Starting from right now you have just a little over 4 days to bid on one of the most elegant watches in the entire Patek Philippe catalog. Catawiki Auctions has a rare Patek Philippe 5170G-001 Complications Chronograph open for bidding, and it is presently the only one of its kind available for sale throughout Europe. The bidding currently stands at £23,923, but for a watch of this rarity the only way is up. The market retail value is over $81,000.

Production of this particular model ceased in 2015, but the watch represents everything that Patek Philippe stands for; refined elegance, impeccable taste and supreme confidence without ever being overstated.

Contemporary design, vintage flair


Although a modern chronograph, the 5170G has an unmistakable vintage 1940s flair, a pleasingly simple, clean piece designed purely for measuring time. Nothing is superfluous; no calendar, no split-seconds, no date window, no extreme features, definitely no diamonds.

This is a chronograph you can just as easily wear with a suit as a handsome dress watch as you can with jeans and a leather bomber jacket on the weekends. Nor does the watch include any of the fancy haute horology embellishments of certain models. For example, there are no blued hands, no warm gold, no guilloche work, no super-sized case, not even a champagne dial. Rather like the Calatrava, it just goes quietly about its business.


The 5170G comes only in white metal, with a white or black dial. Up for auction is the white gold 001 dial version. In keeping with the overall look of the piece, the dial is free of large logos, oversized numerals and the marques of co-sponsors, for there are none. Instead there are simply clean applied Breguet numerals.

In terms of features the 39mm watch includes an elapsed time counter and minute markers around the outer rim. The Chronograph sub-dials display 60 seconds and 30 minutes.

Ch 29-535 movement


The 5170G runs on a hand wind movement Ch 29-535 with a 65-hour power reserve. The crystal is of scratch resistant sapphire. The casing is 18k white gold, with a knurled crown, naturally a transparent sapphire case back.

The Rare Patek Philippe 5170G exists in two editions, both in 18k white gold: the 5170G-001 with a white dial and the 5170G-010 with a black dial.

Certificate of Authenticity


The watch up for auction on Catawiki comes in its original case with complete certification as to its pedigree with a certificate of authenticity and a standard Patek Philippe worldwide guarantee.

The auctioneer is Barry Harleman, an avid watch collector in his own right with plenty of experience and knowledge of all kinds of watches and what they are worth.

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