The platinum 5978P-010 anchors October's watch news at $337,585. Hublot and URWERK mark the two ends of the month, one looking back to 1980, the other rethinking the hour.
Patek Philippe says it has done something it had never done before: put a manually wound chronograph and an instantaneous perpetual calendar in the same watch. The result is the Patek Philippe 5978P-010, a platinum piece limited to 120 examples and priced at $337,585.
It arrived in Milan on October 2, when Patek opened its seventh “Watch Art” Grand Exhibition with seven limited editions. Six of them will have to live in the 5978P’s shadow.
The headliner
The pairing needed a new engine. Patek built the caliber CH 29-535 PS QI for the job, and it is assembled from 500 components. That is a lot of parts to fit behind a case measuring 14.24mm thick.
The case itself is 42mm of fully polished platinum, with a concave bezel, scalloped lugs and a single diamond set at 6 o’clock. The dial is navy and red. Patek is not shouting here. A perpetual calendar chronograph is the kind of watch that doesn’t need to.
Haute Time’s Adrienne Faurote called it the most important complication of the month, and it is hard to argue with her on engineering alone. Patek has spent a long time telling collectors what its grand complications can do. This one adds a line to the list.
The classic end: Hublot looks home
Nine days after Milan opened, the city hosted a very different kind of anniversary. On October 15, Hublot unveiled the Classic Fusion Tributo, a return to the gold-on-rubber watch Carlo Crocco introduced in 1980 under the MDM Genève name.
That original idea, a precious-metal case on a rubber strap, is now so common that it is easy to forget someone had to try it first. Hublot’s tribute comes in 18k yellow gold or 18k white gold, 38mm across and 9.5mm thick, with the self-winding HUB1711 inside. Either metal costs $30,900.
Set that beside the Patek and the contrast is useful. The 5978P costs roughly eleven times as much and takes complication to its limit. The Hublot is a small, wearable gold watch with a story attached. Both are about heritage, in different registers.
The avant-garde end: URWERK rebuilds the hour
Also on October 15, in Geneva, URWERK showed the UR-300 Time Quantum. It changes how the brand’s wandering hour works. Out go the satellites orbiting a carousel. In come two hour modules that lock together in a T-shaped frame. At the top of every hour, that frame jumps forward and rotates.
It is a watch for people who want to see time arrive as an event. There are two editions of 25 pieces each, one in titanium and one in AlTiN-treated titanium. Both cost CHF 168,000 before taxes.
If the Patek is the sum of centuries of horological convention, the UR-300 is a case against convention. Neither is wrong.
Everything in between
The rest of the month filled the gap with some worthwhile oddities. Ulysse Nardin marked 25 years of the Freak with the Freak [S Howlite], made only for North America. Its hour disc is cut from Canadian howlite, a white stone with gray veining, so no two of the 15 pieces match. It costs $190,700 excluding tax.
Ressence announced the TYPE 10 DN “Dark Night” in Antwerp on October 1 and showed it in New York on October 16. It is the brand’s first oil-filled watch powered by its own RW-04 caliber, in 41.5mm Grade 5 titanium that weighs 82 grams. The edition is limited to 100 pieces at CHF 45,000 excluding taxes, with deliveries from November 2026.
IWC, meanwhile, got ahead of the Lunar New Year with its Pilot’s Watch Performance Chronograph 41 Year of the Goat. It has a titanium case, a black ceramic bezel and the first gold-colored dial in IWC’s run of Chinese New Year editions. It is limited to 500 pieces at $13,100. Hermès, at $8,600, offered the most accessible price of the month with its H08 Blanc and Bleu de Malte in braided fiberglass.
Parmigiani Fleurier’s TORIC Petite Seconde Platinum Morning Blue, at CHF 56,500, and MB&F’s LM1 EVO, from CHF 82,000 before VAT, round out the list. The LM1 EVO is a 42mm case built for daily wear, finished to specifications set by Kari Voutilainen.
Haute Time’s verdict on the month is that its story is range. That is fair. A platinum grand complication, a 1980 gold-and-rubber revival and a watch that rotates its hour in a T-shaped frame all landed within two weeks of each other. The Patek 5978P-010 is the one that will be argued about longest, mostly because 120 people will own it and many more will want to.
Via Haute Time
