Sophie Marchand has been a watch specialist at a major Geneva auction house — she has asked that I not name it — for nineteen years. She has handled, by her estimate, several thousand watches of significance and presided over sales that, in aggregate, total more than CHF 800 million. She speaks about the market with the particular precision of someone who has seen it be wrong many times and has learned not to be surprised by this.
The Hour: What does the room feel like when a lot exceeds its high estimate significantly?
Sophie Marchand: It depends enormously on whether the high estimate was credible. If we estimated correctly and the bidding has gone beyond because two determined people have both decided they must have it, the room feels like a fair contest. If we underestimated — if we were cautious with a lot we weren't certain about — and it goes significantly over, the room has a different quality. A kind of collective realisation. You can feel people updating their understanding of what the object is worth in real time.
TH: How often do you get it wrong?
SM: Regularly. And in both directions, which is important to acknowledge. The watches we think will fly that don't are at least as instructive as the ones we think are modest that exceed. The market does not always agree with the consensus, and the consensus is not always right. This is what makes the work interesting and what makes overconfidence dangerous.
TH: What kinds of buyers do you see?
SM: The landscape has changed significantly in the past decade. We have buyers now who were not in the room — or even the market — ten years ago. Some of them have acquired knowledge quickly and are serious collectors. Others have acquired capital quickly and are treating watches as an asset class. These two groups make very different decisions in the room, and the results are sometimes spectacular and sometimes instructive in the other direction.
TH: What's the difference in behaviour?
SM: The serious collector knows what they want before they arrive. They have examined the lot, often in person, often more than once. They have a price in their mind that reflects their genuine assessment of the object. They will go to that price and not beyond it. The buyer treating watches as an asset will sometimes go beyond what any assessment would support because they are bidding on the expectation of future appreciation rather than the present reality of the object. This is not irrational, but it is a different activity.
TH: And the estates?
SM: The estates are where the most interesting things happen. You learn the most from a collection being dispersed — about how the collector thought, about what they prioritised, about the condition they maintained their watches in. A collection sold from an estate is a complete document of someone's engagement with the field. Some of those documents are extraordinary. Some are more complicated.
TH: Complicated how?
SM: (smiles) Collections assembled by people who understood exactly what they were doing and cared for everything correctly are straightforward. Collections assembled by people who understood some things but not others, who bought brilliantly in one category and made mistakes in another — those are more interesting to work with, and more revealing. The mistakes tell you as much as the successes.