is only about 5.25 mm thick, an astonishing feat for a chiming watch and a record at the time.
By the early 1960s, Vacheron Constantin’s minute repeaters reached a turning point with the elusive ref. 6448. Produced in only three unique examples between 1961 and 1962, the ref. 6448 took a different design direction.
It featured modern straight lugs (departing from the ref. 4261’s teardrops) and slightly larger cases. Two examples were made in white gold, while one was in platinum – the platinum piece notably distinguished by an unusual brushed-finish case and diamond hour markers on the dial. Fresh to market and coming from the family of its original owner, this exact brushed platinum ref. 6448 is included in the upcoming Geneva Watch Auction: XXI (lot 57).
Technically, the ref. 6448 continued to use Vacheron’s ultra-thin 13-ligne repeater movement, so despite its refined dress-watch appearance it packed serious horological firepower. Yet, the ref. 6448 marked the end of an era – it was the last minute repeater wristwatch Vacheron Constantin would make for thirty years. After those final 1962 deliveries, the art of the wristwatch repeater went quiet at Vacheron, lying dormant as the company navigated the quartz age and other watchmaking priorities in the ensuing decades.
A 1990s Revival
Vacheron Constantin’s long silence on minute repeaters was finally broken in the early 1990s. As mechanical watchmaking resurged, the Geneva-based company recommitted to its heritage of chiming watches with the development of a new movement: caliber 1755 (named in honor of Vacheron’s founding year).
Work on this modern minute repeater caliber began around 1988 in collaboration with complication specialist Dubois-Dépraz. The goal was ambitious – to create a contemporary ultra-thin repeater that could stand alongside the legends of the past. The result, launched in 1992 for Vacheron’s 237th anniversary, was a hand-wound movement just 3.28 mm thick.
This made the caliber 1755 the slimmest minute-repeating caliber ever, even thinner than the vintage 4261’s mechanisms. Vacheron only ever produced 200 examples of the caliber 1755, primarily split between the dressy, two-handed ref. 30010 and the skeletonized ref. 30030 (to best show off the movement's tiny hammers and gongs). A number of the movements were also upgraded with perpetual calendar modules and used in the minute-repeating QP ref. 30020 and ref. 30040.
Cramming both a full calendar and a striking mechanism into one watch was no small feat – the combined movement was still under 5 mm thick – but it demonstrated Vacheron’s determination to reclaim its status at the pinnacle of fine watchmaking.
Into the 21st Century and Beyond
Vacheron Constantin’s quest for the finest in chiming watches didn’t stop with caliber 1755. In 2013, the manufacture unveiled the caliber 1731, a newly developed ultra-thin minute repeater named as a tribute to founder Jean-Marc Vacheron’s birth year.
This movement measures a scant 3.90 mm in height – slightly thicker than the record-setting caliber 1755, yet still the thinnest minute repeater caliber in production at the time of its debut.
Vacheron used this caliber to create the Patrimony Contemporaine Ultra-Thin Calibre 1731 wristwatch, which set its own records: the case was only 8.09 mm thick, making it the slimmest minute-repeating watch in the world upon its release.
Vacheron Constantin continues to uphold and extend its chiming legacy today.
A fitting coda to this story is the brand’s most recent crowning achievement in high complications: the Les Cabinotiers “Solaria” Ultra Grand Complication. Unveiled earlier this month at Watches & Wonders Geneva 2025 to mark Vacheron’s 270th anniversary, the Solaria is nothing less than the world’s most complicated wristwatch, packing an unprecedented 41 complications into a single timepiece. Among its many functions are multiple calendars, astronomical indicators, a tourbillon, and, of course, five separate chiming complications – all synergized in a watch that took eight years to develop.
It’s more clear than ever that the minute repeater – that most romantic of all complications – remains central to Vacheron Constantin’s identity.
You can learn more, place a bid, and view the entire Geneva Watch Auction: XXI catalogue 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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