Sotheby's has closed its Geneva autumn watch calendar with more than $32 million from its Important Watches sale, held on 8 and 9 November at the Mandarin Oriental. The two-day auction formed the third leg of a Geneva watch week in which the three leading houses together took about $203 million, with Phillips setting a record total and Christie's posting its best watch result.

The most dramatic result of the Sotheby's sale came from a watch by a maker better known for inventing than for volume. A yellow gold George Daniels Millennium wristwatch from 2001, the work of the British horologist who devised the co-axial escapement, sold for CHF 1,536,000, more than five times its CHF 300,000 low estimate. Daniels, who died in 2011, built only a small number of watches by hand during his lifetime, and the Millennium was produced as a limited edition; the example offered in Geneva was preserved alongside correspondence from the maker himself.

The top lot was a Patek Philippe Sky Moon Tourbillon, reference 5002, a yellow gold double-sided wristwatch with twelve complications, which made about CHF 2.3 million. Close behind it, the first numbered example of Patek Philippe's reference 3970 perpetual calendar chronograph reached CHF 2.048 million, setting a new benchmark for the yellow gold version of the reference.

The catalogue ranged widely beyond the top lots, from a unique 1914 A. Lange and Sohne clock watch with perpetual calendar and sonnerie complications to a Rolex reference 6032 chronograph, one of only four known examples, appearing at auction for the first time since its acquisition in 1959. A separate online Fine Watches sale closed on 10 November.