CartierSantos Dumont Small Model

This 2018 Cartier-Santos Dumont is being auctioned through a private vendor and comes with its original display box and outer sleeve, instruction manual, and proof of warranty card. Around the bezel, there are some visible scratches, with the strap and its ‘ardillon’ buckle also showing signs of wear. The vendor has reported the watch is in good working order and graded it ‘A’ for condition. The images appear to be consistent with their assessment.

A diminutive take on the Cartier Santos, the diameter of this reference’s square-formed stainless steel case measures just 27.5mm in diameter. Despite its smaller dimensions, the watch retains everything that is loved about the original watch; the silver, satin-brushed dial is finished with a sunburst effect, the hour markers are presented in the form of roman numerals, and the hands are finished in a blued steel. Instead of Cartier’s traditional sapphire-embossed crown, the precious stone is replaced with a blue synthetic cabochon-shaped spinel. Rounding off the watch’s overall simple-yet-elegant design is a navy blue alligator leather strap.

Beneath the screw-down rear case is Cartier’s ‘high-frequency’ quartz movement, which resonates to a frequency of 32,768 revolutions per second. Despite not having the ‘glamour’ of their automatic counterparts, the battery-powered quartz movements are actually far more accurate and allow the wearer to simply set and forget. Introduced in 2019, these Cartier Quartz watches have an impressive battery life of up to six years.

The Cartier Santos is a watch with over a century of history, and is considered to be the world’s first proper pilot’s watch, predating the Breitling Navitimer and Rolex GMT-Master II by almost half a century.

All watches offered for sale are searched and cleared against The Watch Register database and a certificate is available to the winning bidder upon request.

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