After I made an appointment to AP house, I went with this Royal Oak 5402ba to see a young lady there at 5pm on 29 May 2022. I was intended to overhaul the movement and change a new gasket only. She told me the watch is old and she had to find out their record, she had never seen this watch in he life. Well, I told her this is 5402, the first Royal Oak that changed the destiny of the Audemars Piguet against the Quartz crisis. She went to other area likely talking to some other staff three times, after 30 minutes and told me there there may have no spare parts for this old watch, And they need 6 months to do the job as AP is busy. Well, I told her what parts? She said spare part! I told her Audemars Piguet is supposed the No. 3 high end watch house in Switzerland after Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin... How come no spare?
Patek Philippe's CEO Thierry Stern had once mentioned that whatever Patek Philippe watch even back to 19 Century they still can provide spare part for it. I don't blame her as she may be too new in her job, she is young about 28 wearing an AP white gold Perpetual Calendar watch worth HK$600,000 as she told me during the chatting. She asked me if I want to change a new dial, (how come she know that AP does still have the dial?) I said No, I need to keep the original dial. She asked if I need to polish the case and bracelet, I told her no, I wanted to keep the original condition of the watch. Preferably no polishing.
She said, that watch can not be polished anymore as it is too thin already! (I told myself really too thin to polish? How much do you need to polish? 0.005mm? 0.02mm? 0.2mm?
OK after I saw the document , the description was NXX (XX is my watch S/N, it should read No XX on the back of my watch. on the Watch Description; it was written "39mm gold watch with bracelet. I told her should be "Royal Oak 5402 39mm with bracelet... : it too late as it was 5;55, 5 minutes before they closed. So I told her well, I would like to take it back and make another appointment for visit again.
That was a wonder experience, i feel a bit hesitate to send the watch to AP House to overhaul. But After all who can do it for me? Private watch smith I guess. But I do like to send it to AP Switzerland for best attention on it.
Aftermath
I remembered I was invited to join a new watch fair at Audemars Piguet IFC back in 2018, And I saw a 5402 Royal Oak in yellow gold was housed inside a window box for display. I talked to one of the VPs from Switzerland who told be me still have three NOS (new old stock) JLC 2121 movement under his own possession. This is the movement being used inside the 5402. The 2121 movement is very reliable and one of the best movements in the 70s. Later in 1976, Patek Philippe also took the same movement to be housed in their legendary watch "The Nautilus 3700". I don't know what spare they don't have again,. this puzzled me until now...
Anyway I shall have another appointment in AP House again soon... let's see if that could be another wonder experience for me.
HK Snob
No comments:
Post a Comment