A lit­tle over 30 years ago, Geneva’s Antiquo­rum pio­neered the mod­ern watch auc­tion with its “Art of Patek Philippe” sale. Before then, the notion that fine watch­es were col­lec­table was rather eccen­tric — it took the rise of cheap elec­tron­ic quartz mod­els through­out the 1970s and ’80s to dis­tin­guish tra­di­tion­al­ly craft­ed time­pieces as more than just keep­ers of time.