The Cartier Crash becomes a $2mn watch
Long dismissed as a horological curiosity, Cartier’s surreal Sixties icon is now smashing auction records and reshaping the vintage watch market
With the appearance of having been designed by Salvador Dalí and then left to melt on the wearer’s wrist, when it was first launched in 1967 the London-made Cartier Crash was the swinging watch for the swinging city. However, it proved a bit too groovy and far-out: only a tiny number were sold in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
For decades it was seen as little more than a horological curiosity. Mainstream collectors feasted on steel sports watches, and, to be fair, the Cartier Crash is their diametric opposite. It is the very last watch one would take potholing, skiing, diving, or, for that matter, to the moon. Its objective was simply to be beautiful. It may have taken the best part of 60 years, but finally the pendulum of fashion has swung the Crash’s way.
The first ripples came just over four years ago, when Loupe This, a specialist American auction website, sold a 1960s London Crash (so-called to distinguish it from later, less valuable, Paris-made examples) for $1.5mn. It was viewed as something of an anomaly until this spring, when the auction market for this watch went wild and prices detached themselves from reality. The first gavel of the season was raised at Sotheby’s Hong Kong; in that sale, in April, a late London Crash from 1987 made close to $2mn.
It was a world record — one that held for little more than a fortnight, when Christie’s Geneva sold an even later London Crash (1990), achieving an almost identical result that, when translated into US dollars, came in at a whisper over two million dollars. There isn’t much to choose between them, it depends how you convert the selling currency into US dollars. It was official: the London Crash was now a $2mn watch. And within seconds of the gavel coming down in Hong Kong, dealers in vintage watches around the world were repricing their Cartier stock.
This has not escaped the notice of Cartier’s director of style and heritage, Pierre Rainero, who has seen that dealers who were selling modest ladies’ Tank LC models for €3,000 are now asking €8,000-€14,000 for the same watch. “When you look through the shop windows,” he says, “you see that they have multiplied by three or four times the price of a year or even six months ago.”
Beyond a trickle-down effect, the super-high prices achieved during this auction season reflect a Cartier fever with origins that can be traced back to 2016, when the brand returned to its heartland of elegant watches in shaped (ie not round) cases.
During the first decade and a half of this century, Cartier gradually lost its way in watchmaking, seduced by the complications arms race that consumed the industry. It launched tourbillons, perpetual calendars, astronomical indications — watches, however well made, that nobody particularly wanted to wear, by a brand whose customers had historically prized elegance over engineering. The secondary market reflected the confusion; vintage Cartier pieces, with a few exceptions, drifted.
The catalyst that was to lead to its return to greatness was perhaps the worst watch Cartier has ever made: the Diver — a perfectly good watch, just not a Cartier — which made its debut in 2014. In 2016, Johann Rupert, chair of Cartier’s parent company Richemont, took action. Under a new chief executive, Cyrille Vigneron, Cartier reclaimed its heritage and cultural identity, and steered back towards its own icons including the Tank, the Santos, the Panthère, the Cloche and the Crash.
In addition, Rupert authorised one of the more dramatic acts of brand stewardship in recent memory, spending an estimated €500mn buying back unsold inventory. The decision was strategically brilliant: it prevented the secondary market from being flooded with heavily discounted stock, protecting both brand prestige and resale values.
In 2017, the Panthère watch was relaunched with an advertising film dripping with American Gigolo style, directed by Sofia Coppola and set to Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”, with a hot couple making out, at one point naked except for the gender-fluid Cartiers on their wrists. The messaging was clear: this was Cartier — just not your grandmother’s Cartier.
Cartier also benefited from a shift in the collector climate. The market had spent a decade in a frenzy of speculation, with certain steel sports references trading at multiples of their retail prices. The bubble began to deflate rapidly in 2021. It is not that steel watches had changed; rather that fatigue had set in among some collectors. The obvious trophies had been won; the culture of quick flipping that saw watches as a sort of crypto alternative leached the pleasure from the hobby for genuine enthusiasts, who began looking beyond the sports watch. Cartier, now coherently repositioned, was waiting for them.
“Cartier thrives because clients reward longstanding consistency. Its designs are immediately recognisable and offer exceptional value,” says current chief executive Louis Ferla: “What sets the maison apart for collectors is the rare combination of historical depth, everyday wearability and cultural relevance.”
It is an opinion reflected in the latest figures issued by the influential Morgan Stanley/Luxe Consult report on the watch market. According to the report, in 2017 the brand lagged behind Rolex, Omega and Patek, with just 5.6 per cent market share; now it is second after Rolex with about 8.7 per cent of a significantly larger market than a decade ago.
What strikes Remi Guillemin, Christie’s head of watches for Europe and the Americas, about Cartier’s new audience is its diversity. “You have Asians collecting Cartier, you have Middle Eastern collectors from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Europeans with a great deal of taste, and then the US. It has really become global.”
And when Taylor Swift announced her engagement, the Cartier Santos on her wrist was as remarked upon as her engagement ring. A few months later Bloomberg declared: “Cartier Is Gen Z’s Rolex, Thanks to Taylor Swift.” Typical of this new breed of customers, fresh to the collecting market, is Brynn Wallner, America’s leading female watch influencer, and founder of online platform Dimepiece. At 36, she is a millennial who only came to watches six years ago, during a brief stint as a copywriter. Her first purchase was, yes, a Cartier, and the whole experience was documented by American Vogue.
“For somebody to be able to access a storied luxury brand like that and still afford it within reason — it hits such a sweet spot,” she says, noting that “a lot of brands have ditched the sub-$5,000 price point.”
The brand certainly has enough of the commercial rocket fuel of our times: celebrity endorsement. The Crash alone seems to be worn by a representative cross-section of mid-2020s fame, from Tyler, the Creator and Bad Bunny to Jay-Z, Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner and Tom Brady.
Wallner is impatient with the suggestion that Cartier’s cool is somehow new. “If you look at the real, true A-list, from 50 years ago, compared with today — you just can’t argue about the amount of influence they have,” she says, noting that Alain Delon, Muhammad Ali, Andy Warhol, Jackie Kennedy, Princess Grace of Monaco and Diana, Princess of Wales all wore the brand before famous wrists became advertising space. “They’ve all chosen Cartier. So, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for you.”