Our first live auctions of the fall 2023 season are here! The PHILLIPS Geneva Watch Auction: XIX, takes place on May 11 and 12, at the Hotel President, at Quai Wilson 47 in central Geneva, and the Hong Kong Watch Auction: XVIII takes place on May 24 and 25, at our West Kowloon headquarters. The auctions include hundreds of the world's finest watches – and naturally, there are a number of extraordinary pieces from Mr. François-Paul Journe, including seven in Geneva and eight in Hong Kong.
To celebrate the upcoming auction, we're republishing one of our top stories from last year, which takes an in-depth look at the rise of F.P. Journe at auction over the past five years.
– By Logan Baker
If you’ve browsed almost any watch auction catalog from the past four years, Phillips or otherwise, you’re no doubt familiar with F.P. Journe.
Interest in the Marseille-born, Geneva-based independent watchmaker has surged to an all-time high over the past few years. What was once a niche corner of the watch collecting hobby has exploded in interest and awareness. Sure, F.P. Journe has always been considered one of the more prominent watchmakers of the 21st century, but it would have been nearly impossible for anyone to anticipate the current level of interest in his work.
There are, however, a few key elements we’ve discerned that help in understanding F.P. Journe and the company’s recent growth surge – and we talked with a few of our friends to tease the thoughts out.
Authenticity In Approach
One of the most important things to understand about F.P. Journe is his conviction. He's never once betrayed his own individual perspective on watchmaking. There's no better proof of that than the aesthetics of his watches.
F.P. Journe watches are not to everybody's taste. The designs are incredibly distinctive and are largely informed by the history of watchmaking. More importantly, the unique look of watches represent Journe's personal vision.
That vision is one built around authenticity, wholly dedicated to respecting the history of fine watchmaking while pushing the craft forward through genuine horological innovation. Journe has never been one to hop on any trends or bandwagons. He’s never produced a watch he wasn't deeply passionate about.
“He started in restoration, which is where I think most important artisanal, independent watchmakers begin,” Michael Tay, Managing Director of The Hour Glass, and a longtime friend and supporter of F.P. Journe, says. “He has this incredible underpinning of scholarship, from antiquarian horology all the way through to modern-day watchmaking. I think that fundamentally lays an incredible foundation for any watchmaker, to not just be creative with the aesthetics of a watch but also to innovate. If you can't master the past, you won't be able to create the future.”
A dedicated pocket of collectors has always followed F.P. Journe’s career. The fact that the brand was born via the support of clients through a souscription methodology should not be taken lightly. But the audience has typically been a small one, and there historically has been a very limited appetite for F.P. Journe watches on the secondary market.
“It was just slow, steady growth over time,” Osama Sendi, the collector and historian that’s known as The Journe Guy and who now works for F.P. Journe himself, says. “It starts off with curiosity – it’s a small brand, it’s very niche – so there’s a curiosity factor, and then you start to do research behind it all.”
A desire to dig deep and learn more is a critical part in becoming an F.P. Journe collector.
Scholarship And Social Media
The barrier of entry into F.P. Journe is higher than most other brands and watchmakers – and I don’t mean in relation to dollars and cents. It takes an elevated understanding of both technical and historical watchmaking to fully appreciate much of what Journe does.
“In the early days of the watch internet, forums such as The Purists covered Journe extensively,” Tay says. “The information then transitioned to blogs, and then to social media and Instagram, which, I think, amplified everything. It all became more available because of these new digital tools.”
There is also just so much diversity available from F.P. Journe – from collections and complications, all the way down to the multiple generations and dial variants found in certain models – that it can be an almost endless activity to try and study every reference, not to mention potentially hunting down your perfect example.
There are endless rabbit holes for collectors to explore, and unlike a legacy brand, Journe himself is still around and able to assist in the development of collector knowledge and expertise.
"That's something that you can't find with other large brands,” Sendi says. "With Journe, you can go to François-Paul and ask him, ‘Why did you put your power reserve here and not there?’ And he has an answer, and he's okay with you asking about it.”
F.P. Journe watches also potentially saw a boost due to the COVID-19 pandemic, something we saw occur in many previously esoteric areas of watch collecting.
“I think COVID also helped, because it gave people time to review all the independent watchmakers,” Tay says. “When people had time to really sit down to assess his body of work over the last four decades, they came to realize he's not just a craftsman, he's not just a watchmaker. People realized that he’s an incredible genius making a very small number of watches. He's demonstrated to the world that he has the wherewithal to shoulder the responsibility of being the leader of this generation of watchmakers.”
