We Just Got In This Million-Dollar Voutilainen, and the Internet’s a Powerful Place

Let me just tell you how this thing ended up in our hands. A couple weeks ago we posted a video about a Voutilainen we bought and sold, and it got a decent amount of views. Other collectors who own Voutilainens saw it, and some of them reached out. I was able to secure another two, this one being one of them, with the other coming in later this week.

It’s Not as Simple as People Think

I want to be honest about something. It’s not as simple as saying, hey, we had this watch before, and now people are just lining up to sell them to you. You still have to show you can securely transport a watch like this from the customer to us, market it the right way, and actually have the reach to find a buyer willing to pay a fair market price. And you have to do all of that in a way that makes everyone feel comfortable through the whole process.

What Makes This One So Special

The one we got today is, to my eyes, one of the coolest dials Kari’s ever made. The outside is black, and the inside opens up into this vibrant green. If you’re familiar with Kari’s dials, he has some of the best finishing that exists in the world, and that’s a huge part of what draws people into his watches in the first place. Take a moment and just look at this thing bouncing around in the light. It’s a special look. This one’s a 2026 full set, cased in platinum.

Getting on the List Isn’t Even the Hard Part

Supposedly, if you want one of his watches, first you need a real in with him. Once you basically win the lottery and get that in, he’s going to charge you a 50% deposit up front, with a delivery date about ten years later. So say you’re buying a watch that’s going to cost $150,000. You hand over $75,000 today, and ten years later when he finally finishes it, you pay the balance and get your watch. The hype around the brand is people wanting to skip that ten-year wait. But most people aren’t even getting on the wait list to begin with. There’s probably one out of a million people who even get the honor of waiting ten years for one of these.

Why the Prices Keep Going Up

Part of why prices on these have gone absolutely ballistic is the auction results. Just in the past few months, several have well exceeded a million dollars at final hammer price. These aren’t made-up numbers. Voutilainens are very rarely put on the market, and as soon as they are, they get snapped up, and collectors tend to put them away and never bring them back out.

Why Sell to Us Instead of an Auction House

You might ask why someone would sell a watch like this to us instead of an auction house, and there are real pros and cons on both sides. We typically charge around an 8% consignment fee. An auction house is going to charge the buyer around a 25 to 30% premium and charge the seller another 7% or so, so fees on a watch like this usually run past 30% total. Auction houses do tend to land the highest prices, since their customer pool is the highest net worth collectors in the world, all bidding against each other in the same room. But the seller typically nets about 30% less than the final sale price, and payout usually takes around 45 days. Sell through us, and the moment the buyer pays and takes the watch, you’re paid immediately. Auctions also run without a reserve most of the time, so the final number could land way above what you expected, or way under it. There’s a real level of risk either way, and it comes down to what matters more to you.

This watch is in stock and available now. Take a look at our current watch inventory, and if you’ve got a piece like this you’re thinking about parting with, here’s how our watch exchange works.