Bird’s Eye View of NYC with A Million Dollar Watch

A Million point one, to be correct. We’re talking about that time we decided to fly out a $1.1 m Greubel Forsey Double Tourbillon 30 degrees Technique Sapphire watch on a helicopter above the city of New York.

While in some cases the look of sapphire on the casing looks more like a child’s plastic toy-watch or something that’s been just hanging in a watchmaker’s workspace as a plastic prototype, this is not the case. Being Greubel Forsey means being at least a few steps ahead of anything else. There needs to be price justification. And while most of us would never justify the 1 million…. (whatever complications they throw in there) Geubel Forsey much like a talented artist with personality, have managed to build such a strong name that it’s a lot easier to believe they’ve done substantial work on both movement and casing. To prove that, they took a completely different approach with the sapphire. Instead of merging 2 or 3 pieces of it to make one casing they took a single sapphire crystal and built the whole casing out of it. One part. That is very impressive.

Another thing is, the Double Tourbillon 30 degrees Technique is no new watch. It’s definitely my second personal favourite after the GMT complication, but the fact that we’ve seen other case materials allows us to understand what really is the difference in price point and value of sapphire according to Greubel Forsey. Let’s do some simple maths. The rose gold (bi-colour) version is priced at around $700’000, which makes the added value of sapphire crystal as well as a limited edition of only 8 pieces roughly 400’000. If we compare that to some other sapphire watches on the market that is pretty damn good.

But you were probably here for the view to begin with, so let’s get back to it!

Photography by Petro Onysko for WatchAnish.com