The Vintage Watcher

Clearly made for the nouveau riche Chinese market, this dragon watch is still pretty cool.  Made by Thomas Prescher in 18K gold, the left hand claw indicates the hours, the right hand claw indicates the minutes. When you press the button on the crown, the hands go back to its original “lucky” position. The movement is a retrograde movement, which means when the claw hand reaches the top of the scale (noon or midnight for the hour hand, 60 minutes at the minute hand), it automatically returns back to the beginning of the scale, something nice and complicated to see.  Looks to be a fine movement as it is shockproof, self-winding with 40 hour power reserve, 18K rotor engraved with dragon wings, 25 jewels etc… Anyone buying this watch is buying it for the gold and the dragon to impress friends and business acquaintances, not really the movement.  Auction estimate is at $11,000-$13,000, which sounds about right.  Can be found in the Antiquorum Auction catalog.