Collector’s Daniel Roth, 38mm “Metropolitan 24 Cities” Ref.857ST automatic world time in Steel

Description

Pre-owned. No box or paper but a Passions box will be given.

A rare find. Daniel Roth, a household name among watch collectors who once created watches in the workshops of the Breguet, Jaeger LeCoultre and Audemars Piguet before striking out under his own name. This curved elliptical case design is an icon of the brand, very comfortable on the wrist and never too small or large.

There are various world time mechanical watches for the traveller who appreciates a fine watch on their wrist to accompany their trips that crosses time zones. The Worldtime ‘heures universelles’ with 24 cities time zone was developed by Louis Cottier in 1931 & the design was acquired by the biggest brands of its time. Today, these popular watches are Patek Philippe’s Worldtime, JLC Dual-time, Ulysse Nardin GMT +/-, Rolex’s GMT-Master and this.

This is Metropolitan is an early production piece with a very nice 3 digit serial number. The buckle is an early version with a surface engraved like the teak deck of a yacht and signed. Later versions were very simple square framed and unsigned. The grey dial has guilloche finish similar to Breguet while the luminous arabic nos gives it a sporty look.

Pressing the center-button changes the city names in clockwise manner and also the Am/Pm plus arrow indicator in the lower window. A rather unique and possibly proprietary design by Daniel Roth.

Watch was polished and remains in very good condition now. Functions checked and works well.

An article on this model by SJX here.

Retailed for US$18300 in 2006.