Swatch’s latest luxury collaboration is a $400 pocket watch

Depending on size, features, and finish, the price of Royal Oak watches from Audemars Piguet can range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop pocket watches will be very affordable when available starting May 16th through select Swatch stores – relatively speaking. The Lépine version, with its crown at 12 o’clock, will be priced at $400, while the Savonnette variant, with its crown at 3 o’clock, will be $420. Each will come with a calfskin lanyard but other accessories will also be available including a desk watch stand.

In addition to their brightly colored water-resistant case made of bio-ceramic and scratch-resistant sapphire crystal, the pocket watches feature a variant of Swatch’s Sistem51 movement that the company developed more than a decade ago that can be mass-produced on an automated assembly line to reduce cost. The Royal Pop’s streamlined Sistem51 movement goes beyond the original self-winding function for a manual design with a 90-hour power reserve.

This is not Swatch’s first collaboration with a luxury brand. Swatch is incredibly popular Moon Swatch Collection It was a collaboration with Omega, while… Diving fifty fathoms The collection came from a partnership with Blancpain. However, both Omega and Blancpain are part of a larger one Swatch Group. Audemars Piguet is an independent Swiss watch manufacturer still controlled by the descendants of Jules Louis Audemars and Edouard Auguste Piguet.

This will likely make this set even more desirable by collectors, as well as potentially speculators. To help meet what may be high demand, Swatch is limiting its sales to one pocket watch per person per store per day, according to Wired.