Month: May 2024

Your native London editor here, reporting on London-based auction house Watches of Knightsbridge, which will be selling off a very rare 18k yellow-gold best replica Cartier London Maxi Ronde watches.

Deep-cut Cartier talk is all the rage right now. The uptick in vintage Cartier prices at auction could likely come from the buzz on social media or Cartier’s somewhat ferocious (but no doubt successful) marketing narrative and celebrity placements. Then there is of course a refocus on vintage reissues for the serious collector-heads like the 2022 Pebble or last year’s Tank Normale. Corporate and organic marketing has become so entangled these days it’s hard to know where the buzz really comes from. UK cheap Cartier fake watches has stridently come back into style these past few years with celebrities and big-time collectors worshiping at the altar of the watchmaker of shapes.

Ben Clymer, on the other hand, blithely claims that “the Crash is now pedestrian.” I gather he means to say that we are inundated with pictures of celebrities and very wealthy individuals wearing these astronomically priced and hard to find (vintage)/tricky to order (modern) high quality Cartier replica watches. I will add that Clymer counts a London Crash as the exception to the rule. But the Crash shape has reached saturation point. It’s gone far beyond collector territory and has entered the zeitgeist. Outrageous for some of us to stomach, I know!

All of a sudden everybody knows what a Crash is, and slowly people are learning about other B-side hits from the maison. We only have to look at recent auction results for hard evidence of the top Cartier Crash fake watches trickle-down effect. A Coussin Bamboo sold at Christie’s last season in Geneva for CHF 50,000 and a Cartier London “Dice” Sold for CHF 138,60. That’s a huge increase in previous estimates seen for models such as these. We’ll have to see what the Geneva auctions bring this weekend. The estimate for this particular Cartier London Maxi Ronde is set at 40,000–90,000 GBP. There’s also a ladies’ sized Bamboo up for sale if that piques your interest with the estimate set to 6,000–12,000 GBP.

Cartier London is usually seen as a period of extreme experimentation. While Paris and New York were under non-Cartier ownership during the period of 1965-1973 the combined talent and ambition of Jean-Jacques Cartier and designer Rupert Emmerson at Cartier London led to the creation of the most eccentric models, including the Decagonal, Octagonal, Maxi Oval, Maxi Ronde, Pebble, Losange, and Twin Strap, etc.

Created in 1972, the very last year of Swiss made copy Cartier London watches, this Maxi Ronde is currently the second example known in yellow gold and one of four known London Maxi Rondes in total (two are known to exist in white gold). A manually-wound Jaeger-LeCoultre caliber (P838) powers this 35.2mm by 6.55mm Cartier. The caseback is correctly stamped “JC” for Jacques Cartier, a London hallmark denoting 1972, and a unique Cartier London stock number, “1334.”

The Maxi Ronde was manufactured at the Wright & Davies (W&D) workshop, established by Cartier London in response to the post-war luxury taxes on imports having made it prohibited to import to London the most popular models made by Cartier Paris. W&D made wristwatches to be sold primarily by Cartier London. In 1950 they produced examples of the Tank Normale and other familiar models and it was not until 1965-6 that the iconic Cartier London designed watch cases were offered for sale at the Boutique in Bond Street.

Clearly not as esoteric as some of its other London counterparts, the Maxi Ronde is slightly more conservative in appearance, “It will be interesting to see if the market is as receptive to London Cartier when it’s not a tank,” says Justin Gruenberg, Founder of The Keystone and co-founder of online auction platform Loupe This. “For me, these are incredible wholesale replica Cartier watches that look better on the wrist than in photos.” I recently tried on Gruenberg’s London Decagon from 1970, one of the first Cartier Londons he purchased. We both agreed it was sort of ugly beautiful or as Gruenberg reminded me, Jolie Laide, in French. A look that seems to be trending and is in diametric opposition to this Maxi Ronde.

This is surely a tale of rarity rather than good looks. The tiny production run of the markedly less flamboyant Maxi Ronde “illustrates the “handmade” nature of these London watches,” explained our resident Cartier scholar Tony Traina (after I barraged him for an opinion on Slack). “If I start to think about it a “boring” round 1:1 China Cartier fake watches is actually relatively rare in the vintage catalog (yes yes, I know, the Ronde), so it’s fun for that reason alone. And these old Jaeger-LeCoultre movements are always such a pleasure to wind.” I joked with Traina that this might be the very sober antidote to the crash, to which he retorted, “Sure like ‘oh the Crash and all that was fun but the ’60s are over now back to round watches.'”

Who knows what’s next, but Cartier fever shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. It’s a testament to Cartier and its enduring impact on pop-culture. From monarchs to Andy Warhol, to Tyler the Creator. Even if the super clone Cartier watches shop world vipers will say we have reached peak Cartier popularity, it will be interesting to see if hype comes from unusual looks or if it boils down to a more predictable scarcity-creates-demand scenario.