After the introduction of the Royal Oak Jumbo 5402 in the early 70s, and then the introduction of the ultra-thin perpetual calendar 5548 in the late 70s, Audemars Piguet had a strong front line battling the quartz crisis. As a result, it only made sense to combine the two for an even more formidable force, which eventually happened in 1984 with reference 5554, or 25554. It was arguably the first luxury yet highly complicated sports watch. Upcoming as part of Christie’s Important Watches Auction this month is a very interesting Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar 5554, with some peculiarities to say the least.
Whilst Christies stated that 315 units of the 5554 were produced in stainless steel, this is incorrect. In fact, the 5554 was only produced 279 times across all metals! In the end, only 49 examples of the reference were produced in stainless steel, 46 of them delivered to paying customers. What happened to the remaining three? Only the Audemars Piguet Heritage Department would be able to answer that.
All stainless steel examples of the 5554 were cased in the remaining cases from the D-series of the 5402ST, from case number D 1449 onwards. This number was displayed on the caseback, accompanied by an edition number between 1 and 50. Considering less than 50 were made, not all of these edition numbers were allocated to a completed watch.
What’s interesting about the example coming up at Christie’s is that it features case markings inconsistent with those usually seen on the reference. Rather than the relevant D-series case number, it is numbered C-19635 which is more akin to those cased in yellow gold. As well as this, its edition number is 142, well beyond the 50 pieces made. One possible explanation is due to its production year of 1987, much later than the majority of the other examples. In fact, 45 of the 49 were actually delivered to paying customers in 1985, with only one example was delivered to a paying customer after this, which was in 1990. The present watch is therefore either one of two possibilities: The final model to be delivered, in 1990, or one of the three unaccounted for examples which went somewhere other than regular customers.
Case numbers aside, this piece features a peculiar dial which makes it stand out from the rest too. Whilst most were fitted with smooth matte grey dials, and on rare occasions black tapisserie dials, the present example appears to have a smooth white dial with French typography. When it appeared at auction a few years ago, once again at Christie’s, it featured what appears to be the same dial, but in a more saturated cream hue, accompanied by darker indexes and blue central hands as opposed to the silver indexes and central hands it currently has.
A special example or perhaps one that’s simply been through the wars, we may not know for sure the past history of this particular Royal Oak. None the less it goes under the hammer at Christie’s later this month as one of less than 50 examples of the earliest perpetual calendar sports watches ever.
