In the quiet town of Le Brassus, where watchmaking traditions stretch across generations, one extraordinary Audemars Piguet creation is preparing to step into the spotlight again. After more than a century of secrecy and speculation, the “Grosse Pièce” pocket watch will cross the auction block at Sotheby’s New York this December, carrying a pre-sale estimate of up to $1 million. Commissioned in 1914 by the London jeweler S. Smith & Son, displayed at the Geneva Watch Exhibition in 1920, and delivered the following year, this colossal 18k gold pocket best replica watches UK stands as both a technical marvel and a symbol of artistic patience from an era when time itself was built by hand.
For top copy Audemars Piguet watches, the timing of its return could hardly be more fitting. The auction coincides with the brand’s 150th anniversary, a year in which Le Brassus celebrates not only its future but also its foundational past. The Grosse Pièce serves as a missing link between AP’s legendary 1899 “Universelle” pocket watch and the modern ultra-complications that define its present identity.
The Universelle, with its 19 complications, has long anchored the brand’s story of innovation. The Grosse Pièce mirrors that ambition but with a different soul, a one-of-one creation whose combination of tourbillon and astronomical sky chart has never appeared again in the brand’s history. It remains the most complicated Swiss replica Audemars Piguet pocket watches in private hands, and its reappearance feels almost poetic, as if the watch had waited for this anniversary to resurface.
The Grosse Pièce was a mammoth undertaking even by early 20th-century standards. Its double-dial, double open-face design in yellow gold features 19 complications, including grande and petite sonnerie with carillon, a minute repeater, a chronograph with hour and minute recorders, a perpetual calendar with leap-century correction, and indicators for moon age, phase, equation of time, sidereal time, and power reserve.
On its reverse, the London sky unfolds with 315 stars and 18 constellations arranged in exquisite enamel and gold. At 80 millimeters across, it was nicknamed “titanic” for its sheer presence, and yet what makes it truly monumental is the philosophy it embodies: an era when the cheap clone watches was both an instrument of precision and an object of wonder.
Its rediscovery story adds another layer of fascination. For decades, the Grosse Pièce vanished from public view, its ownership shrouded in mystery. Then, in 1970, New York dealer Sid Rosenberg sold it to investment advisor Robert M. Olmsted for $23,350, which is a striking contrast to its modern estimate of around $1 million. The transaction, carefully documented and preserved, feels today like a time capsule, a figure that reads like a whisper from another age. Olmsted, who quietly built one of the most respected private horological collections in America, kept the 1:1 fake watches safe for more than half a century. Now, his estate has entrusted Sotheby’s to reintroduce it to the world.
Daryn Schnipper, Chairman Emeritus of Sotheby’s International Watch Division, has called the Grosse Pièce the most complicated perfect replica Audemars Piguet watches still in private hands. She suggests that its combination of mystery, provenance, and technical rarity could push a new auction record for the brand. More than that, Sotheby’s hopes the sale will challenge an old assumption that pocket watches, once sidelined by the rise of the wristwatch, lack collectable allure.
With its unparalleled craftsmanship, century-long enigma, and perfectly timed reappearance, the Grosse Pièce now stands ready to remind the buy knock off watches world of something fundamental: that true horology is not about fashion or convenience but about imagination, endurance, and the quiet triumph of human ingenuity over time itself.
About the Author
