Michel Parmigiani took a chance when starting his business; he built his company in 1976, just as the quartz crisis was ravaging the industry. It wasn’t until 1996 that the Parmigiani Fleurier brand was created. Despite their horological wonders, industry success, and awards, why isn’t Parmigiani Fleurier more popular than they now are? This and more in today’s Q&A.
The brand itself makes beautiful watches and there’s a lot of horological value behind it.
My favorite Parmigiani watch would be the Bugatti Turiano. That’s the one that is worn sideways. So you can see the time while driving a car.
Parmigiani is a victim of itself. It’s not doing what it’s supposed to do in terms of marketing. In fact, if Parmigiani took note of Hublot, that would be a lot more successful.
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I’ve met Christophe Claret in Basel, interesting individual and artist in his own right. He’s also one hell of an engineer because some of the chronological work he’s put together is absolutely insane.
This guy created the blackjack watch, and he created a tourbillon watch that uses magnetic fields to show time where it’s supposed to negate the effect that gravity has on a watch.
So the Pan Am Daytona was the first special order Daytona. Oh, the first special order of Rolex delivered to United States, the Pan Am dial is actually a dial of its own. The dial had to be reconfigured. It wasn’t a regular Daytona dial that was stamped with the Pan Am logo.
They actually had to move the words Rolex and oyster higher on a dial in order to fit that logo. You’ll find the same thing on some of the earlier ones. So, this isn’t something that they took over, they actually reconfigured it.
Theoretically there should have been 150,000 of these made yet, we don’t see any of these around and we don’t see them in auction. So I know I didn’t shed a whole lot of light into the auction question.