Hear the sweet sound! ULTRA RARE Patek Philippe 5374P minute repeater
Patek Philippe Minute Repeater Perpetual Calendar 5374P
One of the things I love most about the watch world is the sheer variety.
I know that’s about the blandest statement you could ever make, but you have to really get to know these minuature machines before you can start to appreciate just how strikingly different they can be from one another.
I have a friend who has preciscely zero interest in watches, and when I’m busy boring on about whatever has taken my fancy on that particular day, declares that “yay, its another roundy thing”.
The heretic.
Nonetheless, my world tends to revolve around simple steel round things, with high water resistance, steel bracelets, and nothing more complicated than a date, thank-you-very-much.
Im comfortable with my sports niche, along with probably around 50+ percent of the watch nerd community, but sometimes, you get something a little different in hand, and you find so much more to appreciate.
Weird preamble aside, get a load of this:
Platinum
Grand feu enamel dial in a glorious jet black
Breguet numerals
Perpetual calendar
CATHEDRAL GONGS!
It’s a stonkingly attractive grand complication, with an absolute corker of a movement. You almost don’t know where to start on such a complex piece, but given that I’m a visual type, lets go for the looks first.
This 5347P has a 42mm platinum case which most definitely comes under the “roundy thing” category but just look at the flow of the curves and cambers of the case design, particularly the convex sweep of the bezel towards the case which is glorious.
It’s extremely well executed, and tactile.
Some things are just a pleasure to feel “in the metal” and this is one such piece, with no sharp lines and nothing harsh to the touch, it feels organic, like a smooth pebble, but at the same time, there’s a bit of a thrill knowing that this is a lump of RARE precious metal.
How rare?
If you compacted all of the platinum ever produced, you’d get a cube that was around 7.7 metres on all sides.
It’s a celestial metal that only exists on earth because 4 billion years ago our planet was bombarded by meteorites which exploded and sent their cargo, which included platinum, scattering across the earths surface.
Over the course of a few hundred million years, tectonic plates took over, sealed the earths crusts, and the platinum within it, for us to start digging up and using for jewellery millions of years later.
Mad that this material is literally not of our world, yet here it is, right here on my desk in Jardin Du Mayfair.
No idea where in the universe it came from, and thats probably a discussion best had down the pub, so on to the dial.
It is a glorious deep jet black “grand feu” enamel dial, which is, in truth, a real pain in the rear to manufacture with a high failure rate, hence being usually reserved for haute pieces.
Grand feu translates to big fire, which is essentially the production process.
The base of the dial is an 18ct gold disk, which is coated in a single layer of enamel, then baked at 850 degrees to fuse the enamel to the blank.
Then, the dial is “built up” by adding a layer, firing it, adding a layer, firing it and so on. Each new layer added to the dial risks trashing it completely through cracking or bubbling. Its a long and complex process, but the result is a spectacular rich deep gloss that can’t really be replicated.
Mounted to the dial are polished white gold breguet numerals which add some nice light-play, and the subdials used for the perpetual calendar use a crisp white print which is exceptionally legible. Lumed leaf hands top it all off for easy reading.
While the front of this watch is very attractive indeed, the rear is no slouch either.
The automatic Patek calibre R-27-Q is on full display and uses a micro-rotor to keep the rest of the movement available for your delectation, all four hundred and sixty seven parts of it, as this is a grand complication after all.
It’s a perpetual calendar calibre which means that in theory it wont need to be reset until the turn of the century, as its more than capable of dealing with leap years, moon phases, and shorter months. Its a spectacular movement.
Check out some of the curves, and also the fine pair of cathedral gongs sitting adjacent to the Calatrava cross.
The gongs will chime the hours, quarters and minutes when activated - using the slider on the left hand side of the case and ring out a decidedly lovely clear chime which you’d be very unlikely to bore of any time soon.
If you prefer your casebacks closed, this model has an additional closed caseback so you can cover-up if you’d like, some prefer modesty, I prefer to watch the gongs as they strike.