Top 35 Most Expensive Watches In The World

No. 28. Hublot Ferrari

Price: $318,000

This is again on No. 28 because there is a tie between Hublot Ferrari and IWC – Grande Complication. Hublot has created a limited edition Ferrari watch that costs more than most of the actual cars. For the bargain price of $318,000, brand fans can wrap the MP-05 LaFerrari watch around their wrists. Compared to the million-dollar-plus LaFerrari supercar, the Hublot Ferrari watch seems like a bargain.

Hublot designed the MP-05 LaFerrari watch to show appreciation for its association with the Ferrari brand. The watch is quite complex, much like a Ferrari. It features 637 individual components, a tourbillon, and can function for 50 days with no power. The watch sort of resembles a supercar engine, which is pretty cool.

No. 27. Concord – C1 Tourbillon Gravity

Price: $320,000

When Concord released the C1 Quantum Gravity Tourbillon in 2008, many people believed it signalled what the future of high-end watchmaking would look like. It was a time of rapid modernisation in the watch industry, in both talent, and perceptions of what high-end collectors wanted to buy. There was less focus on traditionally conservative design, and a great deal of experimentation with what were, in the context of the often staid high-end watch industry, quite radical designs. In many ways the C1 Quantum Gravity Tourbillon helped define an era.

While the “Quantum-inspired” super-watch era never replaced a preference for traditional designs, projects like the C1 Quantum Gravity Tourbillon have had a lasting effect on what modern luxury timepieces strive to be.

Under the Movado group, Concord was “re-launched” only shortly before they released the C1 Quantum Gravity Tourbillon. The brand eschewed much of its traditional DNA, instead opting for a futuristic industrial look, which reached its zenith in this particular timepiece. The movement of the Quantum Gravity is a feat unto itself, in addition to the overall case design. Concord worked with the hottest movement maker of the era, a firm known as BNB Concept, to develop the mechanism inside the watch. Heavy on conceptualisation, the movement features a bi-axial tourbillon (spins on two axis points at once), connected to the rest of the movement with tiny suspension-bridge-style wires. A small cylinder of green liquid is located on the dial, which empties and fills as a means of indicating the power reserve left in the mechanical movement.

The easiest way of understanding the point of the C1 Quantum Gravity Tourbillon is to realise that it helped fully legitimise modern conceptual futuristic design as having a place in the high-end watch industry. Whatever it lacked in elegance, it made up for in inventiveness.

Concord fully acknowledges that the movement was designed separately from the case, something common at the time, when both elements of the watch had distinct appeal to collectors. In mostly titanium and 18k white gold, the C1 Quantum Gravity Tourbillon watch even relied on vulcanised black rubber as a case material and design element. Only 10 pieces were ever produced.