The year 2020 has already seen a huge shift to online everything. In the watch world, this has meant auction houses quickly adapting, holding online auctions and beefing up their online platforms to allow for easier online previewing and bidding.

In another sign of the times, Phillips just set a record price for a watch sold to an online bidder. Lot 39 in this week’s Geneva Watch XII hammered for CHF 4.1 million, with a final sale price of CHF 4.99m including buyer’s premium. The exciting bidding action bounced between online, phone and in-person bidders over a few minutes. In the end, the lot was won by an online bidder in Germany.

As auctioneer Aurel Bacs hammered down the gavel, he noted the hammer price set the record for the highest price for a watch sold at auction to an online bidder, besting the previous record four times over. On too little sleep, I can’t recall the current record. Hodinkee references a nearly $830,000 sale from June 2020 as the record for a watch sold at an online auction, but I believe that may have been the record for an online-only sale, and not a hybrid auction such as Phillips Geneva XII.

The record-setting lot is a Patek Philippe Word Timer reference 2523 in pink gold, one of four known with a guilloche dial (one is owned by the Patek Philippe Museum). Launched in 1953, the reference 2523 featured a new two-crown system, one for winding the watch and the other at 9 o’clock controlling the city disc. Two versions were available, reference 2523 with larger lugs sitting above the bezel and reference 2523/1 with a slightly larger diameter and thinner lugs no longer sitting above the bezel.

I’ll update this post as more information becomes available; I also plan on doing a deep-dive on the Patek World Timer reference 2523 in the coming weeks.

See the lot here.