From their earliest beginnings in the 19th century, Patek Philippe was at the forefront of quality workmanship and timeless elegance with pocket watches as their main selling product until the rise of wristwatches in the early 20th-century. Today, wristwatches attract the most attention, however their production of complicated pocket watches is incomparable. Through the decades, they produced openface and hunter cased watches in a variety of designs and fashions from plain cased to intricately enamelled watches that command significant results at auction. The reference 725 is part of a line of perpetual calendar pocket watches produced from the early 1940s with the DNA of Patek Philippe’s iconic wristwatch references such as the 1518, 1526, 2497, and 2499. It was offered in a variety of dial configurations with known reference variants of 725-1, 725-2, 725-3, and 725-4, and encased in yellow gold, pink gold, and platinum.

Beginning in the 1940s the “Bell Pendant” reference 706 was released, followed by the references 715 and 725 like the present watch, which is one of only 10 known yellow gold reference 725-2 examples. With a contemporary and sleek 46mm case, all variants of the reference 725 were housed in Wenger-made cases – the same maker for the vast majority of reference 2499 wristwatches. The -2 dial variant places the leap year indication at the 12 o’clock position with each of the four year sectors containing the months of the year.

The present example is in excellent overall condition and accompanied by the Patek Philippe Extract from the Archives confirming its production in 1952. This extraordinary pocket watch is a wonderful example of the traditional workmanship of a bygone era, and a rare opportunity for the connoisseur.