Patek Philippe Retrograde Perpetual Calendar

A perpetual calendar is like a small computer on your wrist. Think of it this way: Imagine a watch that keeps track of not only the time, but also the date, the day of the week, and the month, tells you whether it’s a leap year or not, and what the current phase of the moon is. Oh, and one more thing — imagine it does all of this mechanically, using springs and gears, and that you only have to adjust it once every century or so. Crazy, right? Patek has been making such watches since the Second World War, and continues to make some of the most superlative quantieme perpetuelles on the market. This particular example, a Reference 5050J, dating to the early 1990s, includes a neat retrograde date display that makes it stand out from the crowd. Housed in a 35mm 18K yellow gold case with a signed crown, a sapphire crystal, and a stepped bezel, it features an 'opaline' silver dial with applied indices, a matching gold ‘feuille’ handset, a printed, retrograde date display, a moonphase display