Alas, it’s very likely that neither I nor anyone else other than a very few friends of the owner will see this watch; it’s a unique piece, it’s already sold, and both owner and price are confidential per Vacheron Constantin. The secrecy naturally invites speculation, though, and given the nature of this watch as a derivative in many key respects of the reference 57260, as well as the relatively close timing of its release with the announcement of the 57260, it seems a reasonable hypothesis that the owner of the wristwatch might be the same individual who commissioned reference 57260 nearly a decade ago. After all, spectacular as reference 57260 is, it’s not the most easily portable timepiece and though nominally a pocket watch, one struggles to imagine a waistcoat with an ample enough pocket to contain it (if it were me I’d have one made just to be able to carry the supercomplication – after all, in for a dime, in for a dollar). This way, the owner will be able to carry a token of his or her possession of the world’s most complicated pocket watch on their wrist – assuming the hypothesis is correct. Even if the owner of the Retrograde Armillary Tourbillon is not the owner of the 57260, they’ve still got a unique, and very uniquely beautiful, complicated wristwatch.
The Vacheron Constantin Maître Cabinotier Retrograde Armillary Tourbillon, reference 91990/000G-9882. Movement, caliber 1990, hand wound, 35 mm x 10 mm (15 3/4 lignes), 65-hour power reserve, 18,000 vph. Instantaneous retrograde hours and minutes, small seconds on the tourbillon carriage. Case, 18k white gold, 45.7 mm x 20.6 mm, sapphire crystals front and back, pressure tested to 3 atmospheres/30 meters; Geneva Hallmark.
Read our hands-on coverage of the reference 57260 right here, and our full technical breakdown here.
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