A Collected Man, a private dealer in London, England, had its eye on the prize as it unveiled the priciest independent watch the market has seen to date. The Philippe Dufour Grande et Petite Sonnerie Number 3 had been listed with an asking price of $7.63 million!

Why so high? This piece was originally designed for the Sultan of Brunei, one of only eight pieces Philippe Dufour constructed by hand for this series. Additionally, the technical insight and craftsmanship that go into a piece like this are impressive on their own.

Minute repeaters are very difficult pieces to build. To get the sound just right, careful attention must be paid to not only precision but also to the musicality of the timepiece. Small hammers clank on round gongs to produce the ring that has put such watches on the map.

The wearer hears the quarterly hour chime thanks to the Grande Sonneries which also repeat the hour. The Petite Sonneries, on the other hand, ring every 15 minutes without the repeat.

A selector slide allows the watch to operate in either mode. A push-button on the top of the timepiece can set a minute repeater.

A Collected Man

A Collected Man

Swiss-born Dufour knows fame in the watchmaker world like no other. He is applauded for having used traditional techniques to offer three types of watches. The Grande et Petite Sonnerie minute-repeater is one. 

For Dufour, practice makes perfect. Those who intimately witnessed the production have stated that he spent almost all of his waking hours cranking out the meticulous timepieces. This is why he is considered by many to be the master of modern watchmaking.

As the watchmaker broke into the world of Horlogerie, he was determined to stand out from the crowd. This ambition drove him to tackle the challenge of putting a Grande et Petite Sonnerie into a device as small as a wristwatch.