One of the world’s most revered wristwatches, the full story behind the reference 2499 perpetual calendar chronograph’s eminent reputation still bears revisiting
Phrases like ‘best of the best’ are a little hollow in a world that sees a new ‘GOAT’ hailed every other week. Watch collecting today has so many grails that even Monty Python would accuse us of not taking the concept seriously. And heavy-hitters like the Patek Philippe 2499 you see here have become so well known, such a ready shorthand for ‘icon status’ that the actual watch sometimes slips past unnoticed while its reputation is doing all the work.
Let’s refocus for a minute. Patek Philippe, for the last 90 years at least (since the Stern family acquired it and set about building the foundations for one of the most important luxury brands in history), has been the pre-eminent haute horlogerie watchmaker. Whatever challenges may come its way from Glashütte, from Le Brassus or from its own home town of Geneva, it enjoys a status and collectability that cannot be matched, and this is thanks to a sustained level of quality that goes back generations.
The Patek Philippe 4th Series Ref. 2499/100
Within that, let’s consider the timing of the reference 2499’s birth. It was the successor to another legendary watch, the reference 1518 - which made waves as the world’s first perpetual calendar chronograph wristwatch to be produced in series, and came out of Patek Philippe’s annus mirabilis of 1941, a year in which it also debuted the 1526 perpetual calendar. First produced in 1951, the 2499 stood on lofty shoulders, but rather than coasting, it modernised with a light touch, resulting in a design that was so resistant to improvement it remained in the brand’s collection for 35 years.
With a slightly larger case than the 35mm 1518 (first series 2499s measured 36mm across but after just a couple of years the model moved to a 37.5mm diameter as Patek Philippe switched casemaker), the 2499 had just the right combination of presence and discretion, aided by the larger stepped lugs and larger crown. Mechanically, the 2499 retained the same movement as its predecessor, a Valjoux 23-based calibre with Victorin Piguet’s perpetual calendar module incorporated, and numerous improvements to the base movement’s design to elevate it to Patek Philippe’s standards of reliability and elegance.
So, we have a watch from the finest maker, launched at the height of its post-war powers, given licence to evolve ever so carefully throughout the golden age of wristwatch design, with a pedigree movement that combines two individually hallowed complications - the handwound chronograph and a perpetual calendar - in one delicately proportioned package. The pieces are starting to come together, are they not?
To quality, one has to add rarity: the 2499 may have been on the books for 35 years, but fewer than ten were created in each year, making for an overall volume of 349 watches. That the reference also enjoys the patronage of some of the world’s best-known collectors - including a particular popularity with musicians; John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Jay-Z, Ed Sheeran - can hardly hurt either.
The Patek Philippe 4th Series Ref. 2499/100
The watch in question is a yellow gold reference 2499/100 from towards the end of the model’s run. Produced in 1984 and sold the following year, it bears all the subtle signs of a fourth series iteration: no tachymeter scale, which cleans up the outer edge of the dial somewhat, as well as faceted baton markers as standard (a rarer find on earlier 2499s) and a neater intersection of the date scale and outer seconds/minutes track at the six o’clock position. The least obvious change is perhaps also the most useful: with the fourth iteration, the 2499 gained a sapphire crystal. There are reasons to love every generation of the 2499, of course, but there is something very appealing about this combination of early modern watch construction, 1940s-era mechanics and mid-century design.
Chris Hall is a writer and editor who has been covering the watch industry since 2011. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, GQ, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Wired and many more publications around the world. He founded The Fourth Wheel newsletter in 2022, co-hosts The Watch Enquiry podcast, and is the creator of the Independent Watchmaking Report, the only sector-specific analysis in the watch world. His first book will be published later this year.
