Collectors who want to add more complication to their lives are in luck. The most complicated Audemars Piguet pocket watch in private hands will go under the gavel at Sotheby’s New York this December. Affectionately nicknamed Grosse Pièce, or “Big Piece” in English, No. 16869 features a huge 80 mm yellow-gold case that houses no less than 19 remarkable complications. It is expected to sell for between $500,000 and $1 million at the upcoming sale, giving the Big Piece an even bigger place in horological history. Commissioned in 1914 by Smith & Sons of London on behalf of a South American client, the double-dialed and double-open-faced minute-repeating astronomical watch took some six years to complete. It features a one-minute tourbillon, a chronograph, a perpetual calendar, a moon phase, day/night grande and petite sonnerie functions, 60-minute and 12-hour registers, equation of time and sidereal time displays, and indications for times of sunrise/sunset. The highlight..
