How to collect Patek Philippe: an insider's guide

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian Tsar tried to entrust Patek Philippe with manufacture of all watches for his court, a commission that the company, with regret, was obliged to decline as it was already flooded with orders many from the New World From Tennessee to Wall Street, the plutocrats of Gilded Age America regarded possession of a complicated Patek Philippe watch as one of the axioms of success Above all, Patek is consistent and, as with thoroughbred racehorses, there are distinct Patek Philippe bloodlines.

One of its most celebrated movements, the Calibre 240 with the 22-carat gold micro rotor, a true micro-mechanical masterpiece, made its debut at the nadir of the so-called quartz crisis in 1977.It is this independence, allied to a stubborn belief in what it does, that accounts for Patek maintaining production of certain models because they are key to the Patek story rather than because they account for a huge proportion of sales During the 1960s, advances in mass production meant that cheaply produced watches were able to imitate the appearance of luxury timepieces with ever greater facility and therefore a design was sought that would, at a glance, be distinguishable from the common run of watches The design of the Golden Ellipse was of such superb simplicity that it soon became Patek Philippe's most readily identifiable timepiece Thierry Stern kept it in the collection because it was an important part of Patek history, it being a watch introduced by his grandfather.

Patek undertakes to repair any watch it has ever made. . Source