SOTHEBY'S SELLS THE ONLY WHITE GOLD CARTIER CHEICH

Only four Cartier Cheich watches existed until 2010, when the maison built a fifth in secret for a Bologna collector who never got to keep it. Sotheby's Hong Kong is now selling it as the only one of its kind in white gold.

A Commission Cartier Made Before It Ever Offered Custom Orders

Giorgio Seragnoli, a Bologna-based collector who co-authored the reference book Cartier Bianco with Osvaldo Patrizzi, commissioned his Cheich directly from Cartier in 2010, years before the house formalized any customization program for clients, the kind of single-owner provenance story that already anchored Sotheby's Summer Sports Week to a $26 million close. The maison cast it entirely in white gold and ran it on a quartz movement rather than the mechanical calibers inside its siblings, then engraved the caseback 2010, No. 1. Seragnoli ran into financial difficulty before he could take delivery, and the watch stayed inside Cartier's own vault rather than his collection. Alessio Zenga, co-founder of the trading house The Watch Boutique, eventually acquired it directly from the maison and revealed it publicly in 2023, thirteen years after it was built.

The Cheich's First Four Versions Already Set Records

The Cheich line traces back to Cartier's Paris-Dakar era, and its rarity has already been tested at auction. A tridor version owned by rally driver Patrick Rahier sold at Sotheby's in 2022 for roughly $1.1 million, smashing its pre-sale estimate and confirming just how far collectors will go for a model Cartier built only a handful of times. Sotheby's own Carl Chen is fronting the new listing, walking bidders through why a white gold, quartz-powered fifth example numbered No. 1 sits apart from the four that came before it.

Hong Kong's Luxury Week Gets Its Centerpiece Lot

The Cheich goes under the hammer September 18 and 19 as part of Sotheby's Important Watches sale in Hong Kong, timed to the house's autumn Luxury Week and presented alongside LuxuryGroup.Official. Sotheby's has not published a public estimate for the lot, but the Rahier result gives bidders a real number to measure against for a watch with one fewer sibling and one more layer of history attached to it. Collectors chasing rare metal finishes have driven similar bidding wars across watches this year, and a Cheich that spent thirteen years inside Cartier's own safe before reaching a buyer gives this one a story none of the other four can match.

Whoever wins the lot inherits a watch that was built for a man who never wore it, then hidden for over a decade before anyone outside Cartier saw it at all.