My watch friends know that whenever someone suggests that I should try wearing a large watch, I have a viscerally negative reaction. Why should I wear large, ungainly best 1:1 replica watches just because I’m 6’7″? What I realized they were saying was, “You should wear this watch because I wish I could pull this off, but I can’t.” Fair enough, but it’s not a distinguishment I asked for or generally want. Well, this is one time I can say, “I can pull this off, but you probably can’t.” And man, am I happy I can.
This is one of the rarest birds in Audemars Piguet’s catalog, something that the brand only trots out in limited edition runs: a Royal Oak Grand Complication. Not only that, but it’s an offshore and semi-openworked one. I’ve been obsessed with these cheap UK fake watches for a while because of their absurdity: 44mm wide, 15.70mm thick, a skeletonized watch with a perpetual calendar, moon phase, leap year indicator, split-second chronograph, and minute repeater. If the original Offshore was called “The Beast,” what do you even begin to call this watch, one that eats up your wrist and weighs you down? I’m going with Jörmungandr – the world serpent eating its own tail in Norse mythology.
The kicker is that despite being an “Offshore,” the watch should maybe be called “close to shore,” with 20m of water resistance. That’s the minimum water resistance Audemars Piguet is shooting for today. This is what happens when you add a minute repeater to any watch; more moving parts on the case mean less water resistance. But who cares? There’s something awesome about a minute repeater for the sake of one.
In 2013, Ben covered a different version of the high quality replica Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Grand Complication watches at SIHH. Before that, we covered two semi-openworked versions of the watch in “normal” Royal Oak form in 2012. So this is technically more of a revisit to a watch that hasn’t changed a ton over the past 11 years. But between Royal Oak and Offshore Grand Complications, I’ve only ever seen two in the wild.
This Offshore makes three, though it technically wasn’t in the wild; it was in Monaco Legend Group’s spring auction this year. It sold for €455,000 against an estimate of €350,000-700,000. When a black-pusher version of this watch was released in 2015, the estimated retail price was around $740,000. That means that not only is this, across the board, just an absurd watch but an absurdly expensive one and often not a great “investment” if you bought one new (as much as I loathe that idea of 2024 Swiss copy watches as “investments” in the first place). Regardless, I was (and remain) absolutely obsessed. I kept asking to take it out of the display case, expounding to anyone who would listen that this watch was the most ridiculously cool thing you could hope to find from a modern piece in an auction. Here’s why.
Audemars Piguet has a long history of excelling in complications. I shared various complicated perfect UK replica watches in my interview last year with Anne-Gaëlle Quinet, AP’s new Head of Complications. But the important ones for this story are the trio that make up this grand comp – split-seconds chronograph, minute repeater, perpetual calendar. Although this specific Offshore was made in 2016, the caliber powering the watch has a lineage back to 1996. That means any watch using the caliber 2885 is based on horology that’s thirty years old, but AP has found ways to keep it fresh with new design touches. Just look at where the watch started.
That watch was remarkable largely for one specific complication: the split-second chronograph. According to AP, in the 1880s and 1890s, the brand made 1,625 luxury fake watches, and over 300 had a split-second function. However, between the creation of their first wristwatch and 1996, AP made only one split-second chronograph wristwatch in 1949. I think this is counter-intuitive with the number of split-second chronographs on the market and, on its face, how complicated something like a perpetual calendar seems. Minute repeaters are also incredibly complex. Heck, IWC now makes a caliber 7750-based split-second chronograph for under $20,000. But no, it wasn’t the perpetual calendar – which became an icon of AP with the 2120/2800 caliber QPs – or the minute repeater that was the limiting technical factor behind making grand comps. It was the split-second chronograph.
A year later, in 1997, Audemars Piguet celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Royal Oak with both the first tourbillon in a RO case and the first Grand Complication. Unsurprisingly, the brand can thank Renaud & Papi (now known as Audemars Piguet Renaud & Papi or APRP), the same people who “solved” the issue of the minute repeater for IWC’s Grand Complication, who were able to help design the caliber 2885. The watch featured the iconic petite tapisserie dial, but other touches (like the words Grande Complication in a serif font on the dial) feel a bit long in the tooth nearly 30 years later. With subtle changes over the years, the brand has kept the model fresh.
