Christie's Rare Watches sale opens at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues in Geneva on May 11 and continues May 12. The viewing runs from May 8 through May 10 at the same venue. The headline of sale 24398 is the Quincy Jones property, and the headline of the Quincy Jones property is lot 119: a Patek Philippe Nautilus reference 3700/1JA, manufactured in 1981, in 18-karat yellow gold and stainless steel, accompanied by a Patek Philippe Extract from the Archives confirming production in 1981 and sale on 8 September 1981.
The estimate on the lot card is CHF 100,000 to CHF 200,000. Early trade-press reports placed the watch at CHF 800,000 to CHF 1,400,000 and identified it as a 5711/1A from 2022. Both figures are wrong. The watch is the original Jumbo, the reference is 3700/1JA, the case material is two-tone and not pure steel, and the published estimate is one tenth of the figure that circulated through the secondary watch press in the days before the catalogue went live.
What the lot card says
The watch is movement number 1'307'683, case number 541'486, the original 3700-series Nautilus design with the Genta-drawn cushion case, the integrated three-link bracelet, the horizontally embossed dial. The case is 42 millimetres wide, listed by Christie's as the original "Jumbo" case the trade has been calling oversized for fifty years. The dial is matte black with applied yellow-gold baton indices, a date window at three o'clock, and the Patek Philippe Genève signature at twelve. The bezel is solid 18-karat yellow gold. The bracelet pairs steel outer links with yellow-gold centre blocks, fitted to a folding deployant.
Inside is the calibre 28-255, the ultra-thin automatic developed on the architecture of the Jaeger-LeCoultre 920 of 1967. The 3700-series was the platform on which Patek argued, in the middle of the quartz crisis, that an automatic Swiss sports watch could carry the dress-watch slimness of a 36-millimetre Calatrava and earn the price tag of a complication. The 3700/1JA in steel and yellow gold ran in low volume across the reference's long production. Christie's specialist Eli Fayon places the figure for the bi-metal variant at approximately 700 examples produced.
The provenance is the structural argument
Jones acquired the watch in 1981. He kept it for forty-three years, until his death in November 2024, and the watch has remained with the family ever since. The Christie's lot essay records that he wore it at gala events and concert appearances, and during his Montreux Jazz Festival performance with Miles Davis in 1991. The Christie's editorial feature on the sale places the acquisition inside the working window of Thriller, recorded between April 1982 and November 1982 and released later that month. The Extract from the Archives establishes the timeline independently of the family's papers.
The estimate sits below recent secondary-market clearing prices
A clean 3700/1JA in steel and yellow gold without celebrity provenance has crossed CHF 100,000 at public sale on dial condition alone in the last cycle. Christie's has set the low estimate at that floor. The high estimate, CHF 200,000, sits inside the band recent comparable lots have reached without any celebrity attribution. The house has built room above the published numbers. A confirmed Quincy Jones provenance with archives extract and on-stage footage is the kind of estate attribution that, in comparable cycles, has produced multiples of low estimate at the hammer.
Other lots in the sale
The Jones property continues into a series of additional lots, including a Girard-Perregaux WW.TC World Time Control Shadow in ceramised titanium, gifted to him by Andrea Bocelli in 2011, estimated at CHF 5,000 to CHF 10,000. The non-Jones highlights of sale 24398 carry their own argument for the catalogue's depth. A Daniel Roth Régulateur Tourbillon C187 ST-SC, number 2 of 20 commissioned in stainless steel by Roth's Italian distributor Roberto Carlotti around 1990 sits at CHF 100,000 to CHF 200,000. A Harry Winston Opus 14 in 18-karat white gold, number 02/50, with the swing-arm record-changer dial, is CHF 60,000 to CHF 120,000. A unique Audemars Piguet observatory-style Precision wristwatch from 1950, in 14-karat pink gold and stainless steel, is CHF 50,000 to CHF 100,000.
The first session opens at 2:00 PM CEST on May 11. The 3700/1JA falls inside it. Phillips will have closed its two-day Geneva sale on the morning of May 11, and Sotheby's Important Watches Part I closes on May 10.
Sources
- Christie's — Lot 119, Patek Philippe Nautilus 3700/1JA "Quincy Jones," 1981
- Christie's — Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, Rolex, Daniel Roth and Harry Winston: Rare watches coming to Geneva
- Christie's — Lot 6584424, Daniel Roth Régulateur Tourbillon C187 ST-SC No. 2
- Christie's — Lot 6584437, Harry Winston Opus 14, No. 02/50
- Christie's — Lot 6584478, Audemars Piguet Precision wristwatch, 1950
- JCK — The 'Thriller' Watch: Quincy Jones's Patek Philippe Heads to Auction
- Haute Time — Inside Christie's Geneva Rare Watches Sale, May 2026 (estimate and reference reported in error)
- Robb Report — Patek Philippe Leads Geneva's Spring Watch Auctions
