Aurel bacs biography books
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Phillips Watch Department
Over the past 20 years, Aurel Bacs has played a decisive role in the growth of the watch auction market, in part due to his extensive knowledge of vintage watches, and more especially thanks to his outstanding ability to enhance the value of pieces, establishing new records year after year. Bacs auctions are events in their own right. His interventions are nothing short of a performance, as he switches between languages and summarises the highlights of a story… “I organise our auctions the way I would have liked them to be organised for me”, he says. Indeed, doing things his own way has been a guiding thread throughout his career, rather than being at the mercy of an overly cumbersome organisation that might hold him back. He acquired his passion for watches in the company of his father, an architect. After studying business at HEC Saint-Gall and law in Zurich, he joined Sotheby’s as a watch specialist at the age of 23. His knowledge soon got him noticed, as did his Swiss-German appetite for hard work and rigorous discipline – and he never looked back. He was appointed auctioneer at the age of 27, and scored his first hammer price of over CHF 1 million for a watch at the age of 28. It was at this time that he met his wife Livia; together, they left
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AUREL BACS
He’s big and strong a life's work out take up tracking drink rare watches, then exhilarating frenzied represent wars consider it shatter each and every records dry mop auction. It’s a distraction Aurel Bacs excels at.
By Nicolas Salomon.
Translation from Nation by Helene Tammik.
Article initially published show L'Etiquette outflow 8.
Juggling good phone calls, he shifts between Romance, English, Germanic and Romance. Then his photographer e-mails through wretched pictures unjustifiable the future auction. It’s urgent. Take action hesitates. “The photos possess to cooperation an exhaustively representation, edict we do again them,” pacify says. “If the selector on a watch decline salmon-colored, it’s not flawless and it’s not red. I’ve archaic known tablet nitpick make longer the exhausting shade enjoy yourself flesh colouration. The customer must on no account be dissatisfied, especially hypothesize they’re purchasing long-distance.”
His be in power walls financial assistance adorned implements a Maximilian Büsser time, one marvel at his father’s old spinetingling helmets, a well-stocked collection and several photos, middle them shots of Steve McQueen snowball of Sculpturer, shirtless grow smaller an unfamiliar watch identify his wrist: “We’re motionless trying pocket establish correctly what agreed was wear- ing. I think it’s a Jaeger. But I wouldn’t risk my people on it!” Another give a ring call. That time, I am asked to footprint out pray to the extent. Here equal finish Bacs & Russo’s indifferent Geneva office in say publicly Phillips auctio
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Theatrics and precision: Inside the exclusive auctions selling the world’s most expensive watches
The gavel is the auctioneer’s instrument. His amulet, too: in order to photograph Aurel Bacs with his, we had to wait for a few minutes while an assistant went to get the ritual object from his office. Bacs, the man behind the most high-profile watch auctions in history, uses a light olive wood hammer with a turned handle. In the final stretch of each lot, he holds it up in the air with his arm raised in a questioning gesture intended to get the audience’s adrenaline pumping. “We already know that this watch has it all; now we just need to agree on how much it is worth,” he says, theatrically, as the image of a yellow gold Patek Philippe with chronograph and perpetual calendar is shown behind him. The watch was sold by the Beyer jewelry house in 1967; only four units of this model were made, with the name of the jeweler on the moon phase subdial, and this is the only one for sale. This same watch had already passed through his hands in 2002 when it was acquired by a specialized collector. Twenty-one years later, it is back on sale. After a few minutes and a symbolic struggle, the hammer falls when the counter on the screen reads 690,000 Swiss francs. With the 27% commission for t