On the back, you get a full view of that caliber 2885 movement; the gongs, the chronograph works, and everything is updated to modern visual tastes. Older versions of the watch had a rotor in yellow gold, which was hand engraved – very 1990s and very outdated today. Now, the replica watches for sale features more modern skeletonization while maintaining some anglage on the bridges. One thing you’ll notice, however, is that the wheels don’t have any interior angles – something you might expect on a $740,000 watch.
It’s funny how quickly people have become complacent about the idea of Royal Oak minute repeaters. Audemars Piguet’s now has four different Supersonneries in the Royal Oak collection and one in the Concept line. These are outstanding repeaters, loud, impressive, and almost a trick when you consider how much louder they are on the wrist than in the hand. But back in 1997, these grand comps were the first repeaters in a Royal Oak case. So when I see the repeater slide on the left-hand side like this, all I can think is that there’s something special to me about the lineage of “firsts.” Sure, this Offshore was made 19 years later, but it’s still the same caliber, which is incredibly cool.
The repeater itself sounds really strong despite the bulky rose gold case that should – in theory – dampen it. But it’s also possibly the limiting factor for the watch, being a 20m water-resistant “Offshore.” And that’s part of the appeal to me. I love contradictions like this – an Offshore I wouldn’t take in the water is maybe the biggest contradiction of them all.
As I mentioned before, the real achievement is the split-second chronograph. I covered this in my story on the Royal Oak Concept and the newest Split-Second Chronograph GMT, but I’ll briefly recap it. At the time of production of this Offshore, Audemars Piguet was only able to produce a maximum of 13 split-second chronographs a year, and all of those mechanisms were used in Grand Complications. In addition to the price (and limited collectors for a watch like this), that’s one of the reasons why super clone watches wholesale shop like this were made in sets of three or four.
Looking at the movement, you can see why. The mass of bridges and levers required to stop a single chronograph hand while letting the other hand run is just a beautiful mess. I’m no watchmaker or designer, but there’s something instantly obvious to me about how difficult it would be to place everything necessary to make the chronograph work. It’s also a good example of why the new Concept is so revolutionary for AP.
As I mentioned in the story on the Concept, the biggest achievement in that watch (that trickled down from the RD#4) is a reimagining of the split-seconds mechanism and rotor. Any split-second work will grip the center wheel to stop one of the chronograph hands (or both), and previously, it was naturally placed under the rotor and bearing, allowing the rotor to swing freely. The downside of stacking these mechanisms is the added thickness. However, the new design from AP nestles the works inside the rotor bearing, simplifying things and allowing for a thinner profile.
It’s possible with these changes (and the innovations of the Supersonnerie) that AP is secretly working on putting all of these innovations together with whatever comes after the 2120 perpetual calendar movements are discontinued (a fact announced alongside the John Mayer perpetual calendar) for a new Grand Comp. We’ve seen the Supersonnerie and split together in the RD#4 already, so it seems pretty likely. In the meantime, Swiss made replica watches like this are still examples of the best of Audemars Piguet.
There are plenty of little details about this specific watch I really love. The dial does the “inversion” thing in a certain light that allows the watch to be plenty legible while giving you a sneak peek at the movement. Tilt it a bit more (and catch a shadow), and you can see right through this openworked dial. Yes, it’s massive. Yes, it’s heavy. But I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a bit cooler when I was wearing it. I wore it so much that I stepped into a slightly darker part of the room where the auction preview was taking place and was surprised to see the lume light up like a Christmas tree. It was a detail I had overlooked until that point and yet another one that left me smiling while scratching my head. If you want to read your openworked grand comp in the dark and don’t want to chime it, well, AP has you covered.
The Royal Oak Grand Complication is no longer the king of the hill at AP. That title has been eclipsed (by a large margin) with the introduction of the RD#4 Supercomplication. But there’s just something so magnetic about a Royal Oak.
This isn’t a watch for everyone. Heck, it’s barely a watch for anyone when you’re talking about it being a “bargain” at around $500,000 on the secondary market. It’s the same kind of watch that could only be appreciated by someone who – in addition to having an unlimited budget – has an appreciation for the foolish and the fantastical, the things that exist for the sake of it, the AAA China fake watches that defy all logic. Oh, and the kind of person that has a wrist (and frame) that can wear anything regardless of size. Apparently, I check a lot of those boxes; it’s just my budget I need to work on.