Why the Audemars Piguet Pocketwatch Costs $3 Million
Last year marked a pivotal moment for Audemars Piguet. The Swiss luxury watchmaker celebrated its 150th year in business by evolving hip-hop’s favorite watch and releasing its most radical timepiece to date. But what if it got even more radical?
To even better celebrate Audemars Piguet's historic anniversary, it created the Audemars Piguet 150 Heritage, an ancient-looking pocketwatch that contains some of the brand’s finest, most modern watchmaking.
Behind the 50-millimeter hand-engraved platinum case lives Audemars Piguet's newest ultra-complication, the Calibre 1150, which is essentially the complication from the brand's genius RD#4 wristwatch but somehow smaller. This feat of horology consists of 1,099 components and 47 functions, including 30 individual complications from a split-seconds chronograph to a flying tourbillon.
Impressive stuff, and that’s before you flip the thing over.
On the pocketwatch’s caseback is a Gregorian perpetual calendar keeping track of the year alongside the solar, lunar, and lunisolar cycles.
This is some of Audemars Piguet's most advanced watchmaking, all hanging from a handmade platinum chain. But there’s a catch.
Revealed as the centrepiece of AP Social Club 2026, an annual gathering where Audemars Piguet’s finest innovations are unveiled, only two of the 150 Heritage pocketwatches exist, priced at CHF 2,500,000 (around $3,218,000). However, an upcoming white gold version is slightly less exclusive — a whole eight pocketwatches will be produced! — and slightly cheaper at CHF 2,350,000 (around $3,025,000).
Safe to say only a select handful of AP’s top clients will have access to this pocketwatch, which is the first one AP has released in over a decade. At least some of the other AP Social Club 2026 watches aren’t quite so limited and come with more palatable price tags.
There is the Neo Frame Jumping Hour, a sleek black and 18-carat pink gold jump hour watch retailing at $71,200 and a trio of updated existing styles. The Royal Oak, AP’s most famous watch, comes with two upgraded complications: the Calibre 6401, a more responsive self-winding chronograph movement, and the Calibre 7139, an in-house self-winding perpetual calendar openwork movement also brought onto the Code 11.59, arguably AP’s most underrated watch.
These are substantial updates to AP’s selection that would be a big deal on their own. It’s just that the $3.2 million pocketwatch can’t help but be the center of attention.
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