Auctions: The Five Results That Actually Mattered, From The Spring 2026 Auction Season
The watch world hasn't seen an auction season like this in quite some time. Well, ever, frankly. Phillips set multiple records (43 by their count, though many are quite obscure), including a new record for the highest single sale of $96,328,083, besting their result from just last fall. If you add in their online auction, they passed $100 million for the first time ever. Sotheby's smashed the record for the most expensive A. Lange & Söhne ever (for a pocket watch, we might add)—a record that only stood for a few weeks, set during the house's Hong Kong sale. But it wasn't so much the overall numbers that were shocking as the fact of which watches were selling for what prices. So, what the heck is going on? Well, we were watching; some of us from afar, others (Andy Hoffman) in the auction rooms. Instead of focusing solely on broad strokes, let's look at five specific results and why they matter for the market. A Bog-Standard Stainless Steel Akrivia AK-06 is Now a $3.8 Million Watch, 30 Times Its Original Retail Rexhep Rexhepi is the hottest watchmaker of the new, young generation, and it's not particularly close. That's not a dig on his contemporaries, but rather a reflection of the realities of the market, where people are clamoring (to an unbelievable degree) to buy a watch from a man who has made very few watches in the first place, and the few that have come to market reach astronomical prices. There aren't many data points to go off of. Only twelve Akrivia or Rexhep ...
Fratello
