Michael Schumacher’s watch collection sells for £3.5 million
Watches belonging to Formula One champ Michael Schumacher have just sold for £3.5 million at a Christie’s auction on Tuesday.
The sale of eight watches, including some impressive personal watches by Rolex and Audemars Piguet, were put under the hammer by the driver’s family and were timed for the 30th anniversary of his first Formula One Drivers Championship win in 1994.
The sporting legend hasn’t been seen in public since he suffered a severe brain injury during a skiing accident in 2013.
And despite a cyber-attack that crashed the Christie’s site, forcing the sale to take place on Tuesday, rather than Monday, there was no danger that the watches wouldn’t be sold.
The property of Michael, was included in a Rare Watches auction, offering 164 pieces, 96% sold by lot, totalling £19.8 million.
The top lot of the sale was a vintage Patek Philippe, reference 1518 from 1948, which went for £2.1 million, setting the highest price for a wristwatch sold this Spring in Geneva. It is one of only 58 made in pink gold and one in 12 with a pink dial.
Schumacher’s collection
One of the Schumacher watches sold was a rare F.P. Journe Vagabondage 1 that was gifted to Michael back in 2004, to celebrate his championship win that year. It went for an incredible £1.3 million.
The ultimate racing memorabilia for any fan, the platinum watch features both Schumacher’s helmet as well as the Ferrari logo on the dial and the logo of DVAG, a bank that sponsored Michael, in place of the hour markers. The 18k rose gold movement was engraved with ‘Xmas 2004 – Jean Todt for my friend Michael Schumacher.’
Remi Guillemin, the head of watches for Europe and the Americas for auction house Christie’s, declined to identify the buyer, but said that five watches in the Ruthenium collection — a boxed set — had been bought for more than a million pounds, by the same person.
An Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Chronograph had been commissioned again by Jean Todt, his mentor at Ferrari, to commemorate the driver’s then, six Formula One victories. It achieved £361,365.
A Rolex Daytona from Schumacher’s collection (reference 6262) which was only in production between 1970 and 1972, sold for £273,761.
Other watches
Another lot, outside of Schumacher’s collection was ‘Les Armoiries’ (coat of arms, reference 6100) which is only one of three Rolex wristwatches featuring a cloisonne enamel dial decorated with a coat of arms, decorated by Marguerite Koch in the fifties. It sold for £240,910.
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