The very first Biver watch produced by Pierre Biver and his father Jean-Claude has sold for £1.3 million at an auction in Geneva.
The watch, a prototype Tourbillon Minute Repeater Carillon in Titanium, is a unique piece with a silvered obsidian stone dial.
Being a prototype, it is not even given the serial number 1, but is instead recorded as unit 00/00 on its case back.
Bidding for the watch, orchestrated by Phillips head of watches Aurel Bacs, went on for 15 minutes as collectors from three continents — online, by telephone and in the room — fought for piece.
The new owner, said to hail from America, has jumped the queue for the first Biver watch by several months since production of the first of three Tourbillon Minute Repeater Carillon models has only just begun, with deliveries not expected until September.
“We wanted the minute repeater to be the foundation stone of the brand,” Pierre Biver says. “A contemporary watch, in a neo-classical style, which is inspired by tradition but which represents both my father and me.”
The Carillon Tourbillon Biver combines a tourbillon and minute repeater in an automatic watch using the JCB-001 movement with 374 components and a power reserve of 72 hours.
Its value is partly in its complexity, but more in the finishing of its movement and display with gold hour and minute hands and domed silver obsidian hardstone dial with applied gold hour markers.
The watch comes in a 42mm titanium case, but there will also be pieces in rose gold.
Pre-orders are being taken with a price of $550,000.
