Vintage Watches: Ten Of The Greatest Missing Watches, Part Two
For most of watch collecting history, collectors pretty much assumed the Patek Philippe 1518 Perpetual Calendar Chronograph was produced in yellow and rose gold, with those rare few in steel. That changed in 2017, when Nick Foulkes published Patek Philippe: The Authorized Autobiography. Inside that book was a chart listing out all of Patek’s references and the metals in which they were produced. One line showed the 1518, introduced in 1941, but after that, a surprise: the chart said that it was produced in rose and yellow gold, steel, platinum, and “mixed metals.” Collectors were quick to point out a few errors in the chart – the missing of certain current production watches, for example. Could these new details about the 1518 be typos as well? Either way, it introduced a new mystery in the world of Patek collecting: Is there a platinum or two-tone 1518 to be found?
