No matter how many limited Offshores AP did, nor how many Rick Ross album covers featured them, nor whether Ari wore one or not, your home was the Jumbo.

You, as an early internet watch geek, had a home with AP and it was called the Jumbo. In the old days, this watch was a nerdy underdog available at retail whenever you wanted, selling below retail all over. a coping mechanism? Those are two criticisms that could have been levied at the Jumbo for the past 49 years and haven't been, so that tells me the audience was on one that day and just a little turnt up at the perception that this watch is effectively unattainable.ДЄnd so I started to think about what AP, and the Royal Oak вЂ“ even the Jumbo вЂ“В represent to the community now. If I were to summarize, the overall feedback was 'who cares - no one will be able to buy this watch anyway,' punctuated with odd remarks about how 'weak' the movement was and how it lacked water resistance thrown in there as. After all, the brief from then AP CEO Stephen Urquhart (yes the guy who preceded Raynald at Omega, too) as 'A Royal Oak For Young People', and that's effectively what they got when it came to market in 1993. In 2014, when I wrote this detailed look at the brand of AP (which I just re-read and re-learned a few things from), I said that basically the rich dudes who didn't care about watches wore Offshores вЂ“ and us geeks wore Jumbos. I have clear memories of a friend (who is now part of the watch industry) telling me I was crazy to pay $12,000 for a 14802ST Jubilee with 'what is that, a freaking pink dial?' The price for that watch now? Right. The only people who wanted a Jumbo were the nerds like me, and the OGs from the Purists and Timezone forums (shout out to my brother in AP love Howard Parr!). Retail at the time, I believe, was around $14,100. The Jumbo, the watch that most closely connected present to past, was not at all what people wanted. It was glorious! One of the most special watches in the world could actually be had. Saying вЂњyou paid how much for THAT?вЂќ I remember a visit from my friend Robert-Jan (you know, the Speedy guy) in NYC just after he'd bought a 15202 with white dial in what feels like it must've been 1998, but what was probably more like 2010, and his wife declaring 'that watch is so 1970s!' I also remember all of the Royal Oaks, including the 15202, regularly trading for well below retail the world over. I have clear memories of friends outside the watch world (yes, those exist, or they did), back in 2010 truly not being impressed at all by the Royal Oak. Its suggested retail price, or what I like to call, 'the amount of money that the people who make the watch you want to buy are telling you it's actually worth' is clearly seen on AP's website: 26,700CHF, or $29,600 at today's conversion rate. A deep, scientific study of the matter ( called one quick search on ) tells me that the 15202 in steel is now being offered at around $100,000. Their watches, almost all of them (!), trade for close to retail, or in the case of its steel Royal Oaks, well above. Audemars Piguet is now a billion-dollar watch brand, one of the five most valuable in the world. For as long as IвЂ™ve been able to afford it, and indeed quite a bit of time before, I had a Royal Oak Jumbo in my watch collection. I think itвЂ™s the realest of the real when it comes to high-end sports watches. Hell, we even hosted one of the nights of its 40th anniversary ten years ago in NYC. These stories might range from a quick blurb in GQ (in the issue currently on stands), to an exhaustive review of the then-controversial and newly introduced 41mm chronograph (with video and fairly deep analysis of AP as a brand that I think still holds true today), to a history lesson on Jay-ZвЂ™s now defunct (but ahead of its time!) website Life & Times, to a story that I was extremely proud of and still would be, if it were still available on about the A-Series, though you can still find it via the WayBackMachine. Like, really, madly, truly, and deeply love. And thatвЂ™s simply because itвЂ™s a subject вЂ“ a watch вЂ“ that I love. In fact, I would say that some of the work IвЂ™ve done on the Royal Oak has been among my best, or at least most enjoyable to create. IвЂ™ve been writing about the Royal Oak, in detail, for over a decade.

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