Pink Gold Skeleton Wristwatch Vacheron Constantin

Pink Gold Skeleton Wristwatch by Vacheron Constantin. Photo courtesy: Sothebys

Vacheron Constantin 18K Pink Gold Skeleton Watch with Roman and Baton numerals. This beautiful skeleton watch has cal.1755 finely pierced and engraved manual winding nickel lever movement with 30 jewels, mono-metallic balance and minute repeating on 2 gongs. Attached with a 18K Pink Gold Vacheron Constantin buckle, it has tear-drop lugs and sapphire crystal display back.

Skeleton watch is a mechanical watch (seldom quartz), in which all of the moving parts are visible through either the front of the watch, the back of the watch or a small cut outlining the dial.

Repeating movement is a complication movement in a mechanical watch or clock that audibly chimes the hours and often minutes at the press of a button. There are many types of repeaters (watches or clocks with repeating movement), from the simple repeater which merely strikes the number of hours, to the minute repeater which chimes the time down to the minute, using separate tones for hours, quarter hours, and minutes. They originated before widespread artificial illumination, to allow the time to be determined in the dark, and were also used by the visually impaired. Now they are valued as expensive novelties by watch collectors and clock enthusiasts.

Minute repeater strikes the number of hours, the number of quarter hours since the last hour and then the number of minutes since the last quarter hour. This requires three different sounds to distinguish hours, quarters, and minutes. Often the hours are signaled by a low tone, the quarters are signaled by a sequence of two tones ("ding-dong"), and the minutes by a high tone. For example, if the time is 2:49 then the minute repeater will sound 2 low tones representing 2 hours, 3 sequence tones representing 45 minutes, and 4 high tones representing 4 minutes: "dong, dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding, ding, ding, ding".

Vacheron Constantin minute repeater wristwatch movement, topless

Vacheron Constantin minute repeater movement from the back.

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