One big difference between last fall’s auction season and how the spring semester has shaken out so far are the luxury fake Omega Speedmaster results. Last November, we were all abuzz about the record-breaking $3.4 million 2915-1 at Phillips, a high for any Omega replica for sale UK at auction ever, but we were subsequently disappointed that there were no further interesting Speedmaster lots surrounding or following it.
Well, interesting perfect fake Omega Speedmasters were all over the place in Geneva last week. Phillips had a number of prototype Speedmasters, including an original Alaska Project II, while Antiquorum impressed with a run of special Speedies that closed out its auction with a 1990s Omega Speedmaster copy for sale that once spent 365 days in outer space aboard the Mir Soviet space station and eventually exploded past its high estimate to reach a total of CHF 312,500. (The CHF 162,500 total for a skeleton Speedmaster Apollo XI was no slouch, either.)
While none of the above cheap fake Omega Speedmasters reached – or even came close to – the high price of last November’s 2915-1, there was a consistent above-estimate strength across the lots at each auction house. One exception, however, came at Sotheby’s.
The first Swiss made replica Omega Speedmaster 2915-1 (lot 48) to come to auction since the record-breaking watch, and a watch I previously highlighted in these pages, failed to sell. Does that mean the 2915-1 market now tapped out? Not necessarily. The good news is that we’ll only have to wait another month to see what happens next for the reference, when Phillips auctions off a 1:1 fake Omega 2915-1 example (lot 152) during New York Watch: Six.