Wei Koh – the influential watch collector and founder of The Rake and Revolution – is holding up and inspecting a Chopard 1860 and a Patek Philippe 5131 World Time. “You can look at them side by side and they're both stunning movements,” Koh says. “They're, of course, different, but the quality is certainly there.”
I set up Koh to deliver that lofty praise, but only because it is a comparison I keep hearing. The dealer Eric Wind was the first to suggest it to me. “The quality is not that different from Pateks [from the ’90s],” Wind says of Chopard. “And at a fraction of the price.” When I check in with WatchTime editor Bilal Khan, a noted Chopard enthusiast, he finds the comparison as natural as can be. “When [Chopard co-president] Karl-Friedrich Scheufele opened the L.U.C manufacture, it was his goal to be at the level of Patek.”
Chopard is gaining heat among watch collectors after two particularly strong years of new releases. The salmon-dial L.U.C 1860 was one of the best releases from 2023, and this year the Swiss maker had another strong showing at Watches & Wonders with a steel L.U.C sequel and a black enamel-dial Quattro. “Chopard has been pretty hot with their new watches,” Wind explains. “There's always a conversation between what's happening in the current day and interest in the vintage pieces.”
Speaking of those vintage pieces: The consensus among collectors is that secondary-market Chopards remain seriously undervalued (though that’s starting to shift). Rather than duking it out for modern pieces selling for multiples of retail, you might be able to win the Chopard of your dreams on secondary sites for well below what sellers are asking. “There are people who appreciate watchmaking and don't have, you know, $50- or $60,000 to spend on the prestigious or indie brands,” Khan says. “And they're the ones who are going after these rare early models.”
The Chopard micro-boom is downstream of the massive Cartier trend, Wind says. As collectors swing back to dress watches after a torrid love affair with sport pieces, Chopard offers value and a brand name that isn’t totally ubiquitous right now.
So, where do you start if you’re getting into Chopard? That’s what I asked the experts this week.
What makes it special: The Sport 2000 is Khan’s everyday watch. It’s a model that’s easy to fall in love with – a sport watch with luxury finishes. “It’s important because it was Chopard’s first sport watch,” Khan says, “and it proved you can have refinements on the dial, like beautifully polished indices, a guilloché dial, and a micro-rotor movement. The Sport 2000, I think, is a superior watch to the Rolex Explorer.”
The Sport 2000 is one of the best value pieces from Chopard: They are currently listed between $4,000 and $6,000 on Chrono24. “It seems like the most overlooked [Chopard] model,” Khan adds.
What makes it special: If you want to remain in the sport world, Chopard also makes a handsome dive watch. “The Pro One is an elegant, incredible-looking diving watch,” Koh says.
The Pro One also carries many of the features that make the Sport 2000 special. It’s a dive watch that was designed for black-tie events long before everyone started wearing their bang-around stainless steel pieces on the red carpet. And prices for the Pro One are still relatively low for a watch of this quality. “For anyone looking for a deal on Chopard, I would probably look at one of those two watches [the Sport 2000 and Pro One],” Khan says.
What makes it special: We’ve officially turned off the Criminally Good Deal Zone and are now driving down the centre of Horological History Makers Avenue. The 16/1860, launched in 1996 after three years of development, was the first Chopard made with an in-house movement and is therefore regarded as the brand’s entry point into serious watchmaking.
That in-house movement, the 1.96, was an instant winner in watch-collecting circles. In a history of the movement published last year, Hodinkee dug up an old quote from watch writer Walt Odets, who named the 1.96 “probably the finest automatic movement being produced in Switzerland.” But it wasn’t just the watch’s quality that made the 16/1860 such an instant classic – it was also the fact that Chopard dropped it in the ’90s, as most brands were still licking their wounds from the quartz crisis that had defined the previous two decades.
“The 1.96 is mind-blowingly good in the context of the era when no one was making in-house movements,” Koh says. “It blew people away and won every single conceivable award. And then the movement was put in one of the watches that I consider to be a design masterpiece of the last 50 years: the 1860.”
Design masterpiece! That’s right: Even if movement nerdery doesn’t do it for you, this watch is plenty sexy on the outside too. Keep an especially close eye on the guilloché dial (the wavy pattern) that emerges from the centre out. These dials were produced by a manufacturer called Metalem, which eventually made similar dials for Philippe Dufour’s legendary million-dollar-selling Simplicity timepiece.
“You look at the finishings and the movement, it's just such a tremendous value,” Khan says. “You can't make these kinds of watches anymore, really.”
What makes it special: Both Koh and Khan agree that if collectors wanted to continue their collecting journey beyond the original 1860, the Quattro should be their next stepping stone. “It’s another watch nerd icon I started tracking and following online,” Khan says, “and was like, ‘Fuck, I need one of these watches now, don’t I?’”
The Quattro, which debuted in 2000, marked another evolution in Chopard’s watchmaking. The model is fitted with the brand’s second in-house movement, the 1.98. The Quattro name comes from the piece’s four power reserve barrels, which allow it to keep ticking without a wind for nine full days.
“They have that same beauty as the original 1860, with just a bit of a twist with the power reserve at the very top,” Koh says. “The last time I checked, they were selling for an extremely attractive value.”
What makes these so special: We’re grouping these two together, because the modern Alpine Eagle is a remake of the 1980s-era St. Moritz.
Khan points to the reference 8300 as the most desirable of the St. Moritz collection, because it’s the only version of the watch that features a mechanical movement. “The 8300 is their first real integrated bracelet sports watch,” Khan says.
The St. Moritz also set the stage for its modern update that touched down in 2019. “The timing of that couldn't have been better because Chopard were just ahead of the integrated bracelet craze,” Koh adds. “It offered a really great alternative to the other entrenched heroes.” (Namely, the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and Patek Philippe Nautilus.)
The rest of the really expensive stuff
What makes it special: “One of [Scheufele]’s core accomplishments was in 2003, when he created the Quattro Tourbillon,” Koh says. “That was super important because up until then no one was going to COSC-certify their tourbillons except for Patek.” (COSC is an official body that puts a watch through a battery of tests to ensure its accuracy.)
What makes it special: In 2016, Chopard introduced its first minute repeater with the Full Strike. At the time, Koh lined it up alongside several other chiming watches. “I don't want to say names, but there was one brand present that's considered to make the best minute repeaters in the world, and that Full Strike, hands down, was just stunning.”
The Full Strike innovated on the Minute Repeater with gongs made out of sapphire, which are attached to the crystal so the sound vibrates through the entire watch. The piece was so impressive it won the biggest award at the GPHG Awards, the watch world’s Oscars.
