Who Will Take Home Watchmaking’s Biggest Prize?

Originally published by Stephen Pulvirent on Hodinkee.

Monday morning, while many of us here in the U.S. were celebrating Labor Day and lamenting the end of summer, the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) quietly dropped the shortlist of finalists for this year's competition. Winners won't be announced until November 7th, but now we've got the final collection of 84 watches that the judges will assess in the days leading up to the big award ceremony in Geneva. These watches span 14 categories, with six finalists allowed per category. The spread of brands and styles represented is pretty diverse, and with the GPHG it's pretty difficult to predict ahead of time which watch is going to take home the night's top prize – the jury is a diverse set of professionals and collectors from across the world, and it's extremely tough to guess at what they're going to find most appealing in any given year. My bet is on something complicated and over-the-top, but that's just me.