The immense variety present in Journe’s back catalog also plays a significant role in the results and prices you see in the auction room and elsewhere on the secondary market. Unless you’re fluent in Journe, it can be difficult to understand why a certain watch carries such a large premium over one that looks similar. It can also be difficult to understand how and why auction results can rapidly evolve – both positively and negatively – in the span of a few weeks.
Those auction results can also inform scholarship and help drive brand recognition, particularly when early, historic watches surface for the very first time.
“I think the start of this current momentum was the sale of the number nine Tourbillon Souscription by Phillips in 2015,” Sendi says. “I think that was the start of a gradual momentum. It was the first time there was a huge connection to a great, historic, iconic timepiece from the brand; it caught a lot of attention. After that, there was more and more attention given to special dials, special configurations, and early pieces.”
However, that momentum eventually attracted more than just old-school watch enthusiasts.
Don’t Shoot The Messenger – But Speculators Are People, Too
“We all know that not everybody that is now interested in Journe's watches is a genuine collector," Jacopo Corvo, the owner of GMT Italia, a Milan-based Authorized Retailer that has worked with Journe for nearly 20 years, says. “It was inevitable, and it started when Journe created his own certified pre-owned (CPO) program in 2016. He was the first brand to buy his rare and old watches back from his collectors.”
These so-called “speculators” represent a new breed of watch-adjacent individuals that keep detailed track of a specific watch’s desirability as reflected by its market performance. They’ve taken the shape of both large-scale digital platforms selling pre-owned watches, as well as individual dealers and collectors wanting to make a buck. It’s even become hard for some to separate the ingenuity of F.P. Journe as a watchmaker from the high prices that some people are willing to pay for certain watches.
“The explosion of interest in F.P. Journe is really related to price,” William Massena, the longtime collector and watch-industry veteran behind Massena Lab, says. “It's always interesting to see a design that has been around for 20 years suddenly be loved by everybody. You have genuine collectors that are really interested in the brand, and then you have guys that are interested in the opportunity to buy a watch on Monday and sell it on Friday. By doing this, they created demand – people couldn't find the watch they wanted, so the second they did find it, they would pay an astronomic price. And that drove the market. People started writing articles saying, ‘Look at the price of Journe; they have doubled, they have tripled. Look at this astonishing auction result.’ Suddenly everybody wants one.”
Journe, rightfully, can’t help but feel a bit of pride in all the commotion.
“Certain players have tried to market F.P. Journe watches as an asset class,” Tay says. “I think Journe appreciates the fact that people place such a value on his watches, because it recognizes the importance of his work. There's no good or bad to it. At the same time, I don’t think all the individuals who bought at these prices truly understand the fundamental nature of what he's doing, and why he's doing it.”
A Big Anniversary
Twenty-nineteen was the year you could clearly see a shift in enthusiast interest away from mainstream parts of the watch collecting hobby. It was the year F.P. Journe officially moved out of the horological periphery and into the beating heart of global collecting culture.
“You have to understand that 2019 was a very important year for F.P. Journe,” Tay says. "That was his 20th anniversary. Journe had been secretly working for six or seven years on all his 20th anniversary launches. It took a lot of time. The Tourbillon became the Vertical Tourbillon. He introduced the Résonance with constant force; he released the Chronographe Rattrapante. There was this wave of new watches that came onto the scene, and people suddenly realized that he had continued to challenge himself. He could have just rehashed what he was already doing, but no, his innovative spirit didn't allow him to just sit back and do nothing.”
You can learn more, place a bid, and view the entire Geneva Watch Auction: XIX catalog here, and the Hong Kong Watch Auction: XVIII right here.
About Phillips In Association With Bacs & Russo
The team of specialists at PHILLIPS Watches is dedicated to an uncompromised approach to quality, transparency, and client service. Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo holds the world record for the most successful watch auction, with its Geneva Watch Auction: XIV having realized $74.5 million in 2021. Over the course of 2021 and 2022, the company sold 100% of the watches offered, a first in the industry, resulting in the highest annual total in history across all the auction houses at $227 million.
About Logan Baker
Logan has spent the past decade working in watch-focused media, reporting on every aspect of the industry. He joined Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo at the start of 2023 as the department's Senior Editorial Manager. He splits his time between New York and Geneva.
Recommended Reading
A Beginner’s Guide To The World Of F.P. Journe
A Round-Up Of The Greatest F.P. Journe Watches Sold At Phillips (So Far!)
François-Paul Journe Shares Personal Stories Behind His Creations