An Observation On The Patek 5811 And What Makes A Watch Interesting

"No one had said anything very remarkable. It may be that no one had anything remarkable to say." F. Marion Crawford, "The Upper Berth"

I’m a little hesitant (although, by god, not hesitant enough by half, I guess) to add to the number of opinions, views, perspectives and unfiltered emotional reactions already out there with respect to the Patek 5811, partly because I don’t think that there is all that much to say, when you get right down to it. Okay, the steel 5711 with blue dial is out of production; yes, we had a couple of high visibility victory laps; and with the release of a new group of Nautilus watches we actually had Patek calling its own watch a “cult” watch, which is fair.

I certainly don’t think that it’s a bonfire of the (watch) vanities, or a symptom of the decline of human civilization (especially when there are plenty of actual signs of the decline of human civilization already these days) and I don’t feel a sense of outrage or disappointment or upset when I look at it. At 1mm larger than its predecessor and with, apparently, a front-loading movement (a nice historical shout out to the original 3700, if a bit inside baseball but you hope for inside baseball from Patek). I’d be interested to see one in person (I don’t like my odds) and if I happened to have that kind of watch budget (if you are reading this I am sure you already know that MSRP is $69,785) there is a non-zero chance I might at least consider buying one. There is a non-zero chance that the proton eventually decays, but anything’s possible.

So, what then? It’s a perfectly good if unreasonably expensive watch, from a company with a reputation most other industrial-level luxury watch brands would give their eyeteeth to possess and if it doesn’t have very much in terms of interesting horological content, well, it’s not meant to. I was content to leave it at that.

But there was something about the 5811 that bugged me and I couldn’t put my finger on it. At the center of all the above casually swirling thoughts was a weird void and I couldn’t figure out what it was, and then finally it hit me.

I didn’t feel anything in particular about the watch. It didn’t ignite any sort of passion or indeed, even provoke any particular emotional reaction at all; if it had been a roll of paper towels or a spork, I’d have had a comparable level of emotional response. Now, this is not the fault of the watch, which is an insentient object incapable of being at fault about anything. And I’ve looked at watches and even owned watches in the past that I felt nothing for – one of them, a cult watch right up there with the 5711, I ended up selling because I felt more when I put on a Seiko 5 than when I put on the so-called grail watch.

But I did think something, which was that it was a good business decision for Patek to release the 5811. To say they will be in high demand is to merely state the obvious. But I wonder about, and am slightly worried by, the fact that when a watch like this comes out, my first reaction is not “great watch” but rather, “great business decision.”