As a result the first 1,000 units of the piece took a year to sell, as did the next 1,000. But, little by little, the RO started to gain favor, thanks, in many ways, to what was its initial downfall. Rather than trying to justify its cost, AP leant into it, acknowledging in one of their advertisements that, with its combination of rarity and expense, ‘It takes more than money to wear the Royal Oak’.

With this edition of our ‘Rivalry’ series, it feels like we’ve finished sitting through the warm-up fights, we’ve enjoyed the spectacle of the undercard scrappers, and we are now fully into the main event.

Both are from around the same vintage, both can legitimately claim to have changed the course of the entire horology industry, each is made by one third of the Holy Trinity and both were originally penned by the same genius designer.

However, it was just an idea for now. The patek philippe replica watches itself wouldn’t make its full debut until a year later with the ref. 5402 introduced at the 1972 show. Along with its looks (which we’ll come to in a moment) equally astonishing was its price tag. At a time when a Rolex Submariner could be had for around $300, Audemars Piguet was asking for CHF 3,750 for the Royal Oak. What’s more, it was in steel and cost about the same as a solid gold Patek Philippe dress watch.

The Royal Oak came first, created in 1971 during the darkest days the mechanical watch industry had had to face up to that point. The Quartz Crisis was in full swing, decimating the traditional Swiss houses one by one, eventually bankrupting upwards of two-thirds of them by the time the fight back began. No brand was big enough or well-established enough to withstand the onslaught, not even Audemars Piguet, a manufacture which could trace its roots back to 1874.

It would be fair to say that the Royal Oak was set to be AP’s last chance saloon. Had it failed, it is likely the business would have crumbled like so many others around it. And the decision to make it, and the speed with which it was styled, only add to the extraordinary legacy.

Almost in desperation, AP knew they needed something out of the ordinary to win back a public now in love with the convenience, accuracy and cost-effectiveness of quartz superwatches.to. Yet all they had to go on was some indistinct chatter from the Italian market which suggested there might be some demand for a steel model tough and sporty enough to be worn everyday, but which offered something distinctive design-wise in amongst a sea of round cased, fairly standard-issue pieces from the likes of Rolex and Omega.

AP CEO at the time, Georges Golay, turned to Genta as the only person who could possibly save his company. That in itself would have been pressure enough. But famously, Golay explained what he wanted to Genta at 4pm the afternoon before the 1971 Swiss Watch Show and told him he wanted an ‘unprecedented’ concept sketch-to unveil the next day!