In addition to the production of watches, pocket watches and table clocks and other timepiece products, some brand fans also know that they also produce some non-timepiece peripheral products, if from the current official website of PP listed accessories products, at least you can find cufflinks, earrings, rings, key rings and banknote holders, etc., and even like Limoges ceramics and enamel ornament plates and other goods you can expect or can't imagine, in addition to these items, Patek Philippe also has a long-term out of print peripheral products that are now very attractive to collectors. That's the Golden Ellipse lighter (haven't you heard of it before).
Patek Philippe's current accessories include cufflinks, earrings and key rings.
If you haven't heard of the Golden Elippe lighter, it's normal, because PP only produced such products in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the number was very small, and it is estimated that the brand only made 200 400 lighters.
At that time, the reason why Patek Philippe produced lighter products was related to the background of the times, when the watch world was in a period of great invasion of quartz watches, coupled with social changes, and the emergence of a new generation of wealthy classes, so the market demand for luxury diversity was also increasing.
Patek Philippe used to create peripheral products such as lighters based on the Golden Ellipse series.
At that time, it was a period of steady progress for Patek Philippe, when the Nautilus series had just been born for a while, and the Golden Ellipse with its characteristic oval case was more in line with the trend of the market for dress watches in those years, and the Golden Ellipse came out in 1968, accumulating more and longer market reputation than the Nautilus series, so more than ten years after the appearance of this work, PP has been successively from Golden Ellipse's exterior styling has been derived from products such as rings, key rings, and lighters.
The oval shape of the Golden Elilipse's signature was the inspiration for lighters, and Patek Philippe is known to have produced around 200,400 Golden Elilipse lighters between the 1970s and 1980s.
John Reardon, a senior foreign PP collector, pointed out that the Golden Elippe product line was the first time that the brand created a variety of peripheral products based on specific geometric shapes, and the production of this non-watch category was in the late 1970s In the early 1980s, during the quartz storm, Patek Philippe successively hired many experienced craftsmen to join, but at that time the number of mechanical watches created by the brand was relatively small. Instead, jewel-setters and enamel-painters apply their skills to products such as cufflinks, tie clips, rings, key chains and lighters.
In the past, Patek Philippe cooperated with the British lighter brand Colibri to develop the Golden Elippe lighter, and PP was responsible for the exterior design and production of the lighter.
Among them, the lighter is a more special product, because of its larger size, relatively speaking, it can better express the aesthetics of the Golden Ellipse, looking back at the Golden Ellipse lighter products at that time, Patek Philippe made the fuselage with ** or platinum and so on, and hand-carved patterns such as herringbone pattern, straight stripe decoration or the brand's so-called wave pattern on the lighter fuselage, and even the brand will integrate the enamel process to make the lighter, which is also open to customers to order, For example, there was a Golden Elippe lighter ordered by the Sultan of Oman in the Middle East.
In addition to the carved surface of the fuselage, the side of the lighter is also engraved with the Patek Philippe brand lettering, which helps to enhance the collectible value of the lighter.
However, after all, the production of lighters and timepieces belong to different fields, so PP did not produce it from scratch, but found the British lighter brand Colibri to cooperate, that is, the core technology of lighters is provided by Colibri, and Patek Philippe focuses on appearance design, decoration and other aspects.
However, there is a slight criticism in the market about PP finding Colibri to cooperate, perhaps because there are other lighter manufacturers on the market that are more famous than Colibri are considered more suitable to co-brand with Patek Philippe, so some collectors will have a wait-and-see attitude towards Golden Ellipse lighters at that time, because they feel that the core technology and quality of lighters can be better (of course, the design and workmanship of lighters are nothing to say).
In 2020, Phillips sold a custom-made Golden Elippe lighter that originally belonged to the Sultan of Oman in the Middle East, and sold for more than 50,000 Swiss francs.
However, until now, the Golden Ellipse lighter, which was bipolar at that time, has been very popular in the market. About three years ago, Golden Elippe lighters or other lighters made by PP have become more and more popular, but it is known that there are less than 60 Patek Philippe lighters at auction so far.
According to Phillips, the demand for PP lighters continues to increase, for example, in November 2020, a Phillips auction sold a PP custom enamel lighter that originally belonged to Qaboos, the Sultan of Oman, for 52,920 Swiss francs, which is a lot of money that can be used to buy high-end watches.
After more than 40 years of Golden Elippe lighters, the market has skyrocketed, and John Reardon attributes the popularity of this merch to the rarity, opulence of its appearance, the quality of its craftsmanship, etc., as well as its pedigree, which is not surprising considering that they are still in smaller numbers than many Patek Philippe watches.
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