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Say what you will about Patek Philippe’s new $256,315 Nautilus desk clock, one of four timepieces the brand introduced at Watches and Wonders to mark the 50th anniversary of its Nautilus collection—commenters have called it everything from “an absolute abomination” to “seriously cool”—but one thing is clear: Finely made clocks, pocket watches, and other horological nods to a bygone era—whether decorative art objects, complex timekeeping mechanisms, or both—have re-emerged as connoisseur favorites, particularly among younger collectors.

“People who have grown up with zero need for a mechanical wristwatch due to cell phones and Apple watches are naturally more inclined to ignore the practicality that you lose in a pocket watch or clock because they don’t see much practicality in a wristwatch,” Rich Fordon, Sotheby’s assistant vice president, associate specialist and head of content, watches, tells Robb Report. “There has to be this romanticism present for them to be interested.”

That sentiment helps explain why brands best known for wristwatches have lately ventured well beyond the wrist. During Watches and Wonders in Geneva, Chopard, Chanel, and Vacheron Constantin—as well as smaller independent makers like the Japanese brand Minase—all presented timepieces designed for the home.

Take Vacheron’s spectacular La Quête du Temps clock, featuring an automaton astronomer performing 144 distinct gestures orchestrated through 158 cams and a mechanical memory system linked to the clock. Chanel’s one-of-a-kind gold, ceramic, and diamond chess set, meanwhile, has two queens (black and white versions of Gabrielle Chanel, adorned in diamond tweed suits and diamond-set slingbacks) that reveal the time beneath their pedestals. These are just two examples that show how the recent wave of old-school time-telling objects, including pocket watches, stand in sharp contrast to the hype watches that dominated the pandemic-era market.

“From where I sit in the auction/secondary world and paying attention to the modern market, I see this as a throughline and a part of the reaction to the Nautilus/Royal Oak hype we saw in the market from 2020-21,” Fordon says.

“If a collector isn’t wearing watches to flex anymore, it’s a natural progression to say, ‘I’m interested in things almost no one is going to see because I’m going to leave them at home,’” he adds. “I wouldn’t say it’s a raging hot market, but there is a fascination with a lot of these objects.”

Chopard’s charming—and chiming—Beehive Clock, a table clock standing nearly a foot tall with seven tiers of rounded glass segments encircling a multi-level mechanical movement, stood out among the new releases for the same reason the Nautilus desk watch (Ref. 958G-001 in white gold) drew so much attention: Both were genuinely unexpected.

“Patek did everything collectors were looking for with the new Nautilus wristwatches, but still, the desk clock was more interesting,” Fordon says.

He contrasted the Chopard and Patek clocks with Vacheron’s La Quête du Temps (“One of the most amazing horological objects created in however many decades you want to count”) and the trio of new Jaeger-LeCoultre clocks designed in collaboration with Marc Newson, presented last month at Milan Design Week: the Atmos Hybris Artistica Tellurium, Atmos Designer Calibre 568, and the new Memovox Travel Clock.

“Jaeger doing a bunch of new Atmos clocks in Milan doesn’t have the same effect as Chopard doing a beehive table clock,” he says. “Jaeger always does Atmos clocks; we know they do this. Whereas with the Nautilus desk clock and Chopard Beehive, they can garner a new audience.”

But the appeal of the unexpected—and a “return to passion,” as Sotheby’s global head of watches Geoff Hess describes the anti-hype watch phenomenon—isn’t the only reason clocks and pocket watches are finding a new generation of fans.

The market for both types of timekeepers peaked in the 1970s and ’80s, when demand was largely driven by collectors of antiques. “If you owned a bunch of pocket watches and clocks, you also had a bunch of Louis IV furniture,” Fordon says. “Whereas now, with the rise of high-end wristwatch collecting, we’re starting to see a return of interest in pocket watches and clocks, this time for their horological intrigue.”

The success of Sotheby’s December sale of the Olmstead Complications Collection, an 84-piece ensemble of mostly pocket watches that achieved $22.9 million, more than triple its pre-sale estimate, points to a growing phenomenon with an unexpected tie to the modern obsession with independent watchmaking.

“We see more and more people going deep into the horological references of independent watchmakers,” Fordon says. At the Olmstead sale, for example, “people were bidding on and buying carriage clocks from 1800 and Earnshaw chronometers because people like F.P. Journe and Raúl Pagès and even Simon Brette—these are the influences they’re drawing on. You’re kind of buying the source. The ultimate is Breguet. Sotheby’s did a big Breguet sale last season in Geneva and F.P. Journe was in the room bidding on the most important piece.

“The independents are very classically knowledgeable,” Fordon adds. “To sit down and make a watch by hand, you have to know who A.L. Breguet is. The technology for watch escapements has not changed much in the last 200 years. If you’re going to make one, that’s who you have to study.” By extension, if you’re going to appreciate a watch made by Journe and his disciples, clocks and pocket watches are the obvious, and often most affordable, place to begin.