Their Time Is Money

If you wanted to see fancy jewelry over the weekend, you could have braved the lines at the Los Angeles Convention Center to ogle the Star of Bombay, the hottest rock in the Smithsonian Institution’s traveling exhibition.

Or you could have been in Costa Mesa, where Tourneau Watches in South Coast Plaza was showing off three watches worth a total of $3.5 million. These pricey pieces were made by Breguet, the Swiss company that supplied the time for Marie Antoinette, Napoleon and King George III.

It was Abraham-Louis Breguet in the 18th century who invented the automatic wristwatch, perpetual calendar, timepiece shock absorbers and the sub-dial that ticks off the seconds.

Long before there was electricity--when telling time in the dark was a major hassle--the repeater watch was popular because it would chime the time when the “slider,” the button on the side, was pressed.

To celebrate the watchmaker’s 220th anniversary, Breguet spent three years hand-making three repeater watches in 18-karat white, yellow and rose gold and encased in diamonds. The pocket watch has a transparent, “skeletonized” back case so you can see the workmanship of the movements, and one of the two wristwatches is a full skeleton, so you can see straight through it.

What kind of assurances come with million-dollar watches?

“A one-year warranty,” says Tourneau’s manager, Patrick Bell. “But they should last hundreds of years.”