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Price: $29,500
Availability: TBD
Movement & Winding: Automatic Patek Philippe in-house 26-330
Case Dimensions: 40mm wide; 10.79mm thick
Water-Resitance: 30m
Power Reserve: Minimum 35, maximum 45 hours

Quick Take: Patek Philippe’s new Weekly Calendar watch is interesting and unusual for the brand, and likely to be one of the most talked-about watches of the Baselworld 2019 releases. Patek is exceptionally good at presenting complicated calendar information in extremely elegant and intuitive ways, and — what d’ya know — they’ve done it again, this time in the form of a watch that displays the date, day of the week, and number of the current week (out of 53). Perhaps even more notable is that this is possibly the only modern stainless steel watch produced by the brand that is not a limited edition.

Who It’s For: Patek Philippe enjoys a special status for watch collectors, and the brand’s steel watches (and especially its steel complicated watches) are relatively rare. It’ll be interesting to see how the market reacts to the introduction of a non-limited, serially produced steel complicated watch, and if it will mean more steel Pateks in the future.

Not only are steel Pateks highly sought after, but the Calatrava Weekly Calendar is highly appealing, with automatic winding, a compelling look, useful functions, and wearable case dimensions. It is still priced like a Patek, however, so it remains exclusive in that sense.

Key Features: What is a weekly calendar? Here, it is based on the ISO 8601 standard for the exchange of date- and time-related data, which means several things: It accounts for the occasional occurrence of 53 weeks in a year as well as stipulates that weeks begin in Mondays, and that the first full week of the year contains January 4th. The Patek Philippe 26-330 automatic movement (based on the existing 324) accounts for all of this, as well displays other more familiar calendar information including date, day of the week, and the time. Because most people don’t keep track of the week number, of course, the months are conveniently also noted on the dial.

Another detail regarding the dial is that the font used is based on the watch designer’s own handwriting — a neat little touch. At 40mm wide and about 11mm thick in steel, the Patek Philippe Calatrava Weekly Calendar 5212A is wearable and interesting. It’salso nice to see the sometimes overshadowed Calatrava line get some attention. With a calendar complication, a prestigious name, as well as an expectedly exquisite movement visible through the case back, the Patek Philippe Calatrava Weekly Calendar 5212A is unsurprisingly priced for high-end collectors at around $29,500.

More from Baselworld 2019

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