The Royal Oak was the world’s first stainless steel luxury sports watch with a fully integrated bracelet. Audemars Piguet sought famed designer Gerald Genta, who developed a brilliantly engineered monobloc case, with a distinctively maritime feel featuring an octagonal bezel secured by eight hexagonal white gold screws. Designed overnight in response to a request for an “unprecedented steel watch”, it was at the same time the most expensive stainless steel watch ever made. Since the Royal Oak’s launch in 1972, the model has undergone various design changes, and upgraded with complications with early iterations featuring the automatic caliber 2121 based on the Jaeger-LeCoultre caliber 920 and finished by Audemars Piguet. In 2005 the brand introduced a new model the reference 15300, which featured a new in-house movement, the caliber 3120.

AP’s new automatic movement was a superbly conceived and well-executed caliber with numerous novel features including a sixty-hour power reserve relying on only one barrel, a Gyromax, free-sprung balance held in place via a bridge and a date mechanism equipped with a safety system preventing the date disk from blocking if the owner tried to manually reset the date at midnight. The reference 15300 remained in production until 2012 when it was replaced by the reference 15400 with a larger 41mm diameter case compared to the 39mm diameter case found on the 15300 and the original Royal Oak, which at the time was considered large for wristwatch and was nicknamed the “Jumbo”.

The present example is in excellent original condition with a crisp case and flawless silvered dial. The reference 15300 is considered by many as the quintessential modern Royal Oak, having found the perfect equilibrium between iconic design and modern mechanics.

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