Collector Book Nautilus Aquanaut Mondani PATEK PHILIPPE

1976: a steel sports watch at Patek Philippe

The Nautilus launched in 1976. A steel sports watch from a haute horlogerie house was close to commercial provocation at the time; it became one of the most enduring designs of the late twentieth century, and the symbol of the brand's sports watches.

The Aquanaut followed in 1997, in a more contemporary register. The two lines answer each other without merging, and the book follows that relationship in detail.

The one non-Rolex volume in the collection

Our watch book shelf is dominated by Rolex. This one is the exception, and it covers precisely the segment where documentation is thinnest: on these two lines the value gap between close references is considerable, and reference literature is scarce.

What the book documents

Calibres, dials, cases and bracelets, with all the characteristics that separate one reference from the next. The complete history of both models is set out, with what gives them technical as much as symbolic value.

What it is for before a purchase

On the second-hand Patek market, verification is cross-checking: does the dial match the reference, is the bracelet original, is the clasp of the right period. Questions settled with compared photographs, not with a seller's description.

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Browse all our collector watch books. For a comparable deep monograph on the Rolex side, the GMT-Master I and II book.