“PANERAI ONLY” IN PARIS:
PROCEEDS OF OVER ONE MILLION EUROS AND TWO WORLD RECORDS
Record prices for the sale of a Radiomir Egiziano of 1956 and a Radiomir PAM00021 of 1997
The “Panerai Only” auction held in Paris on 8 December at Artcurial ended with proceeds of more than one million euros and it was entirely devoted to the historic watches of Officine Panerai, the Florentine high quality sports watchmaker and historic supplier to the Italian Navy.
In the course of the auction two world records were broken by two models of great importance in the history of Officine Panerai. The first was an extremely rare “Radiomir Egiziano”, the diver’s watch made in 1956 for the Egyptian Navy. Highly regarded by enthusiasts for its iconic design and its impressive size (the diameter of the case is 60mm), it was sold for 125,800 euros (US$155,000), beating the previous record price for this model.
The other world record was broken by a Radiomir PAM00021, a Special Edition of 1997 in platinum, with a case design extremely faithful to that of the watch created by Officine Panerai for the frogmen of the Royal Italian Navy in 1938. This highly coveted Special Edition, fitted with a vintage Rolex movement, like many historic Panerai models, was sold for 103,500 euros (US$127,000).
Two other vintage models, a Luminor and a Marina Militare, both with Rolex movements, each made over 120,000 euros, well above the initial auction estimates, while a Luminor 1950 8 Days (PAM00203), a Special Edition of 2005 with an Angelus eight-day mechanical movement, was sold for about 70,000 euros (more than US$85,000).
The single-make watch auction consisted of about 100 models, divided into three sections:
Vintage (1930-1950), “Pre-Vendome” (1993-1997) and “Vendome” (1997 to the present).
Vintage Panerai watches are regularly the subject of exciting bidding at auctions where collectors and enthusiastic connoisseurs compete for examples which are often unique, given the rarity of the timepieces produced by the Florentine watchmaker in the course of its history. In fact Panerai watches were never produced for commercial sale until 1993, when the first collection was presented to the civilian public. All the rare Panerai historic pieces were produced to fulfil military orders between 1936, the year in which the first prototype of the Radiomir watch was created for use during the underwater missions of the commando frogmen of the Royal Italian Navy, and the 1950s. This rarity, combined with the timeless design and the still remarkably up-to-date appearance of the watches, is the basis of the continuous rise in the value of Panerai models, not only vintage ones but also many that have been produced more recently in limited editions faithfully inspired by the models of the past